5 ms·

What's funny is how different using Consumer Reports online experience is. What? There's no free content? I have to pay a monthly fee to read content and it'

What's funny is how different using Consumer Reports online experience is. What? There's no free content? I have to pay a monthly fee to read content and it's not trivial. Best investment I ever made. Especially when buying new appliances. Ha.. It's kind of pathetic that I flinched at spending a few bucks a month for good content. If you're getting information for free your information likely has a cost you're just paying for it in an obfuscated way in the form of higher margins when you shop at a place that advertises heavily. If you ever look at Hulbert's Financial digest, which tracks the total return of investment letters you'll see that the ones that do well are $120/year. Oh yeah, you have to pay for the digest which will tell you which newsletter performs the best and that isn't cheap either. Of course free investment advice is available everywhere online and usually makes a good contra-indicator. If I see a hype filled story show up in the freebie investment news it usually means the stock is about to take a short term down turn.

npsimons 13y ago
If I see a hype filled story show up in the freebie investment news it usually means the stock is about to take a short term down turn. Good time to short it.
corresation 13y ago
Best investment I ever made. Especially when buying new appliances. Ha.. It's kind of pathetic that I flinched at spending a few bucks a month for good content. I have an entirely different perspective of Consumer Reports (the online variant which has external site ads on it). Understand that they are entirely biased (as we all are): They take home the lucre by keeping you thinking that you need them, and that they're doing an important service. Hence why the big noise about things like not recommending the iPhone -- all just noise to keep the subscription dollars coming and to create a sense of utility. They're also prone to taking complex products and then trying to distill it into easily quantified values that they can put in a chart and categorize, leading to a detachment from real-world value and "need to fill this issue". I was a subscriber for several years and eventually came to realize that their top picks were usually not really top picks, and they were often in areas where they were entirely out of their depth (I discovered that particularly after buying a set of their top pick speakers). After that print subscription ended, years later I was looking at getting a new furnace and saw that the online site listed furnace reviews, though they were hidden behind a paywall. Okay, bought a subscription to find that there were no reviews at all, but some useless summary about basic efficiency levels. Well that's useless. Oh well, a year subscription wasted. A year later I discovered that they auto-renewed (never signed up for that, but whatever), and put it on my todo list to jump through hoops to cancel at some point, wasting my time (as they give NO clear way to cancel, despite subscribing being a trivial painless step). The next year they sent me notice that my credit card had expired -- awesome, easy way to finally unsubscribe from an auto-renew that I didn't opt into without sitting on hold for half an hour! Imagine how funny I thought it was when they guessed my next expiry and just used that, continuing the subscription. I have an extremely poor opinion of CU, and I think the belief that they're more pure or their opinion more useful is a bit naive.
- pitchups 13y ago
  >> Imagine how funny I thought it was when they guessed my next expiry and just used that, continuing the subscription. They are not guessing the expiry date - I believe it is a service provided by some credit card companies, possibly to large merchants. It happened to me for several years with my Yahoo Email account - that would renew for $20 / year even though my card expired twice during that time. It stopped after I reported my card as lost/stolen - and got a replacement card, so the actual card number changed. Fastest - albeit a bit drastic - way to get out of a recurring billing if you are having trouble cancelling.
  - tomkarlo 13y ago
    It's relatively easy to update the expiry date, since the month doesn't usually change. You just add two years, try the charge, and if it doesn't go through, wait a day and try it again with the next year. This is pretty standard for services with a recurring subscription model, and they don't really need to pay an outside provider for that info (although it would be trivial for any credit agency to provide.) That said, I'm not sure he can complain that a recurring subscription continued to, well, recur.
    - corresation 13y ago
      That said, I'm not sure he can complain that a recurring subscription continued to, well, recur. Yes, I will complain. Intrinsic in the notion that I'm not bothering to update billing information after numerous updates telling me that it will cancel if I don't is the conclusion that the service, and billings, will cease. Credit cards have expiry dates for a reason, and ultimately it is fraud that they effectively manufactured my info for me.
      - tomkarlo 13y ago
        I'd check the wording of those updates. It's usually that your service may be interrupted if you fail to update your credit card when it expires. And usually, the terms of the site say that you're on the hook for the recurring charge even if your card fails to clear. You're hoping that the natural expiration cycle of your physical card - not the account - will impact a transaction that doesn't actually involve that physical implement. I can see where you're coming from, but I don't know that you really have a right to expect the expiration of your physical card to impact an existing business relationship with a third party that involves recurring charges (that you have likely agreed to pay regardless of your card's validity, or credit limit.) I've worked on these kinds of renewal systems for large sites and generally, users don't mind them because the reverse case - where 4% of the users lose access each month because their physical card expired - sucks for both the site and the end users who don't expect access to be cut off. If you want to use credit card changes as a shortcut for properly cancelling your subscription, you probably need to actually change the card number.
bobsil1 13y ago
This will be solved using big data, and it will be free not subscription. Working on it right now.

npsimons 13y ago

If I see a hype filled story show up in the freebie investment news it usually means the stock is about to take a short term down turn. Good time to short it.

corresation 13y ago

Best investment I ever made. Especially when buying new appliances. Ha.. It's kind of pathetic that I flinched at spending a few bucks a month for good content. I have an entirely different perspective of Consumer Reports (the online variant which has external site ads on it). Understand that they are entirely biased (as we all are): They take home the lucre by keeping you thinking that you need them, and that they're doing an important service. Hence why the big noise about things like not recommending the iPhone -- all just noise to keep the subscription dollars coming and to create a sense of utility. They're also prone to taking complex products and then trying to distill it into easily quantified values that they can put in a chart and categorize, leading to a detachment from real-world value and "need to fill this issue". I was a subscriber for several years and eventually came to realize that their top picks were usually not really top picks, and they were often in areas where they were entirely out of their depth (I discovered that particularly after buying a set of their top pick speakers). After that print subscription ended, years later I was looking at getting a new furnace and saw that the online site listed furnace reviews, though they were hidden behind a paywall. Okay, bought a subscription to find that there were no reviews at all, but some useless summary about basic efficiency levels. Well that's useless. Oh well, a year subscription wasted. A year later I discovered that they auto-renewed (never signed up for that, but whatever), and put it on my todo list to jump through hoops to cancel at some point, wasting my time (as they give NO clear way to cancel, despite subscribing being a trivial painless step). The next year they sent me notice that my credit card had expired -- awesome, easy way to finally unsubscribe from an auto-renew that I didn't opt into without sitting on hold for half an hour! Imagine how funny I thought it was when they guessed my next expiry and just used that, continuing the subscription. I have an extremely poor opinion of CU, and I think the belief that they're more pure or their opinion more useful is a bit naive.

pitchups 13y ago
>> Imagine how funny I thought it was when they guessed my next expiry and just used that, continuing the subscription. They are not guessing the expiry date - I believe it is a service provided by some credit card companies, possibly to large merchants. It happened to me for several years with my Yahoo Email account - that would renew for $20 / year even though my card expired twice during that time. It stopped after I reported my card as lost/stolen - and got a replacement card, so the actual card number changed. Fastest - albeit a bit drastic - way to get out of a recurring billing if you are having trouble cancelling.
- tomkarlo 13y ago
  It's relatively easy to update the expiry date, since the month doesn't usually change. You just add two years, try the charge, and if it doesn't go through, wait a day and try it again with the next year. This is pretty standard for services with a recurring subscription model, and they don't really need to pay an outside provider for that info (although it would be trivial for any credit agency to provide.) That said, I'm not sure he can complain that a recurring subscription continued to, well, recur.
  - corresation 13y ago
    That said, I'm not sure he can complain that a recurring subscription continued to, well, recur. Yes, I will complain. Intrinsic in the notion that I'm not bothering to update billing information after numerous updates telling me that it will cancel if I don't is the conclusion that the service, and billings, will cease. Credit cards have expiry dates for a reason, and ultimately it is fraud that they effectively manufactured my info for me.
    - tomkarlo 13y ago
      I'd check the wording of those updates. It's usually that your service may be interrupted if you fail to update your credit card when it expires. And usually, the terms of the site say that you're on the hook for the recurring charge even if your card fails to clear. You're hoping that the natural expiration cycle of your physical card - not the account - will impact a transaction that doesn't actually involve that physical implement. I can see where you're coming from, but I don't know that you really have a right to expect the expiration of your physical card to impact an existing business relationship with a third party that involves recurring charges (that you have likely agreed to pay regardless of your card's validity, or credit limit.) I've worked on these kinds of renewal systems for large sites and generally, users don't mind them because the reverse case - where 4% of the users lose access each month because their physical card expired - sucks for both the site and the end users who don't expect access to be cut off. If you want to use credit card changes as a shortcut for properly cancelling your subscription, you probably need to actually change the card number.

bobsil1 13y ago

This will be solved using big data, and it will be free not subscription. Working on it right now.