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Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

wsj.com

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Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#561

Post by derwiki »

nktrnk wrote: post #543
Loughla wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pandora is my favorite subscription. I have paid $3.99 a month for years, for all the music I could ever listen to. It is literally always on in my house or office.

Try FIP radio. Free, no ads, and really good music picks to my taste. Beats Spotify and everything else I’ve tried in terms of finding new music or listening to something in the background. TBH, I still have a Spotify subscription for listening on demand.

Relisten.net is also free if Grateful Dead and other similar bands fit your taste

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#562

Post by themacguffinman »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #551
smogcutter wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, for starters this whole conversation is fantasy because streamers, or really, businesses in general, will never on their own initiative stop taking taking money from customers. Auto-cancellation or whatever is never ever going to happen. Unless forced by regulation I suppose, which I don’t see a reason for. We’re not talking about fraud or deception, just the general day-to-day scumminess of capitalism. All t…

The problem in question is really a problem with the subscription model that charges you a flat rate regardless of usage. The ostensible selling point is that what you pay does not depend on how much you use, and that you can use as much of a service as you want, such that the price is significantly below what you'd pay if you were using the service maximally. This is similar to dial-up internet in the old days, wher…

> So no one is doing you any favors here. Poor utilization is not just an "oops" on the part of the subscriber, but an essential feature of the business model. If everyone was being "personally responsible", the business model simply wouldn't work. And because this isn't a charity, the idea of being happy about subsidizing others users is kind of weird.

Firstly, I wasn't talking about under-utilization, I was comparing equivalent usage but one person watches most of their media consistently week by week while others binge a lot of content in a month and then take a break. They are not subsidizing each other in a normal monthly subscription model, they are just using the service in different patterns. But if the binger only paid for the month he binges, he's paying less but still consuming the same bandwidth.

Secondly, personal responsibility means different things to different people. It's absurd to suggest that if everyone was "personally responsible" they'd all be spending as much time as possible streaming TV shows to maximally utilize their media subscription. That's like saying the personally responsible thing to do with health insurance is be as sick as possible so you get the most amount of medical care for your buck. That's like saying the personally responsible thing to do in a buffet is to eat as much as humanly possible.

Most people are not hellbent on squeezing the last drop of value out every service, they accept the simplicity of a consistent monthly price so they don't have to spend the mental overhead of financially evaluating every single thing they consume. If you want to financially evaluate everything, you can go to a digital or retail store and buy one movie or TV season at a time, that way no one is subsidizing anyone else, but a lot of people think that kind of sucks.

The benefit you get in return is variety. In a buffet, it's easy to try small bites that you would otherwise be hesitant to pay full price for and you don't have to financially regret every bad bite of food.

Yeah, some people get less bang for their buck than others but not everyone is obsessed with coming out ahead.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#563

Post by l33t7332273 »

eropple wrote: post #120
Alupis wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The blame falls also on businesses which take money for services they don't deliver. They often know, and otherwise often could know, when subscribers are not using the service. If you're a business, you should earn your revenue, otherwise you are frauds. I disagree. I routinely go months in between using some of my various subscriptions - be it Netflix, Hulu, Audible, etc. I would be very upset if they cancelled o…

I don't really see how this follows. A perfectly reasonable option that doesn't affect your use case at all would be "don't charge a customer who didn't use the service during that period." AWS doesn't charge me for an empty S3 bucket, Netflix shouldn't charge for zero minutes of video watched that month. Simple as! The downside, of course, is that this does mean you can't ride the Personal Responsibility bicycle and…

If you use 480 hours of Netflix per month it costs the same as 10 minutes per month. S3 does not allow you to multiply your usage by 3000x with the same charge.

Gym memberships operate the same way. Planet fitness could not operate if all paying members showed up at once. This freeloading behavior that is built into the pricing model is very similar to advertising, philosophically speaking.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#564

Post by andrew_eu »

wolverine876 wrote: post #64

The blame falls also on businesses which take money for services they don't deliver. They often know, and otherwise often could know, when subscribers are not using the service. If you're a business, you should earn your revenue, otherwise you are frauds. This particular behavior is little better than taking money and simply refusing to provide service. Don't tell me it's unintentional - you know what's happening and…

Long ago I used to be a regular customer at a massage therapists office and paid dues into their sort of "subscription service" program. They charged a monthly fee about equal to a 1 hour massage, but would give a substantial discount when you actually get massages -- it broke even after about 2x per month which worked well enough for me.

The incredible part was that they tracked whether you got a massage that month. If not, you'd get a 1/3rd credit for a free massage. And after 3 months of no use they would stop billing the monthly fee until you return (and collect your free massage). It was, to me, unbelievably consumer-friendly and reflected well on the business. I recommended everyone I could, and they deserved it.

Unfortunately the place shut down shortly after I moved away.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#565

Post by bluefirebrand »

jimmydddd wrote: post #423
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It should be shame that also falls on them, but somehow we give businesses a pass." I have always viewed the push for "subscriptions" as a business model by so-called "tech" companies with suspicion. Looks like it was warranted. Forgetting to cancel is part of the scheme. A friend of mine once worked briefly for a direct marketing company many, many years ago, pre-www. He said they knew a certain percentage would fo…

For annual services, I think they should always remind you before charging you. Even if you've selected auto-renew. I always appreciate the services that do that.

Sony and Nintendo are doing this for their online services. I had yearly subscriptions to both PSN and Switch Online and just before New Years I got emails from both reminding me about the yearly sub.

I couldn't remember using PSN once last year so I cancelled it.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#566

Post by vasco »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #381
wolverine876 wrote: post #64

The blame falls also on businesses which take money for services they don't deliver. They often know, and otherwise often could know, when subscribers are not using the service. If you're a business, you should earn your revenue, otherwise you are frauds. This particular behavior is little better than taking money and simply refusing to provide service. Don't tell me it's unintentional - you know what's happening and…

"It should be shame that also falls on them, but somehow we give businesses a pass." I have always viewed the push for "subscriptions" as a business model by so-called "tech" companies with suspicion. Looks like it was warranted. Forgetting to cancel is part of the scheme. A friend of mine once worked briefly for a direct marketing company many, many years ago, pre-www. He said they knew a certain percentage would fo…

Gym membership model is the power of SaaS.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#567

Post by Nition »

wilde wrote: post #500
dcotter wrote: post #372

I'm surprised literally no one suggested just cancelling the vast majority of your subscription services and cutting ties with unethical companies. The suggestion that poor people need yet more help from the government because they're too dumb, busy, or gullible to know when they're about to get screwed is condescending. The suggestion that the core audience of WSJ and HN needs this is pitiful. Want to watch a movie?…

Ah yes. Why do I need government help managing my subscriptions when I can checks notes literally get the content from the government?

You've worded this sarcastically but it does sound like a valid question.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#568

Post by MenhirMike »

One of the many reasons to do household accounting. It's not even about making/keeping a budget, but simply about knowing where your money goes. It's a shame that many solutions are in turn also subscription based, so I don't have any good recommendations (I use YNAB Desktop, which was killed off a few years ago and replaced with a SaaS solution that's always increasing in price). But having insight into how you spend your money is such a powerful tool, it's worth doing even if it means manually entering stuff into a LibreOffice Calc workbook.

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#569

Post by _thisdot »

MenhirMike wrote: post #568

One of the many reasons to do household accounting. It's not even about making/keeping a budget, but simply about knowing where your money goes. It's a shame that many solutions are in turn also subscription based, so I don't have any good recommendations (I use YNAB Desktop, which was killed off a few years ago and replaced with a SaaS solution that's always increasing in price). But having insight into how you spen…

If you use macOS + iPhone, a Shorcuts based approach using Numbers is simple and powerful enough for your budgeting needs.

Shortcuts being the simplest way to add a row on to the budget sheet (i.e transaction) from iPhone homescreen or macOS Spotlight.

I wrote a small tutorial here: https://rahulkrrrishna.xyz/notes/2023/11/18/simple-budgeting...

Re: Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

#570

Post by theendisney2 »

runsonrum wrote: post #449
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It should be shame that also falls on them, but somehow we give businesses a pass." I have always viewed the push for "subscriptions" as a business model by so-called "tech" companies with suspicion. Looks like it was warranted. Forgetting to cancel is part of the scheme. A friend of mine once worked briefly for a direct marketing company many, many years ago, pre-www. He said they knew a certain percentage would fo…

I'm sure there are some out there that remember 10.. 15.. 20 CDs for 1¢ mail order. My assumption was that they would bank on guilt or forgetfulness to keep the cash flowing in.

I've actually created a business model based on it.

The vhs rental stores were dying left and right. The one i looked into got most of its money from snacks and drinks. The subscription moddel was 75 cent, renting a movie would drop from 3-4 euro to 75 cent. (only 1 at a time) You could keep it for a week, then you would get a call if you could please return it.

The existing customers knew vhs rental was not really a thing anymore. Many visited just for a chat.

I figured one could guilt people into keeping the sub. I wasnt looking to make a profit, just curuous about the puzzle.

Im not even ashamed. haha

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