Americans are spending billions on stuff they forget to cancel • Hacker News Board

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

#611

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 12:09 PM UTC

robertlagrant wrote: post #609

mtlmtlmtlmtl wrote: post #607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it shouldn't change because it's easier, why did you make a point about it requiring work? Just admit your argument made no sense, instead of pretending your argument was just an irrelevant aside. It does matter that it's easier. In fact it can be automated. If a user is inactive for 30 days, the subscription could be disabled and automatically reenabled if and when they decide to use it. You wanna argue that woul…

> why did you make a point about it requiring work? Because a previous comment said it wouldn't require work. Now you also are saying they'd need to implement it. So we agree it needs work. > Just admit your argument made no sense Framing this as "admit" might make it seem like a fait accomplis, but I need a higher bar than that to be persuaded. Biased language only fools very basic readers. > they're just not compar…

Sigh. If you're not capable of admitting when you're wrong I feel bad for you. There's no shame in it you know. I'm wrong about stuff frequently, but at least I'll happily admit it.

Life is too short to waste energy clinging onto bad arguments simply out of spite or poor self-esteem. Embrace cummingham's law.

Have a good life.

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

#612

Post by prossercj » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 12:40 PM UTC

andrew_eu wrote: post #564

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.…

> Unfortunately the place shut down shortly after I moved away.

Clearly you were their most important customer, eh?

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

#613

Post by prossercj » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 12:42 PM UTC

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…

So what is the solution? A law that requires services to cancel auto-pay after a month (or so) of inactivity? Or at least requires them to provide an option or setting so that users can have this behavior as desired?

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

#614

Post by prossercj » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 12:49 PM UTC

Whenever I sign up for a streaming service, my first act is to disable autopay. I really think it should be disabled by default, and you can enable if wanted. That would resolve much of this problem. Do all users even know they are signing up for autopay? Many probably do not realize it. Often 1 month is plenty of time for me to watch what I want to watch, and if not, it's easy enough to renew for one more month

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

#615

Post by _heimdall » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 12:52 PM UTC

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…

This would invariably be followed up with a price increase if any meaningful number of customers have months with no use.

The company would have to cover the costs, likely split between some expected decrease in churn and the rest in a price increase.

If the service is willing to afford eating that cost today, why wouldn't they do a price decrease across the board? Surely they'd rather help those who most use their service rather than the minority that pays but doesn't use it.

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

#616

Post by _heimdall » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 1:05 PM UTC

_Algernon_ wrote: post #438

Alupis wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with people putting on their adulting pants and actually being responsible? Why outsource personal responsibility to a third party? That seems, absurd. "Frazzled and overloaded" is not an excuse for not looking at your bank account one time in 6 months or longer. That's just plain old fashioned irresponsible. If you are at a stage in life where a $10 subscription is hurting, then it stands to reason you…

Personal responsibility only works if parties are roughly equal in terms if power. This is not the case in corporation-consumer relationships. Corporations can employ hundreds or thousands of people whose sole goal is to employ the forefront of scientific psychological knowledge to design dark patterns to make end users not cancel their subscriptions. I hope you wouldn't ask a person who gets harassed by their boss t…

If personal responsibility requires a roughly even power balance, does that mean we have almost no personal responsibility today?

Between large corporations and large governments, most areas of our daily life are impacted in some way. I prefer to think that I can take personal responsibility in spite of an authority attempting to take that away from me "for my own good."

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

#617

Post by lazide » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 1:43 PM UTC

behringer wrote: post #526

lazide wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking free money isn’t asking for handouts. Taking free money is (in this case) someone you know handing you $100 and saying ‘merry Christmas’ or whatever. Sure, you could throw it on the ground and say ‘f you’. But these are existing customers who already give you money and are presumably happy with your service.

taking free money is in this case like your grandma living on a fixed government pension giving you 50 dollars even though you're 35 making 100 grand a year and keeping it because fuck her.

So everyone paying for a subscription is a poor pensioner?

In this case it’s more like taking the standard deduction.

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

#618

Post by listenallyall » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 1:46 PM UTC

plasma_beam wrote: post #514

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 wonder how many people bought a peacock subscription last weekend for the nfl wild card game then forgot to cancel it after.

> I wonder how many people bought a peacock subscription last weekend for the nfl wild card game

None. That was a slap in the face to football fans.

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

#619

Post by carlosjobim » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 1:48 PM UTC

lwhi wrote: post #593

carlosjobim wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is that is logical and not that bizarre that companies will do anything they can to broaden their customer base. Once you've sold your product to the rich and the middle class, you have to target the poor. Because your factory keeps spitting out product and you need customers.

Some companies only sell to people who are financially struggling. And a great deal of these companies rely on people not being financially literate to make huge amounts of money. There's no inevitability to these systems. People make choices to run companies these ways. They don't have to sell because the factories can't stop making products.

You're talking about individual companies, I'm talking about the systemic factors in general.

> They don't have to sell because the factories can't stop making products.

What are they supposed to do? Shut down the factories and fire their workers? Industrialised production relies on huge up-front investments and large operating cost, in exchange for enormous output and low per-unit cost of production. That's how it works in capitalism. That's how it works in communism. If industry can't operate on that model and need to get their income from fewer customers, then consumer goods would be much more expensive as a result. Also much better in quality, but inaccessible for the majority of people.

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

#620

Post by listenallyall » Sat, Jan 20, 2024, 1:55 PM UTC

_gabe_ wrote: post #559

beedeebeedee wrote: post #491

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.

You already had the apps installed... already had the passwords loaded... had zero transactions that you had to recall who the vendor was? really?... and you recognized all of your spouse's transactions? and all of your kids?... and you also checked ACH payments?... every ATM withdrawal accounted for?... not concerned with any gradually increasing amounts?... why did you wait 6 months to do this if it's so simple?