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As a user, why would I choose this? I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade. Assumin

As a user, why would I choose this? I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade. Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. If I instead go with the billing through a company not only do they now have my credit card information, but I have to go through them to cancel. Meaning they can send me through screen after screen trying to convince me to stay (dark pattern) or even worse forcing me to call to cancel. As a user, if you want to offer this fine. But as long as the ability to subscribe through Google or Apple is not removed I will be fine. But if this starts a trend of more and more apps having their own billing that then uses dark patterns to keep me subscribed... I will just end up spending less money on subscriptions than I currently do, and I have quite a few subscriptions.

benhurmarcel 5y ago
It's very easy to stop your Spotify subscription, on their website. There isn't any trick.
curiousgal 5y ago
> disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. Paypal
- nerdjon 5y ago
  Any optional third party option is not a solution. As long as it is a choice for the developer, it doesn't fix the issue. The only reason Apple (and I assume Google) are able to make it this easy is because the app developers are forced to allow it. But if they are no longer forced, why would an app developer choose make it easy to cancel?
  - babypuncher 5y ago
    Apple could make easy in-app service cancellation a requirement for store approval. This does not solve the problem of users needing to provide their CC info to additional payment providers, but it at least solves the problem of dark patterns being used to keep users from unsubscribing.
    - nerdjon 5y ago
      Maybe I am just jaded, but after the fighting and the shady practices done by Facebook to try to get around the app tracking. I don't really see that going over too well, and a court case being brought up about control or whatever. I mean I agree, that would be a fantastic rule and if it was enforced and allowed. Then sure, that fixes at least the dark pattern cancelation issue.
- alimov 5y ago
  Ok, what if you don’t use paypal. Or if one app uses pay pal, but another wants you to use some other payment solution. You’re still stuck registering to new services and sharing your CC info. So now you also have to remember what service is used by whatever app you are trying to cancel billing for.
  - usrusr 5y ago
    You might just as well insist on never linking up your Google account with payment. This might not apply to a random pay to win candycrush clone, but Spotify is enough of an outlier they they likely have quite a few subscribers (or would be subscribers) who never accepted their phone as an app store payment mechanism. I know quite a few people who I'd suspect to be far more willing to hand over they CC data to Spotify than to Apple/Google.
    - alimov 5y ago
      Sure Spotify can do it and people will pay through whatever system.
  - lxgr 5y ago
    I believe that we'll see a centralized subscription cancellation service for credit and debit cards before too long.
- prophesi 5y ago
  Could also use privacy.com though iirc it only works at masking debit cards. But yeah, this burden shouldn't be offloaded to users to make sure they're using a different centralized service to actually cancel subscriptions.
rkk3 5y ago
Maybe costing 30% more isn't worth centralizing the subscriptions
- nerdjon 5y ago
  I fully understand that I am... maybe closer to people here but in the grand scheme of things financially I am in a better state than most people. But so I was curious, I have $762 worth of subscriptions a year through Apple. So I could save $228.60 if they were all 30% less. To me that is worth it. But I would also like to point out, that many of the apps I am subscribed too. I am only subscribed too because it was easy through Apple and I knew that I could cancel. I have a number of expired ones that I used for 6 months or a year but I didn't need anymore. A few that I have right now fit this but I am still actively using them. If it wasn't for this central subscription, they would have never gotten my money to begin with.
  - forty 5y ago
    What if there was another payment system available on iphone with similar subscription centralisation service, with only 10% fee? Would you use that instead? IMO the main problem is the lack of competition. If Apple were forced to accept other payment platforms, you'd soon find the same service for cheaper.
    - nerdjon 5y ago
      I don't necessarily care that its Apple. But the only reason that this works the way it does, is because a developer has to use it. If there really was a third party offering that was just as easy to use sure, why not. But I just don't see companies willingly making it easy to cancel a service without trying to send the customer through some retention workflow.
  - OmahaBoy69 5y ago
    How the hell did you manage to rack up $762 in yearly subscription fees...?
adewinter 5y ago
It would only make sense if the company was able to offer a discount/different price when you use their billing system vs google/apple. Edit: though it's not clear if Google would even allow that in this case.
- nerdjon 5y ago
  That is the only use case I could think of, but I would have expected if that was the case it would have been communicated in this release. It looks like on iOS Spotify is $13 a month vs $10 a month on their website. I don't see anywhere https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotify.music&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotify.mu... that specifies in app purchases but I assume it is the same.
nvahalik 5y ago
> Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong) While subscription cancellations work similarly, Apple holds your hand (from a dev perspective) than Google does. Apple's overall approach seems to just make sense. For instance: if you stop offering a particular plan because you don't want to offer it anymore (e.g. no more yearly plans, only monthly and quarterly). With Apple, you get a notification that you need to change your plan, but if the change happens w/in 7 days of your renewal, you'll be grand-fathered in. With Google... well... you cannot stop offering it. You have to communicate (manually) a cutoff date, (via their API) cancel people's subscriptions, and then deal with the fallout.
- nerdjon 5y ago
  How much does Google communicate to the user with this? One big benefit I didn't mention, is any yearly membership I get a communication from Apple that it is about to renew. Reminding me to cancel if I no longer want to use it. I don't know of a single service I have subscribed too directly that does this. Edit: I remembered one. FFXIV oddly enough reminds me every month that they are about to bill.
  - nvahalik 5y ago
    I'm not really sure. I know some services I've used in the past like Harvest and TaxBot send before-the-renewed notices. Services that used Stripe did not.
- forty 5y ago
  Last time I checked (admittedly a long time on Apple, as a developer, I couldn't refund and cancel a subscription for my customers. They have to go through Apple to do that. Not a great experience.
  - nvahalik 5y ago
    It’s usually fairly simple though. You (as a dev) don’t have to front the cost for support folks to handle it.
olau 5y ago
I know that a consumptionist attitude is popular these days, but as a user of something like Spotify I would surely prefer as much as possible of my monetary contribution ending up with Spotify and the musicians instead of in the hands of a company controlling the market place. To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? The only reason the phone OS companies get away with it is lack of real competition. The regulatory environment is very slow in catching up - it's not more than a few years ago that the EU finally hit the payment card companies. And yes, the EU also has something to say when it comes to dark subscription cancelling patterns.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  What did the eu hit payment card companies with? Only thing I know about is banning vendors from passing on fees to the customer, which harmed us: it prevented the customer from seeing they were being ripped off by credit card companies at the point of sale. (Genuine question here)
- altairprime 5y ago
  I would trust Spotify but not NYTimes, in this model, so perhaps consider a more hostile example than Spotify as well.
- Shank 5y ago
  > To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Just so that we're talking on equal terms here, card processors and networks solve a massive amount of problems that existed with cash. Pre-card, many stores setup credit accounts with individuals, had book keeping practices to deal with, and had to chase down credit lines they themselves offered. Even with debit cards, card networks facilitate the ability to automatically move money between parties and give customers the ability to dispute/chargeback fraudulent transactions easily. If you physically hand a merchant cash, you can't claw that back without a legal process, whereas you're afforded protections by the card network. But the 30% cut is completely different from card processors. Of the 30% to Google Play or to Apple, a small fraction (2.9%ish) is actually the card overhead. The rest is split between pure profit, infrastructure, and whatever else gets tacked on. Cards definitely offer important things to facilitate transactions that are objectively better than a pure cash world for most people. But it's important to call out crazy cash grabs like 30%, which is unheard of even in the payment network world.
shkkmo 5y ago
Perhaps you might want your spotify account be able to operate independantly from google? I see similarities to google SSO. For some people, being able not remember more credentials is worth giving google more power over your life, for others google SSO is a non-starter and the would much rather make a seperate account with different credentials. Some people would rather use single use virtual credut card numbers than rely on google to let them cancel when and how they want.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Or monthly SEPA transfers. That I can set and revoke at will. I wish that there was an error-proof (on my side) way to set the exact amount though. And a range acceptable for the company for what day of the month to do the transfer. I don't understand why I would need to go through anyone else for this than my bank(s) ?
divbzero 5y ago
I suspect you’re right about this. I would love to see the data on how many users end up choosing Spotify’s payment system over Google Play Billing.
- nerdjon 5y ago
  That would be very interesting data. But I would be surprised if we ever actually saw that data.
usr1106 5y ago
> As a user, why would I choose this Because I don't even have Google in my phone? (No idea whether Spotify will support that, but if they wanted they could.)
madeofpalk 5y ago
> As a user, why would I choose this? On iOS you do not have that choice with many apps because they (fairly) do not wish to fork over 30% of revenue. So if this was introduced to iOS, the choice would be "Sign up for Netflix in the app" or "Not at all". You just do not have the option to use centralized billing on iOS with Netflix. "You download the app and it doesn’t work".
- yreg 5y ago
  >"You download the app and it doesn’t work" Steve wouldn't be happy about this.
  - madeofpalk 5y ago
    https://youdownloadtheappanditdoesntwork.com/ https://youdownloadtheappanditdoesntwork.com/
    - yreg 5y ago
      Thanks, I forgot it was an actual quote.
bsimpson 5y ago
Tinder offers a discount if you subscribe through the web. I got upsold into their 6 month package. You were supposed to get 5 super likes per day (which shows your profile to someone and tells them you like them; otherwise, you wait to maybe sometime show up in their feed and hope they pay attention). After I paid, they changed it to 5 per MONTH. It effectively made my subscription worthless, but unless I go through the hassle of contesting it on my CC, I have no recourse.
makeitdouble 5y ago
＞ Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. As a user I might go with Spotify exactly for that reason. My Google account is personal and already attached to a lot of services, while the Spotify one is dedicated and shared. I’d hate to go hunt for the right Google account that has the subscription. Also, Apple subscriptions have several issues like the service provider can’t cancel your subscription. Given that Apple will not let you cancel the current running month, even if the provider agrees with your case, it leads to fucked up situations that only emerge because there’s a middleman.
lawl 5y ago
> I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade. To me it sounds like a huge upgrade. But admittedly I might be in the minority in that the only reason i use android is because I think iOS is even worse in having to deal with the platform owners bullshit. The issues with cancelling things seems like a very american centric problem. I don't know, I literally never had an issue canceling a subscription yet. And hopefully this is a step in the direction where the user has the choice to pay a 30% premium, instead of being forced to. For example I'd be very happy to pay valve 30% more to not have to deal with EGS. I'd be even more happy to pay anyone 30% less to not have to deal with Google.
Flameancer 5y ago
Counter point, Google deleted your account for no reason.
eloff 5y ago
Or worse, like free mobile in France, force you to send a paper letter with a specific format to cancel service. I cancelled my credit cards instead and will let them try to collect internationally. They also let you cancel by phone, if you speak French. They have quite a nice online portal area where I can login and make changes to my plan. But they don't let me cancel there on purpose. It's a dark pattern and I'll never use their service again as a result. Which is too bad, because I was quite satisfied with it otherwise.
whymsicalburito 5y ago
When given the choice, I will always subscribe/pay/book directly with the company rather than use a 3rd party. If something goes wrong it's always easier to only need to deal with one company rather than two. Plus I'm choosing to start a relationship with a company that I give money to and thus want them to be able to use all of that money towards making the service and experience the best possible, rather than have them be handicapped by fees coming right off the top.
- pfranz 5y ago
  I have the opposite experience with subscriptions. Have you ever tried to cancel a gym membership? Famously, companies make it easy to sign up online, but require a phone call (likely with a wait) to cancel. Many places have passed explicit laws [1]. I was a monthly donator to a public radio show. After few years I wanted to switch credit cards (with no intention of canceling or changing my donation amount). They had redesigned their website and there was no discernible way to cancel or contact them. I blindly emailed them, but never got a response. My only recourse was to cancel the credit card. Since then I've greatly preferred a third-party to manage subscriptions. For awhile it was Paypal. In the past decade it's been Patreon and Apple. [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=BPC&division=7.&title=&part=3.&chapter=1.&article=9 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...
  - whymsicalburito 5y ago
    You're right that there are definitely some bad actors for cancelling subscriptions, it's really crappy you've had to deal with that! I once had a recurring charge from rackspace that neither myself nor rackspace's support could tell me which account the charges were associated with! Luckily my credit card company was able to put a block on any charges coming from rackspace rather than have to cancel the entire card. I still think there are way more good companies than bad ones when it comes to cancelling and I do value building a relationship with the companies I patronize. It is worrying to give so much power to a 3rd party, in this case google, who is notoriously difficult to deal with when an issue arises.
YetAnotherNick 5y ago
My guess is that they will offer it cheaper if it was paid through their site.
perlpimp 5y ago
some cards might work with google play and not spotify, I was like that when I got to a country my uber did not work anymore with my old cards but I added cards to google play and paid for my ride this way. choice is good.
smaudet 5y ago
That's not a reason to use Google Pay - I want a system which I can directly block. Credit Card allows me to do this. Billing through Spotify might make it harder to unsubscribe, but I can still block my card. Rather not need to fight a large company with a history of ignoring its users or their complaints to get my payment canceled.
zeepzeep 5y ago
> As a user, why would I choose this Privacy
Tainnor 5y ago
I don't understand your comment. It would make sense if Spotify had been using Google for payments and was now planning on introducing their own payment processing. But what's happening is the exact opposite, Spotify has been using their own payment processing on Android so far and are now planning to add Google payments.
amelius 5y ago
Unsubscribing should have been solved by banks years ago.
nyuszika7h 5y ago
> As a user, why would I choose this? Because chances are the 30% fee will be simply passed on to the customer. I don't know if that's true in this case but this is a very common practice even with big greedy corporations that could definitely afford eating the fee (except many of them have just completely removed in-app subscriptions on Android and iOS already). This is exactly why it's great to have a choice: if you're fine with paying a 30% fee on every single subscription for the peace of mind Google provides (protecting your payment details, easy cancellation, etc.) then that's your choice. But if you would rather cut costs and you trust the developer or are willing to risk it (generally banks will protect you from fraud anyway), you have the choice of direct payment.
cush 5y ago
The prices can be different. The customer may choose the cheaper, less convenient option.

benhurmarcel 5y ago

It's very easy to stop your Spotify subscription, on their website. There isn't any trick.

curiousgal 5y ago

> disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. Paypal

nerdjon 5y ago
Any optional third party option is not a solution. As long as it is a choice for the developer, it doesn't fix the issue. The only reason Apple (and I assume Google) are able to make it this easy is because the app developers are forced to allow it. But if they are no longer forced, why would an app developer choose make it easy to cancel?
- babypuncher 5y ago
  Apple could make easy in-app service cancellation a requirement for store approval. This does not solve the problem of users needing to provide their CC info to additional payment providers, but it at least solves the problem of dark patterns being used to keep users from unsubscribing.
  - nerdjon 5y ago
    Maybe I am just jaded, but after the fighting and the shady practices done by Facebook to try to get around the app tracking. I don't really see that going over too well, and a court case being brought up about control or whatever. I mean I agree, that would be a fantastic rule and if it was enforced and allowed. Then sure, that fixes at least the dark pattern cancelation issue.
alimov 5y ago
Ok, what if you don’t use paypal. Or if one app uses pay pal, but another wants you to use some other payment solution. You’re still stuck registering to new services and sharing your CC info. So now you also have to remember what service is used by whatever app you are trying to cancel billing for.
- usrusr 5y ago
  You might just as well insist on never linking up your Google account with payment. This might not apply to a random pay to win candycrush clone, but Spotify is enough of an outlier they they likely have quite a few subscribers (or would be subscribers) who never accepted their phone as an app store payment mechanism. I know quite a few people who I'd suspect to be far more willing to hand over they CC data to Spotify than to Apple/Google.
  - alimov 5y ago
    Sure Spotify can do it and people will pay through whatever system.
- lxgr 5y ago
  I believe that we'll see a centralized subscription cancellation service for credit and debit cards before too long.
prophesi 5y ago
Could also use privacy.com though iirc it only works at masking debit cards. But yeah, this burden shouldn't be offloaded to users to make sure they're using a different centralized service to actually cancel subscriptions.

rkk3 5y ago

Maybe costing 30% more isn't worth centralizing the subscriptions

nerdjon 5y ago
I fully understand that I am... maybe closer to people here but in the grand scheme of things financially I am in a better state than most people. But so I was curious, I have $762 worth of subscriptions a year through Apple. So I could save $228.60 if they were all 30% less. To me that is worth it. But I would also like to point out, that many of the apps I am subscribed too. I am only subscribed too because it was easy through Apple and I knew that I could cancel. I have a number of expired ones that I used for 6 months or a year but I didn't need anymore. A few that I have right now fit this but I am still actively using them. If it wasn't for this central subscription, they would have never gotten my money to begin with.
- forty 5y ago
  What if there was another payment system available on iphone with similar subscription centralisation service, with only 10% fee? Would you use that instead? IMO the main problem is the lack of competition. If Apple were forced to accept other payment platforms, you'd soon find the same service for cheaper.
  - nerdjon 5y ago
    I don't necessarily care that its Apple. But the only reason that this works the way it does, is because a developer has to use it. If there really was a third party offering that was just as easy to use sure, why not. But I just don't see companies willingly making it easy to cancel a service without trying to send the customer through some retention workflow.
- OmahaBoy69 5y ago
  How the hell did you manage to rack up $762 in yearly subscription fees...?

adewinter 5y ago

It would only make sense if the company was able to offer a discount/different price when you use their billing system vs google/apple. Edit: though it's not clear if Google would even allow that in this case.

nerdjon 5y ago
That is the only use case I could think of, but I would have expected if that was the case it would have been communicated in this release. It looks like on iOS Spotify is $13 a month vs $10 a month on their website. I don't see anywhere https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotify.music&hl=en_US&gl=US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.spotify.mu... that specifies in app purchases but I assume it is the same.

nvahalik 5y ago

> Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong) While subscription cancellations work similarly, Apple holds your hand (from a dev perspective) than Google does. Apple's overall approach seems to just make sense. For instance: if you stop offering a particular plan because you don't want to offer it anymore (e.g. no more yearly plans, only monthly and quarterly). With Apple, you get a notification that you need to change your plan, but if the change happens w/in 7 days of your renewal, you'll be grand-fathered in. With Google... well... you cannot stop offering it. You have to communicate (manually) a cutoff date, (via their API) cancel people's subscriptions, and then deal with the fallout.

nerdjon 5y ago
How much does Google communicate to the user with this? One big benefit I didn't mention, is any yearly membership I get a communication from Apple that it is about to renew. Reminding me to cancel if I no longer want to use it. I don't know of a single service I have subscribed too directly that does this. Edit: I remembered one. FFXIV oddly enough reminds me every month that they are about to bill.
- nvahalik 5y ago
  I'm not really sure. I know some services I've used in the past like Harvest and TaxBot send before-the-renewed notices. Services that used Stripe did not.
forty 5y ago
Last time I checked (admittedly a long time on Apple, as a developer, I couldn't refund and cancel a subscription for my customers. They have to go through Apple to do that. Not a great experience.
- nvahalik 5y ago
  It’s usually fairly simple though. You (as a dev) don’t have to front the cost for support folks to handle it.

olau 5y ago

I know that a consumptionist attitude is popular these days, but as a user of something like Spotify I would surely prefer as much as possible of my monetary contribution ending up with Spotify and the musicians instead of in the hands of a company controlling the market place. To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? The only reason the phone OS companies get away with it is lack of real competition. The regulatory environment is very slow in catching up - it's not more than a few years ago that the EU finally hit the payment card companies. And yes, the EU also has something to say when it comes to dark subscription cancelling patterns.

bennysomething 5y ago
What did the eu hit payment card companies with? Only thing I know about is banning vendors from passing on fees to the customer, which harmed us: it prevented the customer from seeing they were being ripped off by credit card companies at the point of sale. (Genuine question here)
altairprime 5y ago
I would trust Spotify but not NYTimes, in this model, so perhaps consider a more hostile example than Spotify as well.
Shank 5y ago
> To the people who think the exorbitant fees are okay: Imagine a world with no cash. Now the payment card companies decide they want 30% of all transactions. You think that would be reasonable? Just so that we're talking on equal terms here, card processors and networks solve a massive amount of problems that existed with cash. Pre-card, many stores setup credit accounts with individuals, had book keeping practices to deal with, and had to chase down credit lines they themselves offered. Even with debit cards, card networks facilitate the ability to automatically move money between parties and give customers the ability to dispute/chargeback fraudulent transactions easily. If you physically hand a merchant cash, you can't claw that back without a legal process, whereas you're afforded protections by the card network. But the 30% cut is completely different from card processors. Of the 30% to Google Play or to Apple, a small fraction (2.9%ish) is actually the card overhead. The rest is split between pure profit, infrastructure, and whatever else gets tacked on. Cards definitely offer important things to facilitate transactions that are objectively better than a pure cash world for most people. But it's important to call out crazy cash grabs like 30%, which is unheard of even in the payment network world.

shkkmo 5y ago

Perhaps you might want your spotify account be able to operate independantly from google? I see similarities to google SSO. For some people, being able not remember more credentials is worth giving google more power over your life, for others google SSO is a non-starter and the would much rather make a seperate account with different credentials. Some people would rather use single use virtual credut card numbers than rely on google to let them cancel when and how they want.

BlueTemplar 5y ago
Or monthly SEPA transfers. That I can set and revoke at will. I wish that there was an error-proof (on my side) way to set the exact amount though. And a range acceptable for the company for what day of the month to do the transfer. I don't understand why I would need to go through anyone else for this than my bank(s) ?

divbzero 5y ago

I suspect you’re right about this. I would love to see the data on how many users end up choosing Spotify’s payment system over Google Play Billing.

nerdjon 5y ago
That would be very interesting data. But I would be surprised if we ever actually saw that data.

usr1106 5y ago

> As a user, why would I choose this Because I don't even have Google in my phone? (No idea whether Spotify will support that, but if they wanted they could.)

madeofpalk 5y ago

> As a user, why would I choose this? On iOS you do not have that choice with many apps because they (fairly) do not wish to fork over 30% of revenue. So if this was introduced to iOS, the choice would be "Sign up for Netflix in the app" or "Not at all". You just do not have the option to use centralized billing on iOS with Netflix. "You download the app and it doesn’t work".

yreg 5y ago
>"You download the app and it doesn’t work" Steve wouldn't be happy about this.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  https://youdownloadtheappanditdoesntwork.com/ https://youdownloadtheappanditdoesntwork.com/
  - yreg 5y ago
    Thanks, I forgot it was an actual quote.

bsimpson 5y ago

Tinder offers a discount if you subscribe through the web. I got upsold into their 6 month package. You were supposed to get 5 super likes per day (which shows your profile to someone and tells them you like them; otherwise, you wait to maybe sometime show up in their feed and hope they pay attention). After I paid, they changed it to 5 per MONTH. It effectively made my subscription worthless, but unless I go through the hassle of contesting it on my CC, I have no recourse.

makeitdouble 5y ago

＞ Assuming google works like Apple (correct me if I am wrong), disabling a subscription should be able to happen from a central location with a click or 2. As a user I might go with Spotify exactly for that reason. My Google account is personal and already attached to a lot of services, while the Spotify one is dedicated and shared. I’d hate to go hunt for the right Google account that has the subscription. Also, Apple subscriptions have several issues like the service provider can’t cancel your subscription. Given that Apple will not let you cancel the current running month, even if the provider agrees with your case, it leads to fucked up situations that only emerge because there’s a middleman.

lawl 5y ago

> I only see a benefit to developers for this, but from a user prospective going with another system is a downgrade. To me it sounds like a huge upgrade. But admittedly I might be in the minority in that the only reason i use android is because I think iOS is even worse in having to deal with the platform owners bullshit. The issues with cancelling things seems like a very american centric problem. I don't know, I literally never had an issue canceling a subscription yet. And hopefully this is a step in the direction where the user has the choice to pay a 30% premium, instead of being forced to. For example I'd be very happy to pay valve 30% more to not have to deal with EGS. I'd be even more happy to pay anyone 30% less to not have to deal with Google.

Flameancer 5y ago

Counter point, Google deleted your account for no reason.

eloff 5y ago

Or worse, like free mobile in France, force you to send a paper letter with a specific format to cancel service. I cancelled my credit cards instead and will let them try to collect internationally. They also let you cancel by phone, if you speak French. They have quite a nice online portal area where I can login and make changes to my plan. But they don't let me cancel there on purpose. It's a dark pattern and I'll never use their service again as a result. Which is too bad, because I was quite satisfied with it otherwise.

whymsicalburito 5y ago

When given the choice, I will always subscribe/pay/book directly with the company rather than use a 3rd party. If something goes wrong it's always easier to only need to deal with one company rather than two. Plus I'm choosing to start a relationship with a company that I give money to and thus want them to be able to use all of that money towards making the service and experience the best possible, rather than have them be handicapped by fees coming right off the top.

pfranz 5y ago
I have the opposite experience with subscriptions. Have you ever tried to cancel a gym membership? Famously, companies make it easy to sign up online, but require a phone call (likely with a wait) to cancel. Many places have passed explicit laws [1]. I was a monthly donator to a public radio show. After few years I wanted to switch credit cards (with no intention of canceling or changing my donation amount). They had redesigned their website and there was no discernible way to cancel or contact them. I blindly emailed them, but never got a response. My only recourse was to cancel the credit card. Since then I've greatly preferred a third-party to manage subscriptions. For awhile it was Paypal. In the past decade it's been Patreon and Apple. [1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.xhtml?lawCode=BPC&division=7.&title=&part=3.&chapter=1.&article=9 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displayText.x...
- whymsicalburito 5y ago
  You're right that there are definitely some bad actors for cancelling subscriptions, it's really crappy you've had to deal with that! I once had a recurring charge from rackspace that neither myself nor rackspace's support could tell me which account the charges were associated with! Luckily my credit card company was able to put a block on any charges coming from rackspace rather than have to cancel the entire card. I still think there are way more good companies than bad ones when it comes to cancelling and I do value building a relationship with the companies I patronize. It is worrying to give so much power to a 3rd party, in this case google, who is notoriously difficult to deal with when an issue arises.

YetAnotherNick 5y ago

My guess is that they will offer it cheaper if it was paid through their site.

perlpimp 5y ago

some cards might work with google play and not spotify, I was like that when I got to a country my uber did not work anymore with my old cards but I added cards to google play and paid for my ride this way. choice is good.

smaudet 5y ago

That's not a reason to use Google Pay - I want a system which I can directly block. Credit Card allows me to do this. Billing through Spotify might make it harder to unsubscribe, but I can still block my card. Rather not need to fight a large company with a history of ignoring its users or their complaints to get my payment canceled.

zeepzeep 5y ago

> As a user, why would I choose this Privacy

Tainnor 5y ago

I don't understand your comment. It would make sense if Spotify had been using Google for payments and was now planning on introducing their own payment processing. But what's happening is the exact opposite, Spotify has been using their own payment processing on Android so far and are now planning to add Google payments.

amelius 5y ago

Unsubscribing should have been solved by banks years ago.

nyuszika7h 5y ago

> As a user, why would I choose this? Because chances are the 30% fee will be simply passed on to the customer. I don't know if that's true in this case but this is a very common practice even with big greedy corporations that could definitely afford eating the fee (except many of them have just completely removed in-app subscriptions on Android and iOS already). This is exactly why it's great to have a choice: if you're fine with paying a 30% fee on every single subscription for the peace of mind Google provides (protecting your payment details, easy cancellation, etc.) then that's your choice. But if you would rather cut costs and you trust the developer or are willing to risk it (generally banks will protect you from fraud anyway), you have the choice of direct payment.

cush 5y ago

The prices can be different. The customer may choose the cheaper, less convenient option.