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Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

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Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#51

Post by icebraining »

swagasaurus-rex wrote: post #8
buboard wrote: post #7

subscribe to read hahahah For one, I hope subscriptions die. It's a pernicious trend that is borderline fraud for consumers (like gyms, profiting from users who simply forget to unsubscribe or making it painfully hard to unsubscribe). It's also exclusionary for most of the world for whom the subscription price might be a year's income. With downloadable software it was kind of possible to find a crack online, but web…

I think subscriptions are fine; it is the banks that give power to corporations by making it impossible to control who bills your accounts. If you could easily see recurring billing charges and cancel on your bank's end easily, companies would have to step up and offer a useful service.

SEPA direct debit (and the earlier non-SEPA versions) allow the bank to do just that: show a list of charges, set monthly limits and cancel the authorization.

Unfortunately, most foreign companies don't offer SEPA, but my bank also offers virtual CCs that are tied to a single biller, so not only I can revoke them at any time, they are also useless if leaked.

Regular CCs are a pain in comparison.

Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#52

Post by durnygbur »

dukoid wrote: post #14
aNoob7000 wrote: post #11

I wonder if sometime in the future, there is going to be subscription fatigue.

I think there already was, at least in Germany -- based on contracts that made it quite hard to unsubscribe. I think a key to avoiding a general subscription aversion is to make it very easy to unsubscribe.

> I think there already was, at least in Germany

Yup. Two years contracts, automatically renewed, with three months notice period for cancellation, cancellation by post (yes, by a papper letter), no early cancellations. Reverting the monthly direct debit transaction to "give a hint" to the predatory "service provider" triggers furious response from their accounting and customer service, and transaction cancellation fees. It's hard to imagine how the setup could be even more predatory for a customer. Fuck, even the memory of dealing with this raises my adrenaline level.

Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#53

Post by TeMPOraL »

lsc wrote: post #50
TeMPOraL wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean that. Let me rephrase it more clearly: recurring payments are a problem by themselves, the more of them you have, the more problem they are. This makes things offered as subscriptions inferior to actual products you can buy one-off, at least in this aspect. If you're wealthy enough to put money for couple years worth of service into a virtual CC for every service you can use, you're probably wealthy eno…

>recurring payments are a problem by themselves, the more of them you have, the more problem they are. In some ways, I agree. In others, I don't. I mean, the problem is largely in the difficulty of unsubscribing. If that were easier to manage (and virtual cards are one way to deal with that) I think it's not such a problem, and even has some advantages. But you could easily argue that this difficulty of unsubscribing…

You make very good points, but I'm not sure if you correctly identified our point of disagreement - because I believe there is problem with subscription model itself (at least for individuals, I get the capex vs. opex incentives for companies), on top of the problems with unsubscribing.

I was readying a long comment addressing your individual points, but I realized I can compress it all to this:

The overall reason why I prefer ownership of durable goods over subscriptions (and the planned obsolescence economy) is reduction of variance in opportunities and quality of life. At the time when I have the means, I can buy something. If I have less means or that something is very expensive (e.g. a new car, a house), I can convert it into a "subscription" myself using my bank, via various forms of loans and installment payments. And then when I go broke, I can still use the thing I own, perhaps to help myself get out of the predicament. Subscriptions bundle this all together, making the utility directly dependent on my cash flow, prevent me from optimizing the value I derive from them (through ToS that limit a lot of non-standard use cases), and deprive me from the ability to use a good in the time of crisis.

Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#54

Post by ajdlinux »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #48
ajdlinux wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa/Mastercard debit cards are a thing.

In fact, I'd argue that credit cards are US thing. You can pay for most stuff on-line with debit cards just fine. Over the past decade, I had to use PayPal maybe 3 times, because some braindead payment system wouldn't accept debit cards. (It may differ between classes and countries, but over here in Poland around people I know, having a private credit card is like shaving with a straight razor - it's awesome if you c…

You can pay for almost anything online with a debit card if you get a Visa/Mastercard debit card, which is included with practically every bank account over here in Australia. Obviously Visa/MC charge merchants more to accept their debit cards than the national domestic EFT payment networks, but it works well from the consumer experience point of view.

Over here it's quite normal for middle-class people to have personal credit cards, but it's not as important for building up a good credit rating or anything like that as it is in the US.

Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#55

Post by chooseaname »

ianai wrote: post #43
Guest42 wrote: post #16

A year ago I downloaded an interval running app for 10 dollars. Recently I recommended it to a family member only to find out they changed the pricing to 10 dollars per month for the same features.

You can’t tell me that interval running app is as useful to you as a Spotify subscription. 10/mo is pretty steep comparatively!

I bet it's all the "social" features running apps cram in now. Last time I looked (admittedly a couple years now) it was slim picking if you wanted an app that didn't sync your data to the cloud or offer some sort of social feature.

I stopped using apps. I run to clear my head and try to stay healthy, not brag that I run.

Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#56

Post by brewdad »

tzs wrote: post #46
ljm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how it scales at all. I just cancelled Netflix because I'm also paying for Amazon Prime. Netflix hasn't had anything worth watching for a good few months but it took me longer than that to go in and cancel it. But the trajectory suggests that you'll need to sub with Amazon, Netflix, HBO, Disney, etc. if you want the full range of streaming TV. You're going to have to start micromanaging that if you don't…

> But the trajectory suggests that you'll need to sub with Amazon, Netflix, HBO, Disney, etc. if you want the full range of streaming TV. You're going to have to start micromanaging that if you don't want to throw your money down the drain. I expect someone will make a site or app or service for managing this, which lets you maintain a "want to watch" list with optional priorities. For each streaming service, the app…

I'll need to subscribe to an app in order to manage my subscriptions. Of course, that app will only deal with media-related subscriptions. I'll need another app to manage food/health related subs. Rinse. Repeat.

Awesome.

Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#57

Post by notfromhere »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #48
ajdlinux wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Visa/Mastercard debit cards are a thing.

In fact, I'd argue that credit cards are US thing. You can pay for most stuff on-line with debit cards just fine. Over the past decade, I had to use PayPal maybe 3 times, because some braindead payment system wouldn't accept debit cards. (It may differ between classes and countries, but over here in Poland around people I know, having a private credit card is like shaving with a straight razor - it's awesome if you c…

In the US, the fraud protections on credit is way better than debit

Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#58

Post by barberousse »

buboard wrote: post #7

subscribe to read hahahah For one, I hope subscriptions die. It's a pernicious trend that is borderline fraud for consumers (like gyms, profiting from users who simply forget to unsubscribe or making it painfully hard to unsubscribe). It's also exclusionary for most of the world for whom the subscription price might be a year's income. With downloadable software it was kind of possible to find a crack online, but web…

Funny to read this, VISA near silently installed a program whereby replacing your Debit/Card (lost, stolen, etc) automatically updates that card everywhere it is being used a payment method. You can't even cancel a card and see what dies. You have to opt out of this program.

Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#59

Post by rasz »

aidenn0 wrote: post #26

Subscriptions for SaaS are essentially a lease, and leases are almost always preferable to sales for the one doing the leasing. See e.g. IBM[1] [edit] Software (and other media with a high development cost, but low marginal cost such as films) are particularly valuable to lease, because you remove the secondary market, which can cannibalize sales. 1: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40751117?seq=1

Leasing is preferable for Business if you need creative book keeping because you live over your means or need to hide something.

Re: Subscriptions Are Remaking Corporate America (2018)

#60

Post by m463 »

buboard wrote: post #7

subscribe to read hahahah For one, I hope subscriptions die. It's a pernicious trend that is borderline fraud for consumers (like gyms, profiting from users who simply forget to unsubscribe or making it painfully hard to unsubscribe). It's also exclusionary for most of the world for whom the subscription price might be a year's income. With downloadable software it was kind of possible to find a crack online, but web…

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