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> Their average response was $62. When they were given more time to guess again, they increased their estimate to $96. They were still way off. The correct answ
by karaterobot 3y ago
> Their average response was $62. When they were given more time to guess again, they increased their estimate to $96. They were still way off. The correct answer was $273.
I have been in rooms at SaaS companies where the fact that people forget to cancel the subscription was described as an important benefit of the subscription model, and a reason to set the price at something easily overlooked.
People are terrible at estimating or keeping track of their subscriptions, myself included. A couple years ago I painstakingly audited all my recurring subscriptions. Painstaking because I had to go through all my bank and credit account statements for a year looking for the services that billed yearly or semi-yearly rather than monthly. I had also drastically underestimated what they cost me, by about a factor of two in my case. I think of myself as being very frugal about this kind of thing, so it was a surprise.
But then I was able to save myself almost $1000 a year just by eliminating some unused subscriptions I had sort of forgotten. Not forgotten entirely, but services I sort of failed to think about as costs, because the monthly spend for them individually was so low. But once I thought about them as a yearly cost, and then about the total yearly cost for all these little services, that successfully (and more accurately) reframed the situation.
I didn't find unsubscribing or cancelling to be particular onerous. I do use Privacy.com now, which would make it both easier to track and theoretically easier to cancel. Ironically, Privacy.com is a monthly subscription (at the tier I use) but it is definitely worth it.
I told people about the $1000 a year "raise" I got by just trimming dead weight. I told them they should do the same exercise—make a spreadsheet, have a column that multiplies the monthly fee by 12, and think about it as a yearly cost instead—and they were all, uniformly, without exception certain that they already knew what they spent, and it wasn't really very much.
My advice: do the exercise anyway, it is worth it.
- paxys 3y agoGyms, cloud storage, restaurant buffets, insurance all follow this business model. If everyone paying into it actually expected to extract their entire money's worth of value the whole industry would collapse.
- hartator 3y ago> restaurant buffets Buffets have monthly subcriptions?
- rappatic 3y agoNo, their entire model is based on the assumption that users could extract maximum value from the buffet (eating everything) but typically don't (have a normal- to large-sized meal, the supply cost of which is obviously far less than what the customer pays to get in). The parent commenter's point is that many businesses are run this way (eg. the gym is not equipped for 100% of subscribers to go to the gym every day, just as the buffet is not equipped for 100% of customers to eat a huge amount).
- smtp 3y agoI was legitimately excited about this idea. If anyone wants to start a buffet with a monthly subscription, I may be your first customer.
- makeitdouble 3y agoA monthly subscription restaurant would be a true game changer. I'm imagining going to a place where I sit and choose food without ever making price calculations, the restaurant also doesn't have to care about pushing drink orders or time spent at the table. if the cost was low enough people would probably stop caring about optimizing and try to get their money's worth, while the restaurant would only need to focus on customer satisfaction to get renewals. That must exist in some way, what is it ? Edit: school restauration is that, and I genuinely think of it as a crucial system that helps so many kids. I could see company restaurants in the same light but the closed nature isn't great.
- snarf21 3y agoYeah, was just going to say this is Planet Fitness' whole value prop .. Cheap enough that the lie you tell yourself that you will go more next month is easily worth $10 / month.
- antisthenes 3y agoPlanet fitness hasn't been $10 for a while now. Their cheapest plan is something like $12.99 and with fees it's up to $18 or so. And that was 5 years ago.
- anthomtb 3y agoThat still sounds dirt cheap for a gym. I workout at home or outdoors these days, but my last gym membership (24 Hour Fitness) was $25/month, 5 years ago, and the folks at the front desk were amazed I had that rate. Aside, is Planet Fitness still unfriendly to people that push themselves during workouts? I'm no bodybuilder and never will be (my little-girl wrists made that decision) but the idea of a "lunk alarm" was rather off-putting.
- vegashacker 3y agoI see $10 on the random location I clicked on: https://www.planetfitness.com/gyms/oakland-ca/offers https://www.planetfitness.com/gyms/oakland-ca/offers
- talldatethrow 3y agoIt's $10 a month in my town. But that doesn't include the once a year fee of around $50.. so technically you're correct but I assume you weren't counting that since long ago that yearly fee existed too when it was $10 a month as you remember.
- EasyMark 3y agomine is literally 10.99 a month and something like $20 annual fee once a year. I lift late so it works out well for me, but I realize that's not true for everyone.
- jtriangle 3y ago
- al_borland 3y agoI keep a spreadsheet with all my recurring payments. I do this so if a credit card expires or gets compromised, I have an easy list of places I need to change it. That spreadsheet also contains the cost of each thing (monthly and yearly). The columns are the company, what it’s for, the card/account it’s using, the monthly cost, and the yearly cost. It’s very useful to have. Everything is on there, from my property tax to domain registrations, and Netflix. In my budget I allocate $100 for subscriptions and just look to stay under that. I found giving myself allowance to spend X amount made me chill out a little, so I wasn’t always trying to cut at all costs, since they are hard to avoid now. That budget item avoids the death by 1,000 cuts, while also letting me not sweat the small stuff.
- demondemidi 3y agoHow do people not check their credit card statements every month against their receipts? That’s insane to me.
- bluedays 3y agoI just cancel my debit card instead. It’s quicker, and then when I have to add my card to sending that needs it again I have a much deeper understanding of where my money is going.
- lxgr 3y agoCanceling/reordering a credit or debit card is not guaranteed to actually end all subscriptions – some recurring payments can follow you across card reorders!
- xerox13ster 3y agoThis is a "feature" of VISA, called Visa Account Updater [0] [0]: https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau
- bluedays 3y agoI’ve never had that problem. Maybe it’s because I bank with USAA, and a lot of their tech is out dated.