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Fair Pricing

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Re: Fair Pricing

#361

Post by tuhriel »

linsomniac wrote: post #356

I would have purchased several services over the years if they had a pricing like this, which ultimately I did not (because they did not). In particular there was some video editing software for $20/mo, but I knew I'd probably go months between using it. I'd have gladly paid $20/mo when using it, but it would stick in my craw the months I didn't use it.

When the whole SaaS stuff started to pop up as buzzword I actually believed that it would work that way.

You don't pay some heavy license fees for a local installation anymore, but get a login where you get billed a specific amount if you use it that day/week/month etc. I was pretty sad when I saw how it got implemented...

Re: Fair Pricing

#362

Post by percevalve »

wongarsu wrote: post #328
percevalve wrote: post #217

I haven’t seen this mentioned in the conversation yet, so I’ll bring it up here. A research paper from a few years ago introduced the concept of “customer inertia.” It found that users tend to overestimate their difficulty in unsubscribing from a service. In other words, when a subscription includes auto-renewal (or a similar feature), a significant portion of potential users will choose not to subscribe because they…

Seeing how much revenue subscription services make from inactive customers (and how much I have paid over my lifetime to services I no longer used) people don't overestimate this at all. If anything, users still underestimate it. The disconnect between the researchers and people's actual estimations is that "cancelling a service" is much harder than the couple button clicks it usually takes. You have a structural pro…

Basically that is what this study went into great length to measure, at least the way I understand it.

Re: Fair Pricing

#363

Post by samspot »

huhtenberg wrote: post #271
BossingAround wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the streaming services did this, I'd probably have pretty much all of them. Then, instead of paying monthly, you essentially have a tab open with everyone, and you pay for whatever you stream. Indeed, this would make me way less annoyed at the thousand and one streaming services popping up like mushrooms after a rainy day.

It's a very slippery path towards per-watch pricing with "rent this episode for just $0.99"... and that will be horrible.

At the rate I watch, this would save me money.

Re: Fair Pricing

#364

Post by percevalve »

benrutter wrote: post #249
percevalve wrote: post #217

I haven’t seen this mentioned in the conversation yet, so I’ll bring it up here. A research paper from a few years ago introduced the concept of “customer inertia.” It found that users tend to overestimate their difficulty in unsubscribing from a service. In other words, when a subscription includes auto-renewal (or a similar feature), a significant portion of potential users will choose not to subscribe because they…

That's really interesting as a concept. As one random person on the internet (not a sample) I definitely avoid services that look like they'll be a pain to unsubscribe from, and will be much more likely to try out a free trial of something if it looks like an easy one to cancel. Super interesting that some people are trying to factor in that things into wider-scale enomics.

Same here, hence why I remembered it (even if it is from 2022), it did resonate so much with my own experience.

Re: Fair Pricing

#365

Post by yegg »

dingnuts wrote: post #347
yegg wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chatter in search right now is related to AI-assisted answers, and we get 0 of that from Bing. Same with knowledge graph answers before that (which became the most prevalent search module on desktop), 0 from Bing. And same for the most prevalent search module on mobile — local results — 0 from Bing. We have hundreds of team members and millions of lines of code. We’re constantly working on search. In terms of tra…

> The conversation about and innovation in the future of search right now is related to AI-assisted answers I pay for Kagi and stopped using DDG because of the traditional search. That's the differentiating feature. The conversation around AI assisted answers is mostly hype -- but Kagi has those too, if I want them. But no, I'm paying because I want traditional search that works, not an AI summary that's half wrong.

AI-assisted answers are completely optional on DuckDuckGo.

Also, I have no problem with Kagi -- we are actually investors in it. The more competition in the search market, the better.

Re: Fair Pricing

#366

Post by samspot »

dotancohen wrote: post #345
jaza wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I make the streaming services work like this already. I have neither the time nor the interest in watching anything on streaming most months. I have all my subscriptions cancelled all the time. When I want to watch something badly enough on service x, I sign in, re-activate, get charged for one month, then immediately cancel the subscription. Then watch the thing. Then not get charged again until I want to watch some…

Please tell me that you have at least a Bash script or Selenium workflow for this. It actually sounds like a fun project to abstract and make pluggable. It would probably require maintenance, though.

This would be my first use of AI agents. "AI, buy me 1 month of PBS".

Re: Fair Pricing

#367

Post by tuhriel »

Propelloni wrote: post #340
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, exactly. So those "huge fines" won't really scare a normal company since it would not apply to them

Can you explain what you mean? I get the sense of sarcasm, but I'm not sure. 4 % of annual turnover [1] or 20 Mio, whatever is higher, appears substantial to me. If Alphabet would have been fined once in 2024 it would have to pay 4 % of its annual turnover of the year 2023, 307 billion US$, which amounts to ca. 12.3 billion US$. Or do you think 4 % is not enough? Recital 37 [2] of the GDPR gives a definition of what…

not the one who asked the questions, but I actually think 4% are not enough.

If Google or Meta makes 10% of their earnings with that shit and they have to pay max 4% they still have a 6% margin over - not doing it.

IMHO there should be a 4% fine additionally to paying back all the illegally generated earnings. Also, more executives should go to jail for it - And that's the C-Level Executives, because it's them which are accountable.

Problem with those things: usually it still hits the little ones harder than the big players...

Re: Fair Pricing

#369

Post by vel0city »

scott_w wrote: post #204
fnord123 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly you can tell investors you have even more accounts than you do and your churn rate is very low.

> More importantly you can tell investors you have even more accounts than you do and your churn rate is very low. I know you're being a little facetious but it is actually a benefit. Many companies have implemented subscription pausing to reduce churn. The reason is pretty straightforward good business: it's easier to reactivate customers who lay dormant for 1 or 2 months than it is to let them churn and have to re-…

I've had places offer to just not bill for a few months while still allowing full access or offer some steep discounts in the workflow for cancelling in attempt to reduce churn.

Re: Fair Pricing

#370

Post by basch »

scott_w wrote: post #208
BossingAround wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the streaming services did this, I'd probably have pretty much all of them. Then, instead of paying monthly, you essentially have a tab open with everyone, and you pay for whatever you stream. Indeed, this would make me way less annoyed at the thousand and one streaming services popping up like mushrooms after a rainy day.

I... really like this idea. It's an interesting problem and something that a challenger service could possibly use (assuming they can resolve potential cash flow issues around content licensing). From an incumbents' perspective, it's less desirable since the fact I already have Netflix, Crunchyroll, Amazon Prime, Apple TV makes me less inclined to add Disney+ or a new service to my list of monthly outgoings.

Pay for what you use streaming exists. I don't think it would work here. Paying a large sum and dividing it up by what you watch is basically back to cable tv, just with a little smarter more immediate billing -> analytics feedback for hollywood.

A change I think is necessary for consumers however is deduplication of content payments. If you subscribe to multiple services, youre paying for a license to some content multiple times, sometimes many times.

What I would like to see is more like Kagi Fair Pricing, a master payment account (like prime or movies anywhere) that has access to all your accounts, cross references where you are paying for a title multiple times, and offers a refund or credit.

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