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Comment by mStreamTeam | Hacker News Reader

As someone with ADHD, I can confirm this model is super predatory.

I cancel all my credit cards every year just to get rid of all opt-in charges on regular basis

Billing an entire annual subscription up front, as opposed to monthly, seems especially questionable. What if the therapy doesn't work? What if it's so badly implemented that it can't work? You're still out a hundred bucks just the same, and that's just in the first year.

edit: There is also a monthly subscription option, in the Apple app store at least. It's $22 a month - so over twice as much as the annual. This does not give me to think the product here is less sketchy. And the Psy.D founder, Sachs, is a pretty blatant self-promoter of the sort endemic to the ADD/ADHD "coaching" space, if unusually well qualified by that standard: https://sachscenter.com/adult-child-psychiatrist-psychologis...

Perhaps it's less of a surprise than I initially found it that the account posting this Launch HN has thus far had nothing further to say.

also edit: Sachs is a Psy.D, not an MD. Granted, this does entitle him to "Dr." as a term of address, just as would a doctorate in physics, ancient history, or underwater basket-weaving. But, just as with any of those, it doesn't qualify him as a doctor in the generally understood sense. Again, this gives one reasonably to question, and the questions thus raised are ones for which well-prepared founders may reasonably be expected to provide compelling answers.

I just downloaded the Android app to check, and it's a similar ratio as you describe for the Apple app store: £19.99 per month if paid monthly, but £7.17 per month (as £85.99 per year) if paid annually.

And on my phone at least, the monthly payment option is also hidden behind a scroll down action: https://i.imgur.com/rV0bMTH.jpg, with the yearly subscription already selected by default.

It would seem they're pushing quite strongly this annual payment option.

It's really remarkable.

I'm not too proud to admit that I spent a long time not really taking ADD/ADHD all that seriously. That was before I fell in love with someone who has ADD. Seeing on a daily basis the effect it has on him, and the extent to which, even with effective treatment, it remains a serious obstacle in terms of executive function and followthrough even for things he plainly cares a lot about - to say nothing of subscription fees, which even people without these disorders find easy enough to forget that tools for managing them constitute an entire genre in their own right...

Well, I'm really looking forward to seeing what the founders have to say for themselves here, if anything, and wondering what reasons they could give me not to warn my boyfriend off their product in the strongest of terms.

Hey, as an adhd person that really gets frustrated when people don't take adhd seriously -- thanks for changing your stance.

it generally only gets portrayed in the media based on how other people experience people with adhd -- never the actual experience of the person with adhd.

i hope that changes in the future, so more people can have a similar exposure to it that you've had as a loved one.

Thanks for the feedback - this is due to screen size on Android and we're current working on fixing issues impacting smaller screen sizes at the moment.

> £19.99 per month if paid monthly, but £7.17 per month (as £85.99 per year) if paid annually.

As someone who's worked on pricing models, this speaks either to very little thought to pricing or a monumental churn issue.

A hefty discount for an annual subscription is generally something like 20%, and companies with good retention only offer ~10%.

Discounting over 50% if someone chooses annual either tells me (1) this company is low on funding and desperately needs the immediate cash flow, or (2) this company can't retain customers and is really lacking product-market fit.

Old YC would have absolutely helped the founders straighten this out, but it seems YC is now just a big cash grab and rolodex in the form of Bookface.

Perhaps there is room for the following:

(Please dont kill me for the off-the-cuff idea:)

A per-login / frequency of use model;

You agree to a MAXIMUM of $100/year as WELL AS a max per month that may be charged (== to $100/12 max) -- but the idea is that if you skip a month or some amount of time you are not charged....

The usage is based on certain amount of time-in-app or somesuch....

you get the idea.

---

Anyway, as someone who has debilitating ADHD I really want to use this... but whilst not working, I can't pre-commit $100 to something that I may have too bad a case of ADHD to adopt on a regular.

I think that's a good insight, not least in that a model like that incentivizes real utility in the product. Granted, it could also incentivize dark-pattern stickiness, but there's still the seed of something worth considering here.

Granted IAP isn't that flexible, or not to my knowledge, at least. But Stripe is right there, too.

This is a good idea but we do also have limitations from the App/Play Store - definitely something we'd been keen to explore though. In the meantime, we've refunded everybody who has requested one.

That reminds me of a quip by Rachael in an episode of Friends when her and Ross [Ph.D] are at the hospital - "Now remember Ross, there are real doctors here"

> Sachs is a Psy.D, not an MD. Granted, this does entitle him to "Dr." as a term of address, just as would a doctorate in physics, ancient history, or underwater basket-weaving. But, just as with any of those, it doesn't qualify him as a doctor in the generally understood sense.

Indeed, I've had better help from a LCSW than a Psy.D, and I never called the social worker "Dr."

A LCSW is not a doctor in the US but a psychologist is.

Also, as someone without ADHD, I can also say this model is predatory. Nobody should have to remember to put in a request to not be charged after a trial.

You're not wrong - but it's maybe not great to distract from the predatory nature of targeting people that are at high risk of being exploited from this model.

It's bad all around, but it's extra bad for people with adhd -- and considering it's an adhd app, it really puts it on a different level of predatory that's worth focusing on.

Canceling a credit card does not cancel your obligation to pay a vendor unless you also terminate your plan with them. Some of them will try to collect, especially if you had a contract.

Sometimes I go through my bill and find opt-in services so I can call in charge backs against them before I cancel.

They can pry that money out of my cold dead hands. And I've yet to have anything sent to collections

I tried this to get out of my gym membership and they sent the bill to collections. Luckily I called them and they didn't make me pay it. They did ban me from the gym however

If you aren't doing so already, you should look into if your card has virtual cards. Capital One for example does. I think it would make your current process easier.

I use Privacy[1] for this and would highly recommend the service to anybody using a bank that doesn't have an easy and convenient way to issue disposable card numbers (most US banks).

1. https://privacy.com/

It looks like Capital One does this via a Chrome extension, which you have to install (and which can presumably look over your shoulder to see all of the shopping websites you visit). I might consider installing this, deactivating it by default, and then only enabling it when I want to make a purchase. But I was hoping there would be a simple number generator in the mobile app. I guess that would be too easy!

There are nowadays plenty of e-banking solutions which provide you with virtual cards, which you can create and destroy on the fly and at 0 cost. It is really wonderful for this kind of scenario. Vivid is the one I've been using, I couldnt be happier with it. Theres also N26 allowing this, and Im not sure but, Skrill, Transferwise, Revolut,...

Try Privacy.com that should help you manage your subscriptions a lot better.

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