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Subscriptions have a "boiling frog" phenomenon where a marginal price increase isn't noticable to most people. Our payment rails are so effective many people do

Subscriptions have a "boiling frog" phenomenon where a marginal price increase isn't noticable to most people. Our payment rails are so effective many people don't even read their credit card statements, they just have vampires draining their accounts monthly. Starting with a low subscription price also has the effect of atrophying people's ability to self-serve. The alternative to a subscription is usually capital-intensive - if you want to cancel Netflix you need to have a DVD collection. If you want to cancel your thin client you have to build a PC. Most modern consumers live on a knife edge where $20/month isn't perceptible but $1000 is a major expense. The classic VC-backed model is to subsidize the subscription until people become complacent, and then increase the price once they're dependent. People who self-host are nutjobs because the cloud alternative is "cheaper and better" until it stops being cheaper.

Y_Y 9mo ago
My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something. I've noticed several bills that were higher than they should have been "due to a technical error". I'm certain some companies rely on people not checking and randomly add "errors". Notably there's no way (known to me) that you can have direct debits sent as requests that aren't automatically paid. I think that would put consumers on an equal footing with businesses though, which is obviously bad for the economy.
- esafak 9mo ago
  If it's random surely you'd get a discount sometimes!
- speff 9mo ago
  Wasn’t aware about charge notifications. Looks like my bank supports that - thanks for the info!
- usernameak 9mo ago
  > My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something. Wait, your bank doesn't do that by default? I've always assumed it's default behavior of most banks.
  - SoftTalker 9mo ago
    It's normally an option in my experience. I have mine set for charges over $100. I don't want a notification every time I buy gas (I do check my statements every month though).
    - cortesoft 9mo ago
      What is the harm in being notified when you buy gas? It doesn’t hurt anything, and I DO want to be notified if someone else buys gas on my card! The discussion started as a way to avoid forgetting to cancel subscriptions or to catch subscription price increases; if you are setting your limit to $100, you aren’t going to be seeing charges for almost all your subscriptions. I have my minimum set to $0, so I see all the charges. Helpful reminder when I see a $8 charge for something I forgot to cancel.
      - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
        Alert fatigue. Most people, if they get an alert for every single purchase they make, will learn to ignore the alerts as they are useless 99% of the time. Then when an alert comes through that would be useful, they won't see that either. Anyone who has had the misfortune to work on monitoring systems knows the very fine line you have to walk when choosing what alerts to send. Too few, or too many, and the system becomes useless.
        cortesoft 9mo ago
        As I said, I have my alert set to $0 and it really hasn’t caused fatigue. For one thing, when it is something i just purchased, the alert is basically just a confirmation that the purchase went through. I close it immediately and move on. If I get an alert and I didn’t buy anything, it makes me think about it. Often times it just reminds me of a subscription I have, and I take the moment the think if I still need it or not. If I start feeling like I am getting a lot of that kind of alert, I need to reevaluate the number of subscriptions I have. If I get an alert and I don’t immediately recognize the source (the alert will say the amount and who it is charged to), it certainly makes me pause and try to figure out what it is, and that has not been “alert fatigued” away from me even after 10+ years of these alerts. Basically, if I get an alert when I didn’t literally JUST make a purchase, it is worth looking into. I dont think it causes alert fatigue; I am not getting a bunch of false alerts throughout my day, because I shouldn’t be having random charges appear if I am not actively buying something.
vel0city 9mo ago
> if you want to cancel Netflix you need to have a DVD collection You don't need a whole DVD collection to cancel Netflix, even ignoring piracy. Go to a cheaper streaming service, pick a free/ad supported one, go grab media from the library, etc. Grab a Blu-Ray from the discount bin at the store once in a while, and your collection will grow.
- SoftTalker 9mo ago
  Music is different, but I never understood buying movies. Once I see a movie, I've seen it. I very rarely watch a movie more than once.
  - elbear 9mo ago
    Maybe you would, if you bought it.
    - SoftTalker 9mo ago
      No, I do own some (actually it was more in the VHS days so tapes) and I just found that I never really watched them again. So I stopped buying movies. I'm the same with books. Once I read it, I've read it. I would rarely read a novel twice. I know what's going to happen, so what's the point? Reference books are different of course.
      - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
        You're not really thinking this through enough. The exact same logic you used can be applied to music: once you've listened to the album once, you know how it will go, so what's the point of listening again? Presumably you do get something out of listening to music again (since you said you do listen to it more than once), so whatever that "something" is... you can infer that others get similar value out of rereading books/rewatching movies, even if you personally don't. For myself, the answer is "because the story is still enjoyable even if I know how it will end". And often enough, on a second reading/viewing I will discover nuances to the work I didn't the first time. Some works are so well made that even having enjoyed it 10+ times, I can discover something new about it! So yes, the pleasure of experiencing the story the first time can only be had once. But that is by no means the only pleasure to be had.
SecretDreams 9mo ago
> Subscriptions have a "boiling frog" phenomenon where a marginal price increase isn't noticable to most people. This is so apt and well stated. It echos my sentiment, but I hadn't thought to use the boiling frog metaphor. My own organs are definitely feeling a bit toastier lately.
bee_rider 9mo ago
> The alternative to a subscription is usually capital-intensive - if you want to cancel Netflix you need to have a DVD collection. I did Apple Music and Amazon Music. The experience of losing “my” streaming library twice totally turned me off these kinds of services. Instead I do Pandora, and just buy music when I (rarely) find something I totally love and want to listen to on repeat. The inability to build a library in the streaming service that I incorrectly think of as “mine” is a big feature, keeps my mental model aligned with reality.
- vel0city 9mo ago
  I do wish these services would have an easier method to import/export playlists and collections. But that would make it easier to leave, so its not going to happen.
  - galleywest200 9mo ago
    At least with Apple Music you can cmd-a cmd-c cmd-v playlists into a CSV file or something.
    - rvnx 9mo ago
      Yet you can't search anything unless you have a 100% exact match
  - tanjtanjtanj 9mo ago
    I don’t know about Amazon but having migrated to/from both Spotify and Apple Music they are both ludicrously easy to export playlists/libraries from.
paganholiday 9mo ago
Sure but modern cloud subscriptions have a lot of service layers you otherwise won't pay for so effectively you may be buying the hardware yearly that's a lot different than renting a media collection that would be assembled over a lifetime for the price of one new item a month.
KumaBear 9mo ago
This is something I’ve been seeing for a while. As a teen that kept his 300 dollar paycheck in cash that money would last a very long time. Now I make a good 6 figures and was seeing my accounts spending way more than I should. It wasn’t big purchases it was 50 dollars here 200 hundred there. A subscription here and there. By the end of the month I would wrack 8k in spending. Going line by line I learned how much I neglected these transactions being the source of my problem. Could I afford it? Yes. But saving and investing is a better vehicle for retirement early than these minor dopamine hits
nacozarina 9mo ago
the best con of all is convincing ppl they need Hollywood in their lives to be happy
RiverCrochet 9mo ago
You can only boil the frog until it dies. If there isn't a true dependency relationship then at some point the industry will die. In the 2010's, when short on money, I noticed my cable+Internet package was above $200. I took a look at things and cut the TV service, keeping the Internet. Movies and theaters thought they were untouchable until they weren't. Games can keep increasing their subscription fees until people just stop playing them. There was a world before video games, after all.

Y_Y 9mo ago

My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something. I've noticed several bills that were higher than they should have been "due to a technical error". I'm certain some companies rely on people not checking and randomly add "errors". Notably there's no way (known to me) that you can have direct debits sent as requests that aren't automatically paid. I think that would put consumers on an equal footing with businesses though, which is obviously bad for the economy.

esafak 9mo ago
If it's random surely you'd get a discount sometimes!
speff 9mo ago
Wasn’t aware about charge notifications. Looks like my bank supports that - thanks for the info!
usernameak 9mo ago
> My bank has an option to send me a notification every time I'm charged for something. Wait, your bank doesn't do that by default? I've always assumed it's default behavior of most banks.
- SoftTalker 9mo ago
  It's normally an option in my experience. I have mine set for charges over $100. I don't want a notification every time I buy gas (I do check my statements every month though).
  - cortesoft 9mo ago
    What is the harm in being notified when you buy gas? It doesn’t hurt anything, and I DO want to be notified if someone else buys gas on my card! The discussion started as a way to avoid forgetting to cancel subscriptions or to catch subscription price increases; if you are setting your limit to $100, you aren’t going to be seeing charges for almost all your subscriptions. I have my minimum set to $0, so I see all the charges. Helpful reminder when I see a $8 charge for something I forgot to cancel.
    - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
      Alert fatigue. Most people, if they get an alert for every single purchase they make, will learn to ignore the alerts as they are useless 99% of the time. Then when an alert comes through that would be useful, they won't see that either. Anyone who has had the misfortune to work on monitoring systems knows the very fine line you have to walk when choosing what alerts to send. Too few, or too many, and the system becomes useless.
      - cortesoft 9mo ago
        As I said, I have my alert set to $0 and it really hasn’t caused fatigue. For one thing, when it is something i just purchased, the alert is basically just a confirmation that the purchase went through. I close it immediately and move on. If I get an alert and I didn’t buy anything, it makes me think about it. Often times it just reminds me of a subscription I have, and I take the moment the think if I still need it or not. If I start feeling like I am getting a lot of that kind of alert, I need to reevaluate the number of subscriptions I have. If I get an alert and I don’t immediately recognize the source (the alert will say the amount and who it is charged to), it certainly makes me pause and try to figure out what it is, and that has not been “alert fatigued” away from me even after 10+ years of these alerts. Basically, if I get an alert when I didn’t literally JUST make a purchase, it is worth looking into. I dont think it causes alert fatigue; I am not getting a bunch of false alerts throughout my day, because I shouldn’t be having random charges appear if I am not actively buying something.

vel0city 9mo ago

> if you want to cancel Netflix you need to have a DVD collection You don't need a whole DVD collection to cancel Netflix, even ignoring piracy. Go to a cheaper streaming service, pick a free/ad supported one, go grab media from the library, etc. Grab a Blu-Ray from the discount bin at the store once in a while, and your collection will grow.

SoftTalker 9mo ago
Music is different, but I never understood buying movies. Once I see a movie, I've seen it. I very rarely watch a movie more than once.
- elbear 9mo ago
  Maybe you would, if you bought it.
  - SoftTalker 9mo ago
    No, I do own some (actually it was more in the VHS days so tapes) and I just found that I never really watched them again. So I stopped buying movies. I'm the same with books. Once I read it, I've read it. I would rarely read a novel twice. I know what's going to happen, so what's the point? Reference books are different of course.
    - bigstrat2003 9mo ago
      You're not really thinking this through enough. The exact same logic you used can be applied to music: once you've listened to the album once, you know how it will go, so what's the point of listening again? Presumably you do get something out of listening to music again (since you said you do listen to it more than once), so whatever that "something" is... you can infer that others get similar value out of rereading books/rewatching movies, even if you personally don't. For myself, the answer is "because the story is still enjoyable even if I know how it will end". And often enough, on a second reading/viewing I will discover nuances to the work I didn't the first time. Some works are so well made that even having enjoyed it 10+ times, I can discover something new about it! So yes, the pleasure of experiencing the story the first time can only be had once. But that is by no means the only pleasure to be had.

SecretDreams 9mo ago

> Subscriptions have a "boiling frog" phenomenon where a marginal price increase isn't noticable to most people. This is so apt and well stated. It echos my sentiment, but I hadn't thought to use the boiling frog metaphor. My own organs are definitely feeling a bit toastier lately.

bee_rider 9mo ago

> The alternative to a subscription is usually capital-intensive - if you want to cancel Netflix you need to have a DVD collection. I did Apple Music and Amazon Music. The experience of losing “my” streaming library twice totally turned me off these kinds of services. Instead I do Pandora, and just buy music when I (rarely) find something I totally love and want to listen to on repeat. The inability to build a library in the streaming service that I incorrectly think of as “mine” is a big feature, keeps my mental model aligned with reality.

vel0city 9mo ago
I do wish these services would have an easier method to import/export playlists and collections. But that would make it easier to leave, so its not going to happen.
- galleywest200 9mo ago
  At least with Apple Music you can cmd-a cmd-c cmd-v playlists into a CSV file or something.
  - rvnx 9mo ago
    Yet you can't search anything unless you have a 100% exact match
- tanjtanjtanj 9mo ago
  I don’t know about Amazon but having migrated to/from both Spotify and Apple Music they are both ludicrously easy to export playlists/libraries from.

paganholiday 9mo ago

Sure but modern cloud subscriptions have a lot of service layers you otherwise won't pay for so effectively you may be buying the hardware yearly that's a lot different than renting a media collection that would be assembled over a lifetime for the price of one new item a month.

KumaBear 9mo ago

This is something I’ve been seeing for a while. As a teen that kept his 300 dollar paycheck in cash that money would last a very long time. Now I make a good 6 figures and was seeing my accounts spending way more than I should. It wasn’t big purchases it was 50 dollars here 200 hundred there. A subscription here and there. By the end of the month I would wrack 8k in spending. Going line by line I learned how much I neglected these transactions being the source of my problem. Could I afford it? Yes. But saving and investing is a better vehicle for retirement early than these minor dopamine hits

nacozarina 9mo ago

the best con of all is convincing ppl they need Hollywood in their lives to be happy

RiverCrochet 9mo ago

You can only boil the frog until it dies. If there isn't a true dependency relationship then at some point the industry will die. In the 2010's, when short on money, I noticed my cable+Internet package was above $200. I took a look at things and cut the TV service, keeping the Internet. Movies and theaters thought they were untouchable until they weren't. Games can keep increasing their subscription fees until people just stop playing them. There was a world before video games, after all.