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Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel

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

#661
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. Continuing to provide someone a service isn’t scamming them, even if they aren’t using it. Assuming you aren’t making it hard to cancel or anything. And doing all this work in the middle of a high inflation environment…. Do you have a death wish?

[flagged]

Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN.

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

#662
post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone you know (a customer, in this case, with an existing relationship) wants to keep paying you, why go out of your way to say no? unless there is a specific reason you think they screwed up - like they say they want to cancel, but hit the wrong button or something. Or you know they’re dead and can’t cancel. Otherwise it just inconveniences them if they want it, since you cancelled it out from under them. Bad…

Dude you're literally so retarded

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

#663
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the heads up. I will never try them (buying a new car soon).

We bought a new car last April. We also had XM radio about fifteen years ago. Much like GP comment, we will never sign up for SiriusXM ever again, so much so that we didn't even bother with the "free" six month subscription with new car purchase...because I don't want to do deal with canceling, or deal with anything to do with SiriusXM. I'll sing a cappella at the top of my lungs before I'll be so desperate as to tur…

That’s how I feel about non-Tesla EVs. Well Rivian is good, other than lack of charging network; I’d never get one due to that gap. But legacy manufacturers have burned their bridges.

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

#664

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…

> Anyway, a binger whose usage is equivalent to a non-binge watcher, except concentrated rather than diffuse, is not actually underutilizing the service and isn’t really who we’re talking about here. I think. I am actually talking about this here. It sounds like you understood my point but also think this is not what I'm talking about? I'm not saying I underutilize my service, I am actually talking about equivalent u…

> I'm not saying I underutilize my service, I am actually talking about equivalent usage except concentrated rather than diffuse.

No I get that, my point is that the usage pattern you’re describing isn’t really relevant here.

> Literally false. Netflix did this…

Great!

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

#665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you supposed to know that they're unjustified when the (at that time) top comment is just "no"? Are you supposed to accept the superiority of some anonymous commenter, or is the fact that they just "need to" post "no" and therefore show that their opinion must be superior?

I was that commenter who said no. I was replying to equally unjustified assertions. Just because my reply was shorter, does mean it contained fewer justifications.

No.

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

#666
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A monthly financial review doesn't take longer than 10 minutes. That is an absurdly short time for a meaningful financial review for anyone- whether they have a lot of financial transactions or if they don't (and may be unfamiliar or have anxiety about their finances). Especially if they have kids and serious responsibilities- these companies bank on you forgetting or being too exhausted to change.

It’s really not though. Seeing all these comments concerned me a bit. So, I opened up my credit card apps and scrolled through the last six months of transactions to make sure there was nothing unexpected. It took 5 minutes while I was sitting on the toilet. And that 5 minutes normally would’ve been spent browsing instagram or hacker news, so it’s not like it’s 5 minutes that I lost.

> I opened up my credit card apps and scrolled through the last six months of transactions to make sure there was nothing unexpected. It took 5 minutes while I was sitting on the toilet.

Six months in five minutes? How many transactions? (and did you remember them all?) How many different credit cards? How about your bank statements, other accounts, etc?

I still stand by the statement that 10 minutes is an absurdly small amount of time for a meaningful review of anyone's finances, and find your claim that you did it in 5 minutes very surprising. I would ask you to show me, but not interested in watching you take a dump :)

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

#667
post #634

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're talking about subscription services. A huge number of these services won't actually even supply physical goods. Your argument isn't relevant here.

Mass media is also an example of mass production, working in the same way. Whether it's through subscriptions or selling physical media or entrance tickets, creators seek a huge audience. They usually have huge investment costs to produce their stuff, whether it's money or time. Then their cost-per-unit sold is extremely low, sometimes approaching zero. But if they can't get paid by a mass audience, then creativity w…

I do see your point, but it seems to me that you're trying to explain why capitalism isn't the problem.

I don't think this is true.

Think about the system you're describing. It makes a lot more sense until you introduce the concept of greed.

These companies aren't going to a mass market instead of selling to smaller rich audiences. They're selling to the mass market as well.

There's no target profit amount.

"As much as possible".

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

#668

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might be profitable to offer terms where billing was related to use instead of canceling or not. Like I'd be more inclined to have an account with more services if they cost less (over time) and required less attention. Maybe there are lots of people like me. Note that I do currently engage in the responsibility that you speak of, by avoiding subscriptions.

Internet and phone services are subscription based and going "pay what you use" would probably not go too well

You can get pay go phone contracts. They charge more on a per unit basis than unmetered of course.

And then we are talking about video services mostly here. In a perfect world, we'd have on demand streaming on a per piece of content basis that cost about what they can generate from showing ads on that content. A few cents for an episode of whatever.

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

#669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily we have many waking hours in a month to do both.

some people work nearly every waking hour (I have more the a few hundred weeks in my life for sure) other huge logistical challenge that comes out of this is the hours for the call center need to overlap when you’re not working so you can call someone to cancel.

I cancelled my amazon prime while taking a shit. Do these workaholics not shit? Where do they find the time to subscribe to services in the first place?

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

#670
post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty **** easy to infer that a customer wants to save money when possible That businesses and advocates play dumb when it comes to this basic fact is no longer astonishing to me, sadly

They're not playing dumb, just as a magazine subscription isn't playing dumb by not phoning you up to see if you want every magazine. If you sign up to a subscription, you are saying you want it until it's cancelled. If you just want them one at a time, go buy each one in a shop.

A magazine subscription is entirely different. With online services the company can trivially monitor your usage (and likely already do to sell your data / make UX decisions)
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