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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 u

• bombcar 3y ago
  The way I see it, if they can register if you're using it, then after a year of disuse (or getting close to it) they should send a "we will cancel this for you" type notices. If it's business to business, that's more on both sides.
  • toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Interested in filing public comments on this if the FTC asks for them?
  • cptskippy 3y ago
    This is what Credit Cards do. They're shady AF but have no problem cancelling your card due to inactivity.
• thriftwy 3y ago
  I believe this is implemented in Russia: I did not check that but when I sign up for some streaming service, after some time they start begging me to watch something and then stop charging me. I guess they may only charge on the months when I've showed up. They may resume it immediately when I come back, though. Myself would like to know how that works in detail.
• Alupis 3y ago
  > 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 on me... I maintain the subscriptions because I can afford to do so and because I enjoy the convenience of having it available when I want it without having to go through some sort of account activation ritual. People need to have personal responsibility. Review your bank/credit accounts and cancel subscriptions if you want - it's your money so take responsibility. This line of reasoning reminds me of the petulant discussion revolving around overdraft fees... as-if it's difficult to spend 3 seconds tapping a button in your banking app.
  • eropple 3y ago
    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 look down at a generally frazzled and overloaded population, but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to have you make.
    • Alupis 3y ago
      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 should monitor those things.
      • toomuchtodo 3y ago
        > 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. This is a poor perspective to have, and the purpose of government is to protect its citizens from predatory behavior. You're entitled to the opinion, but I vote for people who protect citizens, because that is where the greatest value is in aggregate improvement (vs "personal responsibility"). Existing is different levels of difficulty for everyone, and personal responsibility projection is of little value. But it is great if you're crushing it taking care of yourself. (very similar to overdraft fees and upcoming rules to compress them by the Biden admin and the CFPB)
• lazide 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • behringer 3y ago
    This with dignity? Or do you also ask for handouts everywhere you go?
    • lazide 3y ago
      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.
      • wolverine876 3y ago
        > presumably happy with your service The OP is about billions being spent by people who are not happy but haven't unsubscribed, so that seems like a bad presumption.
        • lazide 3y ago
          Seems like a bad presumption to assume they aren’t happy with the service. Or is taking the standard deduction morally reprehensible too?
          • wolverine876 3y ago
            > a bad presumption to assume they aren’t happy with the service. The OP says they forgot to unsubscribe, which certainly implies they aren't 'happy' with it.
            • lazide 3y ago
              By OP you mean the article? Or someone else? The article is a typical editorial. And behind a paywall, near as I can tell.
• lumb63 3y ago
  A subscription service is an agreement between a consumer and a business, where the consumer agrees to provide money in exchange for access to some service. That service might be something that they regularly receive, e.g. meal kits, or it might be something that they can choose to access, e.g. Spotify. In the former case, where there is a definite agreement that some item will be delivered, I agree with you; not providing that is fraudulent. It looks like you're talking about the latter case, though, and I starkly disagree there. First, it is not the responsibility of the business to ensure people use the product that the business sold them. Why should it be? This standard doesn't exist for companies providing physical products. Someone could order a meal kit subscription, and after receiving the food every week, they could choose to throw it straight in the trash. The company shouldn't offer someone a refund because they chose to throw away the food they sent. The same principle applies for digital subscriptions - the subscriber is choosing to throw away access to whatever service the business provides. Second, I think it's worth pointing out that the principle underlying your argument, that it is the responsibility of the payee to ensure the payer gets what they pay for, logically contradicts salaried or waged work. The principle you've implied is consistent with all services being paid for piecemeal, since if nothing is produced, nothing was received. This implies cashiers should be paid per transaction, chefs should be paid per meal, baristas should be paid per cup, etc. Maybe you do think that - I can't possibly know. However, I doubt you would support a minimum-wage worker having to return a day's pay to their employer if no customers showed up that day. I think that's silly, because in the absence of active demand, the employee is still providing a service: their presence, and thus the ability to fulfill transactions if requested. I also think what you're saying not only absolves consumers of their responsibility, but also strips from them any agency in the matter. This is not a problem requiring collective action, like climate change. This is a problem where the individual's actions are 100% capable of resolving it. In a world where lots of issues are out of the individual's control, why not empower people to control what they can? Cancelling unwanted subscriptions is a simple and effective way to avoid unwanted subscription fees, and is available to every subscription-holder. Arguing that businesses should resolve, to their own detriment, a problem that consumers create, and can easily resolve, doesn't make any sense to me.
  • wolverine876 3y ago
• cryptozeus 3y ago
  What would you want business to do ? See that customer is not active then go ahead and remove their subscription?? Lmao then you will have customers asking why did you stop my account. Clearly you have not faced customers before.
  • tppiotrowski 3y ago
    OP doesn't say remove subscription, just charge $0 for months where users don't use the service.
    • cryptozeus 3y ago
      And charge more than agreed bill if you use more ? This is not how pricing work
  • CJefferson 3y ago
    Why not send a message reminding them of the service, and giving an easy one-click way of cancelling? You could include some info on how they can use your service as well of course.
    • erickj 3y ago
      Imagine someone walked by your house every month and dropped a $5 bill on your lawn. The 1st of every month ... there it was. Would you put up a sign reminding them to stop stop dropping $5 bills?
      • CJefferson 3y ago
        No, which is why I think the government should force companies remind people they took out subscriptions, and make it easy to cancel them.
      • deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    • Detrytus 3y ago
• roland35 3y ago
  Aren't they just providing access to their service? Different companies provide different billing methods and that's fine! For example you could pay $20/month for ChatGPT and use it as much or little as you like, or pay $/per API call... But not every company needs to offer both.
  • mtmail 3y ago
    Yes, sometimes you purchase capacity to be able to use something. The provider has to reserve that capacity.
    • wolverine876 3y ago
      Usually capacity is allocated based on past usage, either by the individual or by some group. It depends on what they are selling, of course. But an easy way to relieve that capacity problem is to stop fleecing people for something they forgot to cancel.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y ago
  "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 forget to cancel. They banked on it. This is not something new.
  • jimmydddd 3y ago
    For annual services, I think they should always remind you before charging you. Even if you've selected auto-renew. I always appreciate the services that do that.
    • bluefirebrand 3y ago
      Sony and Nintendo are doing this for their online services. I had yearly subscriptions to both PSN and Switch Online and just before New Years I got emails from both reminding me about the yearly sub. I couldn't remember using PSN once last year so I cancelled it.
  • runsonrum 3y ago
    I'm sure there are some out there that remember 10.. 15.. 20 CDs for 1¢ mail order. My assumption was that they would bank on guilt or forgetfulness to keep the cash flowing in.
    • theendisney2 3y ago
      I've actually created a business model based on it. The vhs rental stores were dying left and right. The one i looked into got most of its money from snacks and drinks. The subscription moddel was 75 cent, renting a movie would drop from 3-4 euro to 75 cent. (only 1 at a time) You could keep it for a week, then you would get a call if you could please return it. The existing customers knew vhs rental was not really a thing anymore. Many visited just for a chat. I figured one could guilt people into keeping the sub. I wasnt looking to make a profit, just curuous about the puzzle. Im not even ashamed. haha
• silisili 3y ago
  I worked once for a company who internally decided to never contact paying accounts that hadn't logged in in over a year. This isn't a gym membership, this is 5 digit yearly payments. The reasoning? "We don't want them to realize they're paying us for a service they don't use and cancel." I guess I see the point, but feels unethical.
  • makeitdouble 3y ago
    The next step should be to transform "unethical" into "illegal", except enormous business entities rely on subscription revenue. Otherwise it's a very well know effect. There will be unsubscription peaks every time the service communicates with thei customers, even purely informative stuff like "we now have a dark mode" emails will remind people they've a subscription and some will cancel, that's part of the business and something that affects communication frequency in subtle and obvious ways.
• robertlagrant 3y ago
  > which take money for services they don't deliver They are delivering a service. > This particular behavior is little better than taking money and simply refusing to provide service No it's not. > No matter how awful or shameful, people say 'it's business' and those magic words absolve every evil No, they don't.
  • Krasnol 3y ago
    It is quite concerning that this comment is so high up. It is lazy, doesn't provide any additional explanation for their reasoning. It is useless and basically just says "no".
    • wolverine876 3y ago
      It's pretty common on the Internet and on HN too, and in public debate. Aggressive, confident assertions deny others the power to disagree. Contempt and shame - super-popular rhetoric these days - achieve the same thing, and they are related (both kinds of rhetoric are an aggressive display of arrogance). They assert, implicitly, that there's no way to debate this person. Anger is another similar tactic. Then if you don't understand that it's tactical, you give up. So far, to my amazement, very few people seem to understand it; almost all take it at face value.
    • robertlagrant 3y ago
      Perhaps, but all I'm doing is reversing the equally unjustified claims in the parent. Ironically they've lamented unjustified claims in the sibling comment to this one, but their post is chock full of them.
      • Krasnol 3y ago
        How are you supposed to know that they're unjustified when the (at that time) top comment is just "no"? Are you supposed to accept the superiority of some anonymous commenter, or is the fact that they just "need to" post "no" and therefore show that their opinion must be superior?
• sheepscreek 3y ago
  I only blame businesses when they make it hard to cancel a subscription. Here’s a couple from my list: Adobe and Audible. The latter cause they don’t let you keep your “credits” if you cancel.
• edgyquant 3y ago
  This is one thing slack does right, if an account doesn’t post for a month you don’t get charges for it
• lr4444lr 3y ago
  That's not fair. A business has to plan for the future. That means investments in capital and labor. These users have the right of their contract to resume using the service at a moment's notice, which the business is honoring by keeping the server capacity available, generating content, having support staff at the ready, etc.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• timacles 3y ago
  Its the workout gym model of the 90s. They would regularly sign up more people than the gym could hold, but most people might go to the gym once a month or once every 3 months.
• gmd63 3y ago
  It should be illegal to charge someone for a month of a service that they did not use. It's trivially easy to see that someone doesn't log in. Then you just pause their subscription after refunding that month. Next time they log in, you can prompt them to resubscribe with one click.
  • crummy 3y ago
    Gyms everywhere would go belly-up!
    • simplyluke 3y ago
      And neighborhood gym memberships would be well north of $100/month. No one in these discussions considers second order effects.
  • alexas 3y ago
    Why should it be illegal?
    • gmd63 3y ago
      Because accurately pricing sales around intended purchases makes the economy better And it's more efficient for a company managing subscriptions to automate accurate pricing the right way than it is for each and every customer to sift through their payment history for anomalies
• hdhdjdjd 3y ago
  Sounds just like gyms!
• MattGaiser 3y ago
  > If you took monthly payment from your elderly neighbor to shovel their walk and it never snowed, it would be shameful to keep taking it - people's opinions of you would change negatively if they heard about it. Except the neighbour did buy something. You being available to shovel their driveway. You having the equipment to shovel their driveway. Which is why you pay for snow removal services even in months without snow.
• raz32dust 3y ago
  In the elderly neighbor and shovel example, I don't see what's wrong, as long as it was communicated. It depends on the agreement really - for example, if the shovel guy was charging a little less for subscription than what it would otherwise cost the elderly in a regular year of snow. The elderly is getting the benefit of always having a shoveler ready and available, and the shoveler is getting the benefit of more predictable income. I am as frustrated about everything turning into a subscription as the next person, but the solution is not to put the onus of cancellation on businesses. It is to prevent monopolies (so that there is a true free market) and dark patterns (i.e, cancellation should be easy and terms should be very clear when subscribing).
  • 8organicbits 3y ago
    > ready and available This is key. I've had software contacts where I was on retainer to provide service if needed. I wasn't needed, and got paid just for making myself available. The shovel person's availability is reduced, they can't take another job that conflicts with this contract. They needed to buy a shovel, stock salt, maintain their car, etc. This seems like a pretty normal service retainer.
• andrew_eu 3y ago
  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. If not, you'd get a 1/3rd credit for a free massage. And after 3 months of no use they would stop billing the monthly fee until you return (and collect your free massage). It was, to me, unbelievably consumer-friendly and reflected well on the business. I recommended everyone I could, and they deserved it. Unfortunately the place shut down shortly after I moved away.
  • PakG1 3y ago
    I suppose the cynic would argue that if they didn't have this billing practice, they may have survived. Which the other cynic would say is the problem, are businesses being too subsidized by unethical billing?
    • freetanga 3y ago
      Or would have created negative backlash with initial clients while still open, accelerating its demise? Let’s chuck this one on the bin of “who knows? Who cares?” Mistery Bin.
    • pxc 3y ago
      We also don't know that it closed because it failed. Small businesses like that can end up closing just because the owner moves away or something like that, if the owner is highly involved in operating the place.
      • setr 3y ago
        I’m highly suspicious that the whole 90% of restaurants fail thing is largely because small business owners don’t know how to manage their finances and maintain adequate buffers for lean months. I expect even the highest revenue places to just fall over suddenly because of it
• libraryatnight 3y ago
  When I was a teen I worked for a credit card company doing outbound balance transfer sales, it was awful. But the day I put in my two weeks was when my sup pulled a call of mine to review and asked me what I had done wrong. In it, a very very old woman who never used her card anymore, hadn't had a balance in some time, barely remembered she had it, was not interested in the balance transfer. My requirement in addition to the balance transfer was to also offer the product that came up for the account. The product was an account protection that basically froze your payments if you were unable to make them. She asked if I thought that was something she really needed, I said no, you don't run a balance so it'd likely not be worthwhile if she planned to continue not using it. The sups issue with the call was that I said she didn't need the product. He wanted me to swindle that lady. I didn't walk out or anything I just said this is my 2 weeks this isn't for me. Anyway, at some point people make these things okay, we can stop it.
• prossercj 3y ago
  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?