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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health. Even in this very thread you can see all kinds of excuses ("it's too hard to log in and check credit card statements every month", "they make you call or chat to cancel so I don't bother", "they should cancel subscriptions automatically if you don't use them", "it's the government's fault").

This discussion is about subscriptions but the general idea applies to so much more – basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary.

Ultimately it is your money and your problem. No one is looking out for you. You can either endlessly complain about it or build some good habits. 30 minutes of effort once a month to go over bills and budgets is hardly the end of the world.

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Some of these are valid issues though. I'd consider myself in top 1% when it comes to financial health and I still pay for stuff I forgot to cancel. Some of the reasons:

> They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm, and hold for hours to cancel, sometimes even disconnect forcing you to start over, while not offering a callback option. Sometimes there are weeks I absolutely cannot afford to do this because of work.

> You buy something, and they tag a "3-4 months free" of another service, which you can't opt out of even if you want to, and then suddenly charge you that extra money on the 5th month. You obviously cancel it, but you still overpaid for a month.

> Services that charge you once a year. You forgot to cancel the Xbox subscription because you bought a PS5, got charged a year later. Now you cancel it, but you paid for the year.

> Services that make you use or forgo credits that you already paid for if you cancel. (Audible) You want to cancel, but you put it off for another month because now, you need to figure out 5 ebooks to buy. Next month, you end up in the same situation and now you need to figure out 6 ebooks to buy.

The point being, you could check all your statements weekly, and still end up spending money on something you forgot about.

> They make you call between 9 am and 5 pm

This is customer service. A written notice of termination works for any consumer contract.

> but you paid for the year

Unpay for it. This is the utility of credit cards.

> Unpay for it. This is the utility of credit cards.

That's a facile answer. You're extremely well educated on this matter and know full well the downsides of "unpaying".

EDIT: see sibling comment from "notaustinpowers" for an explanation of the downsides (thanks!). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39060260

What are the downsides of disputing a charge?

If you unpay for, say, YouTube, I'm pretty sure Google will straight up delete you.

"Most places have segments in their contract that state if you do a chargeback or block a payment, they will terminate your account, and payment providers can block that card from being used on their service in the future." Also, depending on the agreement, you can be sent to collections (gym memberships are notorious for this).

The chargeback doesn't supersede the vendor's control of access to the service or potential legal/debt obligations.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39060260

> Most places have segments in their contract that state if you do a chargeback or block a payment, they will terminate your account,

When terminating my account is exactly what I want, that's totally fine.

This does highlight yet another problem with consolidating to huge companies. You'll never be able to charge back to a behemot like amazon or google, they'll just erase you off large parts of the internet which would be problematic.

But with smaller vendors that you are trying to get rid of and never want anything to do with them again, it works wonderfully.

Use a temporary credit card number that's only authorized for one payment. When it doesn't work the second year, they'll let you know you need to pay.

Sign up and immediately cancel/turn off billing, so you aren't charged again next year (again, they'll send you a bunch of notices ahead of the end of your service).

Put a calendar reminder in for 11.5 months out from when you sign up.

In Slack, /remind me in 11.5 months to cancel X service.

My tech-hating mom is currently spending hours, maybe even days setting up billpay through her bank so she doesn't have to give companies her credit card info for subscriptions. She's been burned too many times trying and failing to cancel subscriptions.

But reading suggestions like yours, apparently it's all on people like my poor mom to outwit corporations with multi-million-dollar budgets dedicated to screwing her over. (And yes I'm helping, but precious few tech-noob elders have an engineer in the family.)

> My tech-hating mom is currently spending hours, maybe even days setting up billpay through her bank so she doesn't have to give companies her credit card info for subscriptions. She's been burned too many times trying and failing to cancel subscriptions.

Why? That's much worse. If anything is going to do a recurring charge to me, I want it to go through a credit card which offers a layer of indirection.

I never authorize automatic billing directly to a bank account, then the money is truly gone. With a credit card I can always protest the charge and have had to do this with particularly difficult businesses a few times.

> Why? That's much worse.

Congratulations, HNer — you're more tech savvy than my mom.

Perhaps you're volunteering to help vulnerable seniors like her navigate the Hobbesian nightmare of subscriptions?

I applaud your initiative, but if you're new to this, let me caution you: they don't always understand or follow the advice you give them precisely. Even if they are trying their best.

Funny, I guess it can be difficult. I do manage all the accounts and finances for a >>90yr old family member, but it is easier because I manage all of it.

Kudos for taking that on!

would a service like privacy[dot]com which generates custom one-off credit card numbers with custom spend limits be useful? (Not affiliated, I just use them from time-to-time exactly for that purpose)

Privacy.com is awful. You forgo the credit card protections, they need full access to a checking account, you can't do chargebacks, you lose any cashback methods.

Use a virtual card from your credit card Many banks offer these now a these days (Capital one does, with all cards, in app or in browser, no need for extension).

Critical HN energy

So easy a toddler (with three PhDs) could do it!

Do you actually think setting a calendar reminder is hard?

> Use a temporary credit card number that's only authorized for one payment

These get sold to a collections company. Invalid payment doesn’t invalidate the contract.

> This is a customer service. A written notice of termination works for any consumer contract.

Not entirely. Most places don't accept cancellations over email, or require certified mail for cancellations, which just means now you have to go to the post office between 9-5.

> Unpay for it. This is the utility of credit cards.

Most places have segments in their contract that state if you do a chargeback or block a payment, they will terminate your account, and payment providers can block that card from being used on their service in the future.

Not only can they terminate your account and potentially block that card in the future across other services using the same payment provider, more expensive subscriptions like a gym WILL continue accruing a bill for you and will send it to collections which hurts your credit score.

You can dispute that with the credit services though. Which probably won't get you anywhere but it is worth doing.

Make sure you give them negative feedback with the BBB if canceling is too hard.

Though the business model of most gyms (except the expensive ones) is to get you to enroll and then not come, so they won't care.

If it won't get you anywhere... then how is it worth doing? What a waste of time.

> Most places don't accept cancellations over email, or require certified mail for cancellations

E-mail yes. But I've never seen a letter mailed fail. Especially if you Cc your state's consumer protection regulator.

> if you do a chargeback or block a payment, they will terminate your account

Wait, what are we trying to do?

Credit cards don't let you "unpay" a charge. You can dispute it as either an error or as fraud, but if your credit company issues a chargeback most services state in their ToS that they reserve the right to deactivate accounts for doing so.

> This is customer service. A written notice of termination works for any consumer contract.

Next time you're in a well trafficked area, ask 20 people if they know they can do this.

Also who would you even send it to? How do you guarantee they receive it? If you do certified mail that is a cost and another thing to take up your time.

True, although I'd rather pay the few dollars for that and the 10 minutes in the post office, than spend endless hours on hold just to be hung up on and start again.

That’s assuming the letter even works in having the subscription cancelled. Regardless of whether or not it should work, I am certainly not confident such a thing would be handled properly. If it isn’t then you are back to customer service or i guess hiring a lawyer.

10 minutes during weekday business hours plus 30 for commute and 20 minutes of standing in line if you go at noon. Also, the discoverability of this workflow is complete dogshit.

None of this is a problem for me, but I fully understand why dishonest businessfolk love to exploit the hell out of these "tiny conditions" and then turn around and pretend they don't understand why they are a big deal.

> Also, the discoverability of this workflow is complete dogshit.

Yes, the correct solution is certainly to pass laws that force companies to enable easy and quick unsubscribe process.

Just commenting on that between the two bad choices of hours and hours on hold, or 10 minutes in the post office, I'll take the latter.

There ought to be some legislation to modify the credit card system such that all your recurring subscriptions are managed through your payment provider (say credit card web portal) so you can see a list and cancel them with one click.

I have one credit card I only use for recurring charges. That helps me easily see how much I spend each month and notice when yearly charges happen, etc. Some services will even rebate if you cancel soon after the yearly charge happens.

Most of them will, particularly the sketchier ones like online dating sites.

It is worth it to them to let you cancel a subscription rather than have to deal with chargebacks, lawsuits, bad publicity, etc.

Two of those can be fixed with a simple calendar entry. We do that with subscriptions but also with things like AirBNB bookings where you can cancel up to x weeks in advance.

That's cool that you've found a system that works to avoid the abuse, but it's still abusive.

Which part is abusive? I might view that last item as a sort of dark pattern (exploiting the sunk cost fallacy), but I still fail to see how it's abusive. If you're not using the service, cancel your subscription? Is everything you don't like even slightly now qualified as ABUSE?

The hostile “you must call into an understaffed call center and hold for several hours” is definitely abusive. I believe NYT was particularly bad about this in the past.

You acknowledge it's a dark pattern, but then excuse it. Dark patterns are 100% abuse.

my solution to this is to not have any subscriptions except for property taxes, garbage, utilities, insurance and phone plan. and I absolutely avoid 30 day free trials (if they ask for credit card info) like the plague. the moment I see a credit card number entry field, I close the browser tab immediately.

but, I'd like to know, which companies have onerous cancellation policies?

> which companies have onerous cancellation policies?

gyms

Bloomberg - Had a subscription and saw the renewal coming up. Decided to cancel, but you can't do it yourself - you have to go through their service desk and of course they try five ways from Sunday to get you to reup with a cheaper plan (that then jumps to the full price after 1 to 3 months).

Spectrum (previously Time Warner Cable) - To cancel you need your account number (both the TW and the Spectrum ones for folks who were converted) and your PIN for each - which you likely setup only once and may well not have realized you needed since it's only for starting service and cancelling. Don't have them? You can't cancel. Let me emphasize that again, if you don't give them the right number they will continue to charge you until your credit card expires, and then send you to collections. I am fastidious about account info and had mine, but some of my neighbors were less so.

Were you looking for a full list (I have more) or just wanted a couple of examples?

Most of them could be solved by our CC system putting people in control. Wanna cancel NYT, stop payment and let them come to you if they want to bother. The fact that people can just take money from our accounts on a whim and we have to beg them to get it back or stop is a ridiculous system. I would much rather deal with invoices.

The only system where they just charge you I like is the usage model. I get a bill from AWS, OpenAI, and Backblaze every month for a few dollars but if I stop using them the bill drops to $0.

This is how UPI-based subscriptions work in India. You open your UPI app, go to the autopay section, and see all your subscriptions, whether it is one-time mandates or as-presented recurring ones. You can just cancel there and it's done.

My solution is to try to subscribe through Apple as much as possible, even if it's more expensive. Unified interface, always can cancel online and I think they are required to let you use it until the end of the billing cycle if you have been charged. Not always possible, but when it is, it's often worth it.

I interviewed a bunch of "financial hardship" people a few years back for an app my company was working on. The lack of financial knowledge was pretty disappointing to me, but the big thing I remember is that all the people I talked to were good people. They all had decent, yet low-paying jobs (nurses, care-givers, teaching assistants, cashiers, etc.) I was expecting a bunch of jerks or bungling idiots, and there was some of that: many people don't know how interest works on a credit card until it's too late, or other people are completely apathetic to their finances. But, honestly, the thing that stuck with me the most is that most of them were very trusting people, and ultimately that's what got them to where they are (broke). They trusted blindly: "[credit card company] wouldn't double my interest rate just because I missed one payment.", "The guy who sold me the car seemed nice. Why would he give me a 29% interest rate on my car loan?", and "The credit card companies can't do that; there's got to be laws that prohibit that." Lots of statements like that really stuck with me. I felt bad. It's like I wanted to give a TED Talk that would've lasted about 30 seconds: "The banks and credit card companies are not your friend, don't trust them. Once you fall into debt with them, you're never gonna get out. The law offers very little protection for you, if any at all."

And, thankfully, the app was never released. It was basically just an app for pay-day loans.

Yea, most people assume the best in others I think. They assume others will not break the law for personal gain. In real life, those folks get taken advantage of. I know because I used to be one but now I don’t trust anyone. The moral degradation of society isn’t in the extra drugs and sex we have, it’s in the way we accept merely to follow the letter of the law, and find as many loopholes as possible otherwise. You see that in VC funded startups constantly, in politics, and everywhere else.

It's sad but Usury/Interest is often exploiting two bifurcated groups of people -- those who are trusting and those who are desperate.

Worked at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for awhile. We encountered a lot of these cases and there are a ton of dark patterns as well as just straight-up not honoring the 300 page contracts that they had written. For the most part you come to understand that people are actually trying really hard to get it right most of the time.

The lack of knowledge is quite startling (but understandable, given how complex some of these things often are and how much time it takes to figure them out that people just don't have) and the pace at which it is exploited is very disappointing but inevitable.

Intentional Obfuscation is difficult to convey to people who, for example, make enough money to hire someone to do their taxes for them.

> They all had decent, yet low-paying jobs (nurses, care-givers, teaching assistants, cashiers, etc.) I was expecting a bunch of jerks or bungling idiots, and there was some of that > And, thankfully, the app was never released. It was basically just an app for pay-day loans.

Maybe next time don't work for them? It's not too late to give money to charity though.

The rapacious corporations agree with you — no matter how deceptive or even illegal their practices are, no matter how much R&D money is brought to bear in designing innovative user interfaces and bureaucratic frameworks which systematically exploit human weaknesses (particularly those of vulnerable populations such as less-tech-savvy elders) to bleed the populace dry... it's all the fault of the individual victims who are "allowing" themselves to be ripped off, one-by-one.

I think you are misrepresenting OPs point. We all know many people who are extremely sloppy with their personal finances, and sign up for things they can't afford, debt they are unlikely to pay back, etc.

Am I sad for companies who take in these people as customers? No, but let's not canonize people who are reckless with their spending, even when warned.

Let's not pretend that the only people getting ripped off are those who are 100% irresponsible and entirely devoid of any redeeming financial virtue.

Of course in any population there will be a long tail of people who are bad at finances, for example leasing cars they can’t afford or using buy now pay later plans for clothes they don’t need.

That's not what this is about though. In those situations, the person is consciously choosing a bad option. However this is materially different, because with auto-pay people are being charged without their knowledge. The first situation involves making a bad choice, but this is being unaware of a bad thing, which companies are exploiting.

> We all know many people who are extremely sloppy with their personal finances, and sign up for things they can't afford, debt they are unlikely to pay back, etc.

You know I have heard this my entire life, and I have yet to actually meet any of these people. The people I have met though fall into one or more of a number of categories:

- People uneducated in finance, usually lower class: You can say things like "well of course credit cards charge interest" but I was never taught that in school. I learned it from my mother, who is an accountant. She also taught me how to do things like a proper budget, balance a checkbook, diligent record-keeping on expenditures, and how to file my taxes. I was never offered this knowledge in schooling. The gap between how many, I believe well intention-ed and well educated people have between what is "common sense" financial knowledge and what is known by common people, can be the grand fucking canyon.

- Despite the above, I have also never in my life met a person who believed a credit card was free money. Everyone knew they had to pay it back, even if they didn't understand interest and why interest was about to ruin their credit score.

- Additionally, I have never met a person who signed up for things they couldn't afford for the hell of it. I met a few people who were sold mortgages they couldn't afford, by representatives of financial institutions. I've also met people who borrowed money from Payday loan stores because their cars were broken and they could not earn money until that was solved, and they lacked the money to accomplish that.

- I've also met people who, before they were legally allowed to DRINK, were allowed to sign on the dotted line for six figures of educational funding, with no demonstration of understanding how the critical above concepts worked, so they could know what they would eventually pay, nor any demonstration of how they would earn enough of a living afterwards to pay it off, which is just odd to me? Like, a bank won't loan you $500k to buy a house that's only worth $100k, so why will they loan you $150k to get a degree in underwater basket weaving?

- Lastly, I've also met people who struggle with things like depression, addiction, attention issues, all manner of ailments that either stem from or are made worse by a lack of dopamine in their brains, which makes them impulsive and possibly reckless depending on the day, and I have seen them interacting with products that are clearly, blatantly, preying on their inability to say no effectively so that they will say yes. And once they say yes enough times, their credit cards are maxed out, and they're in the poorhouse for no other reason than being vulnerable to manipulation.

And like, all of that aside, even if you meet NONE of those categories, I still, frankly, believe it's not only possible but the only ethical response to all of this is: we should have a society that leaves enough room for people to fuck up occasionally without ruining their goddamn lives. I don't know exactly how we go about that, in finance especially this is a tricky thing, but at the same time, I simply don't believe that a lifetime of wage-slave-serfdom, or perhaps worse, freezing to death on the street, is an acceptable punishment for you making a bad financial decision at some point in your life. That does not make sense to me.

> And like, all of that aside, even if you meet NONE of those categories, I still, frankly, believe it's not only possible but the only ethical response to all of this is: we should have a society that leaves enough room for people to fuck up occasionally without ruining their goddamn lives.

At this point, I don't understand what the fuck you people are talking about. This is an article about people paying for subscriptions they don't use, not people ruining their goddamn lives. The hyperbole is extensive, is this article posted to some Socialist Discord so everyone can raid the comments? Why is this level of bad faith discussion occurring?

The topic of the original post is an article about that. The GP comment we're all replying to took that as a direction to discuss how many people do not take care of their finances, and how you, as an individual, are on your own. Several comments in reply to that person went on to discuss how "take care of your financial health" is only really an applicable statement when the person in question is at least somewhat educated in finance: that tons of people reach adulthood without that knowledge or those skills. And, that situation is complicated still more by the fact that many businesses, quite intentionally, are preying on both that lack of knowledge in general, and on people at large using dark patterns to obfuscate or make canceling subscriptions difficult. Then, off of that, someone else commented saying that they felt a reply was misrepresenting what was said by another, stating that "we all know people who are sloppy with their finances", which is, IMO, a clear and standard example of the appeal to common belief fallacy. To which I challenged, citing numerous experiences to the contrary I have had, and my utter lack of experiences to this common knowledge I have been told is common knowledge: that people, by and large are poor because they fail at money management, and not, which is my contention, that the majority of that time they are not poor because of bad money management, but they are poor because they are poor and are being taken advantage of. This is not hyperbole, this is just an evolving discussion. If you don't like the direction it's taking, you're free to not participate.

My rule of thumb looking at any problem has evolved to: it it's one person, blame them. If it's happening to swaths of the population, scrutinize the system they operate in. Mistakes can only be treated entirely as such if most other people don't fall for them. Otherwise it's a systemic issue.

These comments are so blatantly absurd considering in all the cases we're talking about, the user signed up for the service initially. Even if it's a trial, the user is forced to make it abundantly recognized that they will be charged money when the trial is over because they are forced to input credit card information or authorize use of Apple Pay or some other similar service to enter the trial.

I can understand suggesting that services like this, especially when using tech like Apple Pay, have made it too easy to 'check out' through a trial process, but the language is still over-the-top since the user is still clearly considering the product as potentially useful to go through the effort of signing up for a trial or an actual sub. (And on the flipside, Apple Pay, e.g., makes it easy to see all subs in one place and cancel them in one place, so it has that going for it.)

And of course, what illegal practices are you talking about? I'm going to guess most people here aren't blaming the victim if a practice is actually illegal. But I see you're being hyperbolic so maybe I shouldn't bother.

The big change between the subscriptions of yore, e.g. magazine subscriptions in the days before the internet, and the subscriptions of today, is that payments used to be push and now they are pull. The magazine used to have to beg and plead with you to send them a check, but now vendors can set up an automatic debit continuing into perpetuity.

The regulatory environment has not caught up (although the article explains how it's starting to). It turns out that recurring pull payments tend not to be cancelled, resulting in a system where massive overpayments for actual services consumed are the norm. This is not economic efficiency leading to useful consumer innovation, it's rewarding the players who lodge the darkest dark patterns. Occasionally that includes, as described elsethread, the illegal practice of "just straight-up not honoring the 300 page contracts that they had written" — although unethical practices such as making it deceptively difficult to cancel are presumably more common than outright lawbreaking.

Note that you are currently making excuses for blatant dark patterns for some reason. I dunno why we're doing that. People should definitely push harder to not waste money, but entities should not abuse their position to try to push them into passively allowing it. There's so many things you need to take care of in life that I don't imagine most people ever really get to give as much attention to all of the facets of their lives as they need to, and finances are only one of them. The fact that someone is effectively stealing your money and forcing you to trade it for time and effort you could spend doing anything else is criminal. (I mean, literally, it should actually be criminal. If I don't want to be subscribed, fucking unsubscribe me. That means you Planet Fitness after I moved to California.)

That's a lovely and idealistic view of humans.

Unfortunately bad actors have realized that what we actually are is just meat computers with unpatchable security vulnerabilities, so demanding that people just stop having problems and fit your nebulous definition of competence with unlimited and unwavering performance, has predictably not panned out.

What is the more moral solution then? Recognizing and placing systematic limits on exploitation behaviors, or is it continuing to demand super-vigilance from the victims?

Just wanted to say that I found this phrasing to be fantastic.

Agreed, this was a really well-put response.

Just came across a very terse version of this sentiment, which you might like:

“You can try having self-control, but there are a thousand engineers on the other side of the screen working against you.” ― Tristan Harris

(Found on https://www.staygrounded.online/p/how-i-got-my-phone-screen-..., itself linked from a discussion of use of grayscale mode, which I also recommend for people like me that easily get sucked into a whirlpool of novel information seeking. History has relentlessly proven to me that the less "self control" I need to have, the more self control I actually have.)

You can have:

1) An “ethical” system in which a bunch of people are losing money and are surprised by this, unaware of it, or intend to stop it, haven’t yet, but absolutely would if it were as easy as thinking “stop that”. But they said yes somewhere along the line, so it’s all “ethical”.

2) A just-as-ethical system that… simply doesn’t do that bad stuff in 1, or at least does way less of it.

It’s weird to me that people defend situations akin to 1 when 2 is totally achievable, on the grounds that “well 1 isn’t technically unethical (as I define it)”. Ok? So what? 2 is better and isn’t less ethical. What is going through someone’s head when they defend 1 and dismiss or put down the notion of 2? If you could flip a switch to toggle between the two, would you really leave it on 1? I do not get it. Why not pick the version with better outcomes?

[edit] and, separately, I think it’s plainly unethical—to put it mildly—to add terms to a contract or steps to a process that you know with great certainty your counterparty will later regret or dislike, relying on their overlooking it or not having better options, purely for your own benefit at their expense. I don’t think their saying “yes” makes that ethically an ok thing to do—it’s straight-up predatory. But even if it does make it Ok, why prefer that over… not-that?

I agree. It's absolutely crazy. I think about this every time I see someone pull out their massively stacked wallet full of cards. I couldn't live like that.

However, it's not entirely the people's fault. Credit card providers make it really easy to sign up for their cards but make it really difficult to do things like "add an alert that texts me whenever a purchase above $0.01 is made" or "alert me when my 0% APR promotional period is ending" or "tell me when i'm about to pay a late fee".

All of them will make you go through a labyrinthian exercise to turn these alerts on, if they make them available (LOOKING AT YOU, CITIBANK) and many will not alert you on anything less than $50, which is crazy given how many transactions are smaller than that!

Also, in a world where everything is getting more expenses and incomes aren't keeping up, using a tool that reminds you how broke you are on a daily basis isn't fun. So I can understand why folks shy away from it. I certainly did when I was living at the edge for a few years after I graduated. (That said, having this data is essential for creating a plan to change that outcome, but thinking long-term is not fun.)

Regardless, things are getting better. Most utilities and other services accept eChecks now with Bill Pay, which allows people to pay for their recurring expenses from one place. Many restaurants and shops use Toast, Stripe, Clover or newer NCR POS's which make it easy to email your receipts. (A pet peeve of mine is restaurants that use Stripe or something like that but don't accept Apple Pay or hand you a bill instead of a mobile POS. Like, come on; you're already paying for these features!)

> All of them will make you go through a labyrinthian exercise to turn these alerts on, if they make them available (LOOKING AT YOU, CITIBANK)

How long ago is your experience with this from? I ask because I just got my first card from Citi within the last three weeks and was able to turn these on really easily before my card arrived. I actually have a notification for $16 sitting on my lock screen from them as I type this.

A few months ago? I'm glad it's easier!

> It's absolutely crazy. I think about this every time I see someone pull out their massively stacked wallet full of cards. I couldn't live like that.

If you want to maximize your credit score (and you should since it'll give you better rates, saving you money) you want to have lots of credit cards with high limits.

One of the factors that goes into your credit score your available credit. You want your available credit to be very high but your utilization to be very low (but not zero).

I keep lots of credit cards, at least one or two from every major bank and some from smaller ones. Thus my available credit is very high and so is my credit score.

> . I think about this every time I see someone pull out their massively stacked wallet full of cards. I couldn't live like that.

Some folks in this situation are likely just optimizing for rewards / points / sign-up bonuses. I've had more than 10 cards at a time and definitely have my financial "house" in order. I get many free several-thousand-dollar trips per year to boot.

It may be simply a case of the people who most need this stuff are the most likely to lack either or both mental energy or the requisite knowledge.

And frankly, I don't see why the government shouldn't mandate making it easy to unsubscribe.

I don't disagree with you, but lots of people do not take charge of their financial health simply because they do not know any better, or are too trusting to entities that will loan them money. And they are that way likely because their parents were that way too.

A common thing I hear when talking about things like the student loan crisis and the housing market crash of the late 2000s is "well no one forced them to take out those loans" or "I took out a loan and I paid it off, why can't they?" But when it's as prevalent an issue that more than half of undergrad students in the U.S. are in debt, and the fact that poor people taking out subprime mortgages just so they can have somewhere to live can cause a global financial disaster, it starts making me think -- yeah maybe it is the "government's fault". Maybe us smart people on the top have to understand not everyone is as smart as us, and we have to build a system that works for all the truly clueless folk.

You suggest that spending 30 minutes a month can improve someones financial situation.

In those 30 minutes they could cancel unused subscriptions and maybe save $50 a month. $50 a month isn't bad, but it's not going to be the difference between retiring comfortably and not retiring.

Or they could spend those 30 minutes updating their resume and applying to a job; if they apply for a better job every month they could easily find a better paying job that gives them an additional $20,000 a year, especially if they do this consistently.

Overall, I agree people would benefit from more effort put into their personal finances, but people have limited mental energy and their time can be better spent on things other than cancelling subscriptions. Indeed, if someone is willing to put effort into improving their financial situation and the best option society offers them is for them to pinch pennies and cancel their subscriptions, that is a sad situation for them and reflects poorly on society.

Luckily we have many waking hours in a month to do both.

If you do both, then you are spending at least some of your time sub-optimally.

Education, applying to jobs, entrepreneurial ventures, etc, all of these have higher expected value than cancelling subscriptions.

Not cancelling subscriptions has a high correlation with irresponsible spending habits. The same person will likely amass a large amount of stuff that stays unused. Instead of repairing, they will buy new. When they buy new, they don’t consider the longevity and durability of the item.

people aren't thought experiments in ancap-economics textbooks.

irrational behaviour is core to not only people but pretty much every lifeform on the planet.

I guarantee you there are very few on the planet whose time management is so strict that spending 30 minutes a month to review their finances would cut into any of those activities.

some people work nearly every waking hour (I have more the a few hundred weeks in my life for sure) other huge logistical challenge that comes out of this is the hours for the call center need to overlap when you’re not working so you can call someone to cancel.

I cancelled my amazon prime while taking a shit. Do these workaholics not shit? Where do they find the time to subscribe to services in the first place?

$50 a month won't get your retied, but it will free up some cash to use for better purposes.

> No one is looking out for you

This is literally what law enforcement and consumer protection is for. Otherwise we could make the same argument about pickpocketing victims, which is frankly what this is more akin to.

So willingly going to netflix.com, picking a plan, entering your credit card info, hitting subscribe and watching TV for the next month is the same as getting pickpocketed?

It is when systems are intentionally designed to be extremely low friction to initiate and extremely high friction to cancel. In a lot of cases that’s exactly what happens.

To be fair, there should probably be a national consumer protection law that ties complexity of cancellation to complexity of sign up.

Some states in the US have laws on the books so that if you can sign up to a service online, you need to be able to cancel online—at least.

I signed up for a service years ago - scent bird - and it was nearly impossible to cancel.

They kept changing the app and I could never find the way to cancel (turns out it doesn’t exist). I would just eat the most monthly because I never wanted to spend the time to figure it out. One day I sat down to check their website. No way to cancel.

So I went to the support page. It has a deep-link to the cancellation page. The link is broken. Reddit and others couldn’t find a valid link. Everyone said to DM them on social media.

So I tried to contact support, but they don’t publish a valid email or phone number staffed conveniently in my time zone.

So I blindly emailed “support@“ and asked to cancel. The response was another broken deep link. I replied no I wanted support staff to do it. They refused. So I told them I was a California resident and we have a law on the books requiring that online signups can be cancelled online and support staff is legally required to honor a cancellation request. No reply.

I got an email a few days later cancelling my account for violating their arbitration clause in their TOS.

This is basically pickpocketing.

Strongly disagree. You gave them the means and permission to bill you on a regular basis. These area valid and legal transactions. There are no protections from poor judgement (if you deem a subscription to be a poor choice).

Requiring someone to call to cancel your service is almost always a shady business practice to make it difficult enough that it's not worth their time. If it takes you less than 5 minutes to sign up, it should take you less than 5 minutes to cancel. If you can sign up without talking to someone, you should be able to cancel without talking to someone.

That type of practice could use some sort of regulation.

There could be a rule where should be able to cancel with the same mechanism that signed up. If signed up and use the service with app or site, then should be able to cancel with them.

> (especially the ones who can least afford it)

> [...] basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary.

These look like things that are generally unavailable to those who can least afford not doing those things.

It's expensive to be poor.

There is more than one way to feel about this situation! I watch my finances, but the hours I spend on it feel wasted, and I am resentful of the people whose parasitic attitudes towards my bank account make this necessary.

It's as if, when I go to relax or exercise, my only option is hiking in a tick-infested field. I spend an extra 15 minutes prepping my clothes before going out, and an extra 15 minutes checking every inch of my body after I come back in.

It's true that all this extra work is my responsibility. It's also true that ticks suck (literally) and it would be preferable if there were a way to prevent them from parasitizing me in the first place.

> Ultimately it is your money and your problem. No one is looking out for you.

This is true, but it doesn't mean that collective solutions cannot exist or should not be desired.

> It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health.

They may be too exhausted from their second job - or from the one job they have to be on their feet the whole work day - and may not have the mental energy to comb through financial statements. You have the luxury of time and energy, so real reasons sound like excuses to you. I would recommend you (re)read John Scalzi's essay on Being Poor[1]. Except:

>> Being poor is knowing how hard it is to stop being poor.

The link between stress and poor decision-making is well studied, and unfortunately poor financial health is self-reinforcing: being poor is very expensive!

1. https://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

I'm with you on every point except

>negotiating rents

I have never, ever been in a situation where a rent negotiation would have done anything except ensure I didn't get the apartment.

Is that real? Where?

With a small landlord it is sometimes possible. Even with the large ones if you let them know you are looking at moving you can sometimes get a discount for the year. Note that you need to be serious about moving to pull this off: you need to actively look at other places to live, and be ready/willing to follow through and move if they don't give you what you want. Apartments are competitive markets for new renters, but once someone is there the hassle of moving means people are often willing to pay more.

Anecdotally...

I've lived throughout the US - Seattle, Atlanta, East Bay, Portland - and each time I've leased a place I've pushed back and asked for cheaper rent. Sometimes it's worked, sometimes it hasn't, but that's never ended a conversation or resulted in them walking away.

The home I'm renting now, I asked my landlord to reduce their proposed rent increase by 75% if we committed to a two-year lease, and they were fine with that. Never been an issue for me, and if a potential landlord bristles at something like that, then it's a sign that things may not be so great after I've signed the lease.

Low conscientiousness is linked to anti-social behavior, blue-collared crimes, and crimes of passion,[3] as well as unemployment and homelessness.[19] Low conscientiousness and low agreeableness taken together are also associated with substance use disorders.[27] People low in conscientiousness have difficulty saving money and their risky borrowing practices make them fall prey to subprime and predatory lending more often than conscientious people. High conscientiousness is associated with more careful planning of shopping trips and less impulse buying of unneeded items.[19] Conscientiousness is positively correlated with business, white-collared, and premeditated criminal behavior.[28]

It's bizarre to me that some people think that American's are somehow more stupid or gullible than other nations. Lots and lots of capital was spent to make sure that Americans are conditioned to spend as much and as frictionless as possible. And now they do and regulation cannot catch up.

> retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary.

Where else do people need to actively manage their pension accounts like in the US? If your employer does not provide a decent 401k they trying to create a solid retirement investment account is an uphill challenge. In most other places it's simply a tax into a pension fund.

> not paying random fees There is very little price transparency. Random fees are typically not random, but hidden. You can't book a rental car online without being hit with some municipal tax or other surcharge at the counter. In SF a health surcharge often added to the bill on top tax. It makes no fucking sense that it is not a part of the price or part of the sales tax. Cellular carriers and ISPs know exactly how much you gonna be paying but will bend backwards to make sure you don't know it until very end.

You are right that basic financial discipline is a personal responsibility, but removing the asymmetry in the relationship between large businesses and consumers is on the government and legal system.

> This discussion is about subscriptions but the general idea applies to so much more – basic budgeting, retirement savings, not paying random fees, not paying interest, moving spare money to investment accounts every month, rebalancing your investments every quarter, negotiating rents, negotiating your salary.

I think it's one of the major failures of the education system. Why is there no class in school which covers taxes, savings, budgeting, etc? People are seemingly just expected to know this on their own.

Most subjects taught in K-12 tend to be ancient: language, math, history, science, music, etc. with occasional modern electives.

Obviously personal finance is also ancient on some level, but I wonder how long it's actually been so complicated and critical as to warrant consideration for being taught in school. I'm no expert, but I think the complexities like payment cards, insanely complex tax code, etc. are quite modern. On the other hand, the same could be said for driver's ed which is pretty common.

When I was in grade school (a very long time ago), personal finance was a huge focus. It was the main thing you learned in Home Economics class. When my kids were in grade school, it was basically not taught at all. Home Ec was more about sewing and cooking than about, you know, economics.

I don't know when that change happened, but it's to the detriment of everyone.

Would the kinds of people who have trouble budgeting and managing their investments be any better at it if the technique was taught at school? Judging from my own experience, I'd say willpower is the bigger barrier. Thankfully I'm not in a situation where I'd need to carefully watch my daily expenses (being semi-concious of them works well for me), but if I had to, I'd have to force myself. Maybe that's too much for some.

> managing their investments

Bold of you to assume that these people have investments at all.

IF you don't know the basics of math you won't figure out personal finance. If you do know math you can figure it out - that isn't saying you will, but you can.

Probably because people don't pay attention. I had someone at university that asked the same question, why didn't we have these classes be required. Our school required it and they were in the same class as me. They just didn't bother to pay attention to even know they had taken it.

> It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health.

It’s designed to be complicated, confusing or easy to forget just so it traps people at least once. It’s borderline fraud sometimes, at least it feels like that to me. The recourse is to be super vigilant but when you let guard down you fall into a trap and it’s hard to beware all traps at all times especially when they’re being constantly evolving

> No one is looking out for you. You can either endlessly complain about it or build some good habits. 30 minutes of effort once a month to go over bills and budgets is hardly the end of the world.

I don’t disagree, but I’d point out that this applies to basically anything in life. Relationships, exercise, health, work, etc. The fact is people prioritize and many don’t prioritize their finances. All of us drop the ball on something.

Is it really that shocking? People pay a lot for convenience. Not putting effort into managing money is another act of convenience that comes with a cost.

Hiring a money manager would be the convenience here, but that's not what is happening.

It's called nickel and diming and the term originated when they stopped being something you could buy a sandwich with.

I'm not surprised at all, a few billions is paltry. I think i have a few subs that i've forgotten about for months or years. I have several bank accounts and several credit cards, things become complicated.

At the time i liked what those people were making, or i wanted to watch a certain series, etc.

>It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health.

I've seen it first-hand how those with the biggest financial problems earn as much money as anybody else, but they simply can't handle it. And the rest of us are supposed to bail them out of course.

While that's true, there are multi-billion dollar industries built around exploiting financial ignorance. Payday loan companies and gambling are top of mind for me here. Who are we really bailing out, the financially unhealthy or the corporate parasites?

> (especially the ones who can least afford it)

There's a correlation between financial illiteracy and acquiring cripling debt.

The line between reasonable responsibiliy and unreasonable responsibility is subjective and blurry. We can generally agree it's my responsibility to not waste my life savings on novelty mugs, but it's not my responsibility to keep my money in an armored vault at home in case a burgler breaks in and tries to steal it.

Laws exist to protect people from bad actors so our time and efforts can be better spent on things that are valuable to us and society.

Is 30 minutes a month an unreasonable responsibility to protect against companies taking advantage of people with unutilized subscriptions? Should the law be updated to enable people to save people that time and effort? Maybe. I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to at least consider.

A lot of it is genetic. Good luck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscientiousness You have a lot of it, and so do the type A personality people on this site.

>It's bizarre to me just how many people in this country (especially the ones who can least afford it) simply do not take charge of their financial health.

But, see...

>No one is looking out for you.

... that's just it, isn't it?

Nobody's looking out for you. We send kids to public school from ages five to eighteen, but at a broad level, we do not have a requirement for any of that education to be about how to take charge, and stay on top of, your fiscal health. I'm not sure how you can look down on others like that when a large chunk of people are kicked into adulthood without ever having been taught how to look after themselves financially.

But you can teach yourself, like how most everyone who is looking over themselves financially did. Learning doesn't end with schooling, and for most they know that, doing dance, art, and sport classes for example all on their own. It’s just that financial literacy isn’t a priority.

If it's not a priority for people, and we understand that there is an incredibly wide range of circumstances that everyone is in, much of which don't allow for easy fiscal education, access to it, or time for it, it should be pretty darn obvious that it should be a part of our basic education system. Am I to take your response as a suggestion that we shouldn't bother introducing this subject matter as a requirement at the public school level?

Let's add it as a class, I'm not against it. I do have doubts about its efficacy introduced to students in high school before they have their first credit card and their counselors continuing to push the college at all costs view, but it won't hurt.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Frankly I just don't think people are that interested in it - even if you do know about it, looking at your cc bill or budgeting just isn't a thing people want to do. If you know your mortgage jumps up in 5 years, most people will think they'll be able to afford it then. We vote in policies that help the wealthy because everyone assumes that's who they'll be soon enough!

That all being said, I'm not sure how much we should protect people against themselves. I don't mean to take a libertarian view and we can improve the current situation (like making subscription cancelling easier and online), but I don't think solving finances is a tenable one. I'm digressing, but we all like to kick the can down the road, including our national debt or pension obligations.

People tend to act shocked when I tell them my finance app requires me to enter transactions manually and doesn't magically categorize everything.

You spend a third of your life working for that money, surely you spend 5 minutes at most tracking how you spend it.

which finance app do you recommend?

YNAB is pretty good. I like their zero-based budget system.

I'm guilty of being averse to this too, even though I intellectually know that if I accept manually entering transactions, then there are so many more options I can choose for tracking finances. As it is, I'm locked into a Banktivity subscription fee...

I think part of it is that it is just so hard to centralize all finances through just one bank. The best bank for retirement doesn't support business credit cards; the best credit cards are with completely different companies, etc. Monthly finances are a huge hassle as it is.

> I think part of it is that it is just so hard to centralize all finances through just one bank.

I always advice against single points of failure (whether software, security, or finance). Do the opposite, pick the best for each and intentionally avoid overlap.

I have credit cards from every major bank but I don't have anything else at those banks. My accounts with money in them are in other institutions where I don't have cards or anything else. My mortgage is with a bank where I have nothing else with them, and so on.

Decentralize, avoid too many eggs in any one basket.

I use an app like this as well. Was working great until I moved in with someone and it became more time consuming to look over line items and split all the restaurant / grocery bills rather than just entering the total. Now I have a bowl full of receipts to go through and the balance is usually not up to date :/.

sure, but when there's a dozen apps that will do it automatically, why?

if the app automatically categorizes things, you don't ever have to look at it. doing it yourself requires that you review every transaction individually.

Categorization and review are two different processes. The app I use will download and categorize, but I still have to review/accept each transaction. What is the benefit of manual entry in this case?

Why are both of you not naming the apps you use?

I use Tiller, which ingests my transactions but doesn't categorize them for me (except by a rule set that I manually defined)

My credit card statement already automatically categorizes things.

I don't know what's the point of using a 3rd party app for this, unless you feel very generous about providing your data for someone to sell.

I also don't know what's the point of reviewing transactions individually. If I pay something monthly (e.g. internet/car insurance/utility bills), I'm not going to look at it every month. I might check it at the end of the year to see if there are any 10x anomalies, but that's it.

I'm also not going to check transactions under $20, unless there are hundreds of them that are unexpected.

Although I do feel sorry for buyers who spend $1000+ every month on impulse shopping, but those are also the kind of people to never check their financial health anyway.

What value do you feel that you gain from all that categorization effort?

When I was very poor (~$22k/year), I had a google sheet that had a running tally of all my transactions, what category they came from, and was therefore able to forecast months in advance when I'd be able to afford to go to a movie with my partner. If I was going to have a shortfall (maybe because I'd been scheduled for less hours unexpectedly, or I had an unexpected health issue), I'd know weeks in advance if I was at risk of missing rent, and adjust my grocery spending accordingly.

Being exposed to the crushing reality of my poverty, alongside the daily ritual of sending off job applications and reading rejection emails from last week's applications, took a heavy toll on my mental health. If I was running things that close to the bone again, I'm certain I could take that habit up again, but one of the ways I know I've come up is that my survival does not require me to categorize every transaction in real time and confirm adherence to the budget down to the penny.

> 30 minutes of effort once a month to go over bills and budgets is hardly the end of the world.

Maybe for someone who already has good financial habits it is 30 minutes, but for people who never bother with this it will take far more time.

Well that's a dismal way to look at it. Regulations should be in place to prevent these kinds of business practices. For example, if a user doesn't use a service, perhaps they should get a refund for those months.

This is exactly the problem I am talking about. Why is the first instinct to always externalize blame? Why is big government the default solution to everything? How about – if you are not getting value out of a subscription (that you signed up for), go and cancel it. And if you choose not to, don't blame the rest of the world for your money problems.

Bluntly, we live with individuals who just suck at finance (this extends to other now-necessary skills too). I want to live in a world where they aren't constantly taken advantage of. Consider it a mental disorder if you need to; we don't have to punish people for being dumb.

Besides, regulation of this kind (cancelling subscription) benefits everyone but certain companies. I don't want to waste my time due to someone's misguided free market ideology. Even if navigating endless bureaucracy does make me feel smart.

That said, I hate the tendency of regulators to outright ban certain activities. Everyone should be free to throw their money away (by e.g. making risky investments), after signing a lot of very scary forms and showing that they really mean it.

If I watch 1 hour of Netflix a month and you watch 300 hundred hours a month, should the government mandate that Netflix charge you 300x more than me? If not, why should the person who watches 0 hours be treated any differently? Ultimately Netflix is creating the plan and publishing its details, and we are all opting into it willingly. Whether we get value from it or not is for us to decide, not the government.

Because a person who doesn't watch Netflix for a month gets no value from their money, so not charging them is a clear win with no downsides.

Netflix doesn't get as much money, but since they didn't provide any service, I fail to see why that's a problem.

The only reasonable price for 0 work is 0€. For anything more it gets complicated.

That's not entirely true though. Netflix had to be prepared to provide that service. Meaning they needed to be able to have the capacity to serve the videos if necessary. Some times just having that capacity has a cost in and of itself.

Not to mention they still are producing content whether you watch it or not, and by subscribing you are paying for that content to be created.

It's more extreme in other scenarios, like say hospital emergency rooms. But it still applies to services like Netflix imho.

I'm with you that someone who has been paying for a service despite not using it shouldn't necessarily be entitled for a refund.

That said, I wholeheartedly believe that there should be a legal requirement for any subscription to be as easy to cancel as it is to sign up. Gym memberships are notoriously for being criminally difficult to cancel. It's beyond ludicrous that I can sign up for a gym online or at my local gym, but can't cancel the same way. Nope, I have to pick up a form (which only the manager can give you, which means I have to go there when he's there, and he'll be conveniently unavailable), fill it out, mail it, and hope they don't conveniently "lose" it. And even if they don't lose it, they'll just sit on it for 2-3 months before the payments stop.

> How about – if you are not getting value out of a subscription (that you signed up for), go and cancel it.

That sounds sensible, but fails to acknowledge the power differential between a single person and a billion+ dollar corporation.

The latter has armies of people whose sole job is to intentionally make it almost completely impossible to unsubscribe.

Resolving this power imbalance is one of the useful properties of government. Pass laws that say it must be very easy to unsubscribe (some states have).

Consumer protection laws exist for a reason

>... if you are not getting value out of a subscription (that you signed up for), go and cancel it.

You're not wrong, necessarily, but the world isn't as black and white as you would like it to be. There is nuance to things, and not every subscription is as easy to cancel as you seem to think it should be.

I cancelled my NYT subscription about a year before California required them to make it a one-click process. I had to sit on the phone with them for 90 minutes in order to make it happen. Various holds, multiple reps pushing different "packages" for me rather than just outright cancelling. I literally had to argue with them in order to make it happen.

I had the time then. I didn't mind, though I sure was annoyed as hell. These days, with the job I have, and my outside-of-work life situation being what it is, 90 minutes isn't exactly an easy chunk of time for me to block out just so I can cancel a $25/month subscription. I could end up finding time for it, sure, and that - to your point - is absolutely on me. But it's not as easy to do that now as it was when I'd signed up for it years back. And you know, deep down, just as well as I do, that shit isn't ever as black and white as your attitude would like it to be. You can call it an "excuse" all you want, but that's a disingenuous take.

Same "advice" can be given to fatties too. Your health and your problem. I put advice in quotes because it doesn't work and isn't that easy in practice.

Honestly this is a very out of touch view. And you assume people don't do these things. Of course they do. Some don't. But you're making a broad generalization.

People do check this stuff. Even then it's easy to forget about something for a few months. Or ask if your SO is using something.

There are so many charges on a typical CC statement that spending time every day going through them isn't always worth it either.

Whenever I get a free trial of Prime, I immediately set a reminder on my phone to cancel it in a month. It's really not that hard.

You can also immediately go to settings and choose not to renew. It'll still be active for the rest of the month.

Gosh I've wasted so much time worrying about not cancelling on time

It's even easier to reject all free trials of everything. That's what I do.

I habitually reject subscriptions and automatic payments, too, as far as possible, so I can retain full control of the flow & timing of my expenses.

(For services where it's not possible, I subscribe them to a single credit card, which I treat as though it were another utility bill.)

I'm already ordering stuff from Amazon, why would I refuse free shipping?

I think it is human nature.

If someone was hired to manage your life, and they did what you did, they would be fired with contempt.

It's not bizarre when you consider the lengths companies go to, to try convince those who can least afford it to make a purchase.

The most vulnerable are used a fodder for a vast capitalist system.

Industrialisation means that most consumer goods are mass produced. That means these companies need to make their money from wide sales instead of tall sales. Wide as in getting as many individual customers as possible, instead of tall as in selling bespoke products for an expensive price to few customers.

Very few people need more than one washing machine. Well off people already own washing machines. So if you're selling washing machines, you need to make a way for as many poor people as possible to be able to buy them, hence credit and split payments.

What's your point?

That the system is just fine thank you Sir, move along?

My point is that is logical and not that bizarre that companies will do anything they can to broaden their customer base. Once you've sold your product to the rich and the middle class, you have to target the poor. Because your factory keeps spitting out product and you need customers.

Some companies only sell to people who are financially struggling. And a great deal of these companies rely on people not being financially literate to make huge amounts of money.

There's no inevitability to these systems. People make choices to run companies these ways.

They don't have to sell because the factories can't stop making products.

You're talking about individual companies, I'm talking about the systemic factors in general.

> They don't have to sell because the factories can't stop making products.

What are they supposed to do? Shut down the factories and fire their workers? Industrialised production relies on huge up-front investments and large operating cost, in exchange for enormous output and low per-unit cost of production. That's how it works in capitalism. That's how it works in communism. If industry can't operate on that model and need to get their income from fewer customers, then consumer goods would be much more expensive as a result. Also much better in quality, but inaccessible for the majority of people.

We're talking about subscription services.

A huge number of these services won't actually even supply physical goods.

Your argument isn't relevant here.

Mass media is also an example of mass production, working in the same way. Whether it's through subscriptions or selling physical media or entrance tickets, creators seek a huge audience. They usually have huge investment costs to produce their stuff, whether it's money or time. Then their cost-per-unit sold is extremely low, sometimes approaching zero. But if they can't get paid by a mass audience, then creativity will have to return to bespoke works. Ie, artists will make their work for rich individuals by commission, instead of to the general public.

I do see your point, but it seems to me that you're trying to explain why capitalism isn't the problem.

I don't think this is true.

Think about the system you're describing. It makes a lot more sense until you introduce the concept of greed.

These companies aren't going to a mass market instead of selling to smaller rich audiences. They're selling to the mass market as well.

There's no target profit amount.

"As much as possible".

That's passing the buck. All of those suggestions you have apply to these companies as well. It's just that when they are lazy, they get to leech off of everyone else and make money from it, where they hide behind the "complexity" of their systems. It's absurd that you place the blame on the victims of this.

There's so much bullshit required a lot of the time in canceling things or even knowing that you were signed up for something in the first place. Just purchasing something these days will automatically sign up yourself up for endless emails from that and other companies, even if you unchecked the so-called newsletter option. There are so many dark patterns that sign people up for things that they didn't even they got signed up for. I have absolutely been signed up for something, either by accident or a dark pattern, that I didn't realize until latter. It wasn't due to laziness, me lamenting others, or some bad habit. It was due to being effectively tricked and legally scammed.

Companies have used software-based services as a sort of trojan horse, and they absolutely take advantage of people who don't understand technology.

Eh, there's a pretty big difference between "I'm too lazy to solve this" and "the only reason this requires so much effort is because the business would lose a ton of revenue if people could simply stop paying for things that they don't want to have". There really is no reason why cancelling a subscription at some predefined point in the future should require any kind of business-hours-only-must-talk-to-a-physical-person approach, and if your CSR handling your cancellation is not empowered to actually process your request (which is pretty common with e.g. cable and phone companies as well as gyms), then its abuse, pure and simple. I know what my hourly equivalent is, so if the cost to my employer (or myself, if I'm an independent contractor) while I sort this out when I should be working is more than the monthly bill itself, then it becomes not worth my time to sit on the phone and deal with it.

I had a regular order with Chewy, until the dog food brand I was having drop shipped stopping selling that particular type of dog food to Chewy (but I could get it somewhere else). And I had to sit on hold for 30 fucking minutes, just so Chewy would stop charging me (considerably more) for, and shipping to me, dog food that I did not want, had never wanted, and was actually shopping elsewhere to avoid. And I didn't find out that they didn't carry that brand anymore until they shipped "what we believe is the closest match" to me. I honestly thought it was a mis-pick initially, so when I went to resolve it, I followed that customer service UI pattern, to no avail. They've changed it since then, but the fact still remains, that was not at all a scenario I should've needed to call in for. I certainly shouldn't have needed to sit on hold for it. When I finally spoke to the CSR, she was apologetic that I even had to talk to her about it.

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