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I'd be willing to say that subscriptions are a dark pattern when they don't automatically stop if you stop using them. A fundamental part of healthy business r

I'd be willing to say that subscriptions are a dark pattern when they don't automatically stop if you stop using them. A fundamental part of healthy business relationships is value for value. E.g., you give me money, I give you a sandwich, you take the sandwich, eat it, and are happy with it. If you keep paying me for sandwiches but I don't give them to you, that's not healthy. Ditto if I put them on the counter but you stop taking them. Personally, I think there should be a law that all service/software subscriptions auto-suspend after 30 days of non-use. Because right now there's a big incentive for businesses to get you to sign up for things they think you're not going to use, and to keep on charging you even though they know you're not using it.

tomnipotent 4y ago
What you're asking for is a la carte access while still getting discounted subscription pricing, pushing all the risk onto the business. Consume as much as you want, but pay nothing when you don't. Sounds like a crap deal for the business.
- roblabla 4y ago
  And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service. Produce nothing, but get paid every month. Sounds like a crap deal for the users.
  - tomnipotent 4y ago
    > And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service All of them, from the local gym to Dropbox to Spotify. Subscription businesses can't make money if every consumer costs more to service than the revenue they generate. There's even an official accounting term for it, breakage. > Produce nothing, but get paid every month Failure to consume and get value from a subscription is your fault, not the business that fulfilled its obligation.
    - wpietri 4y ago
      I am amazed that you can't see that approach as exploitative, and that your last line is victim blaming. If a company can't exist without tricking people into paying for something they get no value out of, maybe it shouldn't exist.
      - tomnipotent 4y ago
        > can't see that approach as exploitative You're getting all-you-can-eat from the business for a fixed price in exchange for predictable revenue as opposed to pay-as-you-go. That you think that's exploitative just tells me you don't understand the business model. You want to have your cake and eat it, too.
        wpietri 4y ago
        Ah yes, the old "people who disagree with me must be ignorant" routine. Not a good sign, but I'll take one more swing at it. An all-you-can-eat restaurant where customers don't eat anything and you still keep charging them until they notice months or years later is indeed exploitative. For something like an apartment, there's reasonable justification for long-term contracts and continuing to charge people without regard to use, in that it's an expensive good that has exactly one user at a time and where it can take a while to find a new tenant. But that entirely vanishes with most internet-based subscriptions. If I stop watching Netflix, they stop experiencing marginal costs for me. If I get excited about a NYT subscription but then stop reading, it's the same deal. Nobody went out and bought another server just because I signed up. I could cancel at any time and they'd have to let me go. If they keep charging me when I'm not getting any value, then it's not a mutually beneficial relationship; they're just exploiting me. And indeed, maybe they were exploiting me from the get-go if their intent was to just get my money in without regard for whether I was going to get anything out of it. People who take money without providing value are at best economic parasites, but quite a lot of them are just scammers, grifters, and frauds. Which is exactly why a law would be especially valuable here, so that their time and attention were devoted to some socially positive activity.
- wpietri 4y ago
  For anybody who offers a month-to-month subscription, I'm not asking for anything other than them not taking money they're not earning. You have a point with, say, annual subscriptions. But for services where there's no cost to the vendor for an unused subscription, maybe that's ok, as there an annual subscription could much more easily be a dark pattern. I also think pushing the risk of "the customer doesn't actually get anything out of it" onto the business is where the risk should be. Who better to understand and manage that risk than the people making the product and who have great masses of data on how it actually gets used?
  - tomnipotent 4y ago
    Absolutely there's cost to the business even if you don't use the service. There's marketing, salary, healthcare, leases, and any other number of expenses. Gym's pay rent regardless of you showing up. Netflix still has pay for content you don't watch. The entire point of a subscription model is that a business can offer a steeply discounted price vs. pay-as-you-go in exchange for predictable, recurring revenue. That's the only way the model works.
    - bigiain 4y ago
      > Gym's pay rent regardless of you showing up. In my opinion, that's the industry (at least here in .au) that are the poster-child worst example of dark patterns in manipulative subscription charging. They are infamous here for doing fucked up things in an attempt to make it as difficult as possible to cancel your subscription. I had one friend who moved overseas, discovered his gym was still billing him monthly even though he'd emailed to cancel explaining they didn't have any locations in his new country of residence, and they tried to claim the only way to cancel his subscription was in-person at the location he signed up at. He had to lawyer up when he cancelled the credit card (and told them he'd done so), and they threatened to send his account to a collection agency. (On single lawyer letter got him a refund of all charges since the date of his original email saying he was cancelling, so they _knew_ they were legally in the wrong and wouldn't have a leg to stand on it of ever got to court.)
      - 4y ago

tomnipotent 4y ago

What you're asking for is a la carte access while still getting discounted subscription pricing, pushing all the risk onto the business. Consume as much as you want, but pay nothing when you don't. Sounds like a crap deal for the business.

roblabla 4y ago
And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service. Produce nothing, but get paid every month. Sounds like a crap deal for the users.
- tomnipotent 4y ago
  > And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service All of them, from the local gym to Dropbox to Spotify. Subscription businesses can't make money if every consumer costs more to service than the revenue they generate. There's even an official accounting term for it, breakage. > Produce nothing, but get paid every month Failure to consume and get value from a subscription is your fault, not the business that fulfilled its obligation.
  - wpietri 4y ago
    I am amazed that you can't see that approach as exploitative, and that your last line is victim blaming. If a company can't exist without tricking people into paying for something they get no value out of, maybe it shouldn't exist.
    - tomnipotent 4y ago
      > can't see that approach as exploitative You're getting all-you-can-eat from the business for a fixed price in exchange for predictable revenue as opposed to pay-as-you-go. That you think that's exploitative just tells me you don't understand the business model. You want to have your cake and eat it, too.
      - wpietri 4y ago
        Ah yes, the old "people who disagree with me must be ignorant" routine. Not a good sign, but I'll take one more swing at it. An all-you-can-eat restaurant where customers don't eat anything and you still keep charging them until they notice months or years later is indeed exploitative. For something like an apartment, there's reasonable justification for long-term contracts and continuing to charge people without regard to use, in that it's an expensive good that has exactly one user at a time and where it can take a while to find a new tenant. But that entirely vanishes with most internet-based subscriptions. If I stop watching Netflix, they stop experiencing marginal costs for me. If I get excited about a NYT subscription but then stop reading, it's the same deal. Nobody went out and bought another server just because I signed up. I could cancel at any time and they'd have to let me go. If they keep charging me when I'm not getting any value, then it's not a mutually beneficial relationship; they're just exploiting me. And indeed, maybe they were exploiting me from the get-go if their intent was to just get my money in without regard for whether I was going to get anything out of it. People who take money without providing value are at best economic parasites, but quite a lot of them are just scammers, grifters, and frauds. Which is exactly why a law would be especially valuable here, so that their time and attention were devoted to some socially positive activity.
wpietri 4y ago
For anybody who offers a month-to-month subscription, I'm not asking for anything other than them not taking money they're not earning. You have a point with, say, annual subscriptions. But for services where there's no cost to the vendor for an unused subscription, maybe that's ok, as there an annual subscription could much more easily be a dark pattern. I also think pushing the risk of "the customer doesn't actually get anything out of it" onto the business is where the risk should be. Who better to understand and manage that risk than the people making the product and who have great masses of data on how it actually gets used?
- tomnipotent 4y ago
  Absolutely there's cost to the business even if you don't use the service. There's marketing, salary, healthcare, leases, and any other number of expenses. Gym's pay rent regardless of you showing up. Netflix still has pay for content you don't watch. The entire point of a subscription model is that a business can offer a steeply discounted price vs. pay-as-you-go in exchange for predictable, recurring revenue. That's the only way the model works.
  - bigiain 4y ago
    > Gym's pay rent regardless of you showing up. In my opinion, that's the industry (at least here in .au) that are the poster-child worst example of dark patterns in manipulative subscription charging. They are infamous here for doing fucked up things in an attempt to make it as difficult as possible to cancel your subscription. I had one friend who moved overseas, discovered his gym was still billing him monthly even though he'd emailed to cancel explaining they didn't have any locations in his new country of residence, and they tried to claim the only way to cancel his subscription was in-person at the location he signed up at. He had to lawyer up when he cancelled the credit card (and told them he'd done so), and they threatened to send his account to a collection agency. (On single lawyer letter got him a refund of all charges since the date of his original email saying he was cancelling, so they _knew_ they were legally in the wrong and wouldn't have a leg to stand on it of ever got to court.)
    - 4y ago