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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

#401

Post by cwillu »

polymatter wrote: post #398
cwillu wrote: post #384

I tried to downsize my google plan from 2tb to 100gb. It's now charging me for both plans every month, and my available space toggles every couple weeks (with dire warnings in every app about being at 90% capacity when it's on the 100gb plan). Support says all the things that are already on the support pages and then throw up their hands and say they don't have access to do anything to fix it.

Sounds like time to consider small claims court.

The thought has crossed my mind, but if I win they can still (algorithmically, no doubt) say “we've decided we no longer want your business”, which would be a bigger deal given how prevalent “sign in with google” is, to say nothing of the various important and/or official things that are mailing to gmail.

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

#402

Post by YeBanKo »

darth_avocado wrote: post #131
paxys wrote: post #106

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country ( especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it…

Some of these are valid issues though. I'd consider myself in top 1% when it comes to financial health and I still pay for stuff I forgot to cancel. Some of the reasons: > They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm, and hold for hours to cancel, sometimes even disconnect forcing you to start over, while not offering a callback option. Sometimes there are weeks I absolutely cannot afford to do this because of work. > Yo…

My solution is to try to subscribe through Apple as much as possible, even if it's more expensive. Unified interface, always can cancel online and I think they are required to let you use it until the end of the billing cycle if you have been charged. Not always possible, but when it is, it's often worth it.

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

#403

Post by omginternets »

Alupis wrote: post #115
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…

> 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…

Surely it's unethical to take advantage of people, even the irresponsible ones? There's a significant minority of people out there who struggle with this kind of thing because of circumstances beyond their control. If I didn't know better, I'd think you were saying "they deserve it".

It's not "personal responsibility" or "ethical business". It's both.

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

#405

Post by talldatethrow »

antisthenes wrote: post #300
snarf21 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, was just going to say this is Planet Fitness' whole value prop .. Cheap enough that the lie you tell yourself that you will go more next month is easily worth $10 / month.

Planet fitness hasn't been $10 for a while now. Their cheapest plan is something like $12.99 and with fees it's up to $18 or so. And that was 5 years ago.

It's $10 a month in my town. But that doesn't include the once a year fee of around $50.. so technically you're correct but I assume you weren't counting that since long ago that yearly fee existed too when it was $10 a month as you remember.

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

#406

Post by clouddrover »

Alupis wrote: post #115
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…

> 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 enjoy the convenience of having it available when I want it

So why not also enjoy the convenience of only paying for what you actually use?

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

#407

Post by ryandrake »

snowwrestler wrote: post #359
ryandrake wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm unusually anal retentive about this, but I have every bank account, PayPal, Venmo, both credit cards, every brokerage, 401(k), HSA, IRA, mortgage, everything... in Quicken, which I check every single day. 1. Start Quicken, 2. Hit Update, 3. Get Coffee, 4. Review everything in boldface to make sure it's not a surprise. I have the next month worth of bills and paychecks "below the line" as future transactions…

I wish there was some way to do this without handing over the credentials for my entire financial life to a 3rd party—which I refuse to do.

I don't believe you are actually "handing over the credentials" to Intuit or any other 3rd party (unless you consider your computer the third party). When you use Direct Connect, they're stored locally (for example, Keychain on Mac), and when you use Quicken Connect (aka EWC or EWC+), it's more like oauth where you authorize through the financial institution website, and they issue a token to Quicken. What you want to avoid is their "Quicken Sync" which stores credentials in their cloud (yikes!).

It is confusing as an end user, and they don't really do much to explain it. You have to do some digging to understand how it works.

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

#408

Post by didgetmaster »

jjav wrote: post #352
madars wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This line of reasoning reminds me of the petulant discussion revolving around overdraft fees... as-if it's difficult to spend 3 seconds tapping a button in your banking app. Not sure which discussions you call "petulant" but banks high-to-low ordering payments is predatory against people who lack liquidity. (Simple example: if you have $500 in your account, and the following transactions happen in sequence in a day:…

> Not sure which discussions you call "petulant" but banks high-to-low ordering payments is predatory against people who lack liquidity. Indeed, and as the article also mentions, banks will intentionally maximize the number of overdraft fees by reordering transactions in a way that causes most pain. This should not be legal.

I have heard of this, but was always unsure if it happened in real life. An account with $100 in it has 7 checks against it come in the same day (six for $15 each, and one for $90). If they processed all the smaller ones first only the larger check would incur the overdraft fee. But if they processed the largest one first, all the smaller ones would trigger a separate fee.

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

#410

Post by lazide »

wolverine876 wrote: post #360
lazide wrote: 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…

> 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? Because I don't want to take people's money that I haven't earned. Why do I want to scam people? Blaming them doesn't make it less of a scam. > unless there is a concrete reason you have to believe otherwise Here we agree. You need a concrete reason. For example, if your service…

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?

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