4 ms·

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

dukoid 7y ago
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.
- durnygbur 7y ago
  > 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.
johnpowell 7y ago
I'm already there. I just hate random money coming out of my account. I just gave fastmail $130 for three years. I wish I could have given them a thousand for lifetime so I would just never have to think about it again. I bought a lifetime Plex Pass for $150 so I would never have to think about it again. And no hard feelings if these services were to shut down. I can deal with a large one time payment. A bunch of random 5 dollar a payments a month isn't going to float. I crawl through my credit card statements looking for oddities. And it just bugs me.
- throwawaycuriou 7y ago
  try privacy.com one off credit cards with fixed limits. use them for each service that may bill you again.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    The problem isn't with unexpected or fraudlent charges. It's with the expected ones. Each subscription is another recurring charge, of a different amount and at a different time. Eventually it can become a death of a thousand papercuts. I too share the subscription fatigue, and avoid subscriptions as much as possible. I prefer to pay once, up front.
    - lsc 7y ago
      eh, but the comment you are responding to had a solution that worked for me for some time. I haven't used privacy.com, but bank of america used to have a way for me to create virtual credit card numbers; I'd simply create one for every subscription I had, and it was really easy to just disable the virtual credit card. Bank of America has discontinued this service, and I haven't setup a new workflow, which is disappointing. but I mean, it is one solution.
      - johnpowell 7y ago
        I have a card with Capital One and can do virtual cards too. There is even a Firefox extension to make it a few clicks to make a new one and input the info. I guess I should mention that I am poor-ish. Right now I am getting lumber from a reclaimed lumber place and making furniture in a Amish style. Then my sister paints and distresses it. So if a bunch of random five dollar charges hit my account at once and I am not expecting them it could be a problem.
        lsc 7y ago
        I heard that but never got it setup. I did a bunch more poking today, and it looks like they want me to use a chrome extension (I'm mostly a safari person) I should spend more time looking up how to get that working, 'cause it was way more convenient than just canceling my credit cards every six months.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        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 enough to manage all this stuff for you anyway.
- baroffoos 7y ago
  Selling lifetime services for something like that is very risky. It would be like paying someone a few million dollars and then they have to try to budget it out for the rest of their life. Also what happens if the company runs out of money and cant continue services. You have already paid for a lifetime subscription but they have no money to give you a refund.
  - johnpowell 7y ago
    That is why I said "no hard feelings". Fastmail or Plex could shut down tomorrow. I would be disappointed, but I wouldn't scream for a refund. As long as I felt that they tried I would be alright. Our wonderful journey wouldn't cut it. But a simple, we went broke would be cool.
ljm 7y ago
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 want to throw your money down the drain. Patreon's another one. Really cool idea, but everyone with a Youtube or a blog or a Twitch stream is pushing it. So it's a case of subscribing to one person for $10 a month or 5 people for $2 each. After that, you can get a monthly subscription of underwear, shaving stuff, make up, etc. at which point it seems like a purely wasteful cash grab. The problem is, even with the increased competition, prices are only increasing.
- tzs 7y ago
  > 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 would tell you which if the items you want are on that service, and how many total hours of content that is. You can use this to help decide which, if any, streaming services you should subscribe to for each month. I have no idea where one would get the data for such an app, but this site [1] seems to have it, so I infer that it is possible to get it. They have a paid API, so maybe they could even be used as the data source. [1] https://reelgood.com/ https://reelgood.com/
  - brewdad 7y ago
    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.

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.

durnygbur 7y ago
> 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.

johnpowell 7y ago

I'm already there. I just hate random money coming out of my account. I just gave fastmail $130 for three years. I wish I could have given them a thousand for lifetime so I would just never have to think about it again. I bought a lifetime Plex Pass for $150 so I would never have to think about it again. And no hard feelings if these services were to shut down. I can deal with a large one time payment. A bunch of random 5 dollar a payments a month isn't going to float. I crawl through my credit card statements looking for oddities. And it just bugs me.

throwawaycuriou 7y ago
try privacy.com one off credit cards with fixed limits. use them for each service that may bill you again.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  The problem isn't with unexpected or fraudlent charges. It's with the expected ones. Each subscription is another recurring charge, of a different amount and at a different time. Eventually it can become a death of a thousand papercuts. I too share the subscription fatigue, and avoid subscriptions as much as possible. I prefer to pay once, up front.
  - lsc 7y ago
    eh, but the comment you are responding to had a solution that worked for me for some time. I haven't used privacy.com, but bank of america used to have a way for me to create virtual credit card numbers; I'd simply create one for every subscription I had, and it was really easy to just disable the virtual credit card. Bank of America has discontinued this service, and I haven't setup a new workflow, which is disappointing. but I mean, it is one solution.
    - johnpowell 7y ago
      I have a card with Capital One and can do virtual cards too. There is even a Firefox extension to make it a few clicks to make a new one and input the info. I guess I should mention that I am poor-ish. Right now I am getting lumber from a reclaimed lumber place and making furniture in a Amish style. Then my sister paints and distresses it. So if a bunch of random five dollar charges hit my account at once and I am not expecting them it could be a problem.
      - lsc 7y ago
        I heard that but never got it setup. I did a bunch more poking today, and it looks like they want me to use a chrome extension (I'm mostly a safari person) I should spend more time looking up how to get that working, 'cause it was way more convenient than just canceling my credit cards every six months.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      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 enough to manage all this stuff for you anyway.
baroffoos 7y ago
Selling lifetime services for something like that is very risky. It would be like paying someone a few million dollars and then they have to try to budget it out for the rest of their life. Also what happens if the company runs out of money and cant continue services. You have already paid for a lifetime subscription but they have no money to give you a refund.
- johnpowell 7y ago
  That is why I said "no hard feelings". Fastmail or Plex could shut down tomorrow. I would be disappointed, but I wouldn't scream for a refund. As long as I felt that they tried I would be alright. Our wonderful journey wouldn't cut it. But a simple, we went broke would be cool.

ljm 7y ago

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 want to throw your money down the drain. Patreon's another one. Really cool idea, but everyone with a Youtube or a blog or a Twitch stream is pushing it. So it's a case of subscribing to one person for $10 a month or 5 people for $2 each. After that, you can get a monthly subscription of underwear, shaving stuff, make up, etc. at which point it seems like a purely wasteful cash grab. The problem is, even with the increased competition, prices are only increasing.

tzs 7y ago
> 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 would tell you which if the items you want are on that service, and how many total hours of content that is. You can use this to help decide which, if any, streaming services you should subscribe to for each month. I have no idea where one would get the data for such an app, but this site [1] seems to have it, so I infer that it is possible to get it. They have a paid API, so maybe they could even be used as the data source. [1] https://reelgood.com/ https://reelgood.com/
- brewdad 7y ago
  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.