Hacker News Reader

Comment by varenc | Hacker News Reader

It's why everything is a subscription these days: you make more money.

Consumers undercount the true total cost. And because X% of people will forget they're subscribed and keep paying forever.

If every month you had to either consent to recurring charge on your card or unsubscribe, I'm sure billions of revenue would evaporate overnight from people mass unsubscribing.

(I wish there was regulation that required companies to automatically pause monthly subscriptions if you haven't logged in to or used the service in any way for 3+ months. Though that would create some weird incentives)

View on HN

I think requiring notification would be better than automatically pausing (or maybe let people choose?)

My elderly parents have a cheap voip landline that they never use but keep for peace of mind. It'd be unideal if that got automatically "paused" and then it didn't work the one time they tried to use it to call 911.

Sure, the scenario would mean their cell phones are not working, or they're suffering from some cognitive issue, so it's unlikely -- but still plausible.

That's a good example. In that case though I'd say that every month the voip line is providing a service. Something like a Netflix subscription that you haven't logged into for 6 months is more unequivocally providing no value.

Mandatory monthly notifications about charges seem better though and wouldn't lead to weird perverse incentives. (Like Netflix spamming your email with auto-login links so if you click one they can claim you did use their service)

Virtual credit card numbers are a great way to combat this.

For example, the Wall Street journal pricing is pretty wild (8 dollars a month for the first 3 months then jumps to much higher) so I use a virtual card which expires right before the planned price hike.

For other services I like to either use a virtual card with a single transaction limit, or just buy the service and cancel right away which typically is equivalent to just paying for a month

I tried to cancel a virtual card to cancel a service (that only allowed me to change anything by phone call, so this would have been far more convenient and less confrontational) and they tallied up a "delinquent balance" and threatened to sue if I didn't pay everything I owed in order to cancel.

Canceling the card does not work for predatory companies. Maybe for well-meaning ones that automatically cancel when a charge declines.

I switched home insurance away from liberty mutual after my term was up and did not renew. Three weeks after my coverage with them lapsed I received a notice from a collection agency for a late fee for coverage I never purchased. FUCK automatic billing and non-consensual subscriptions.

Take them to small claims court. You would win

It's too late for that now, but maybe if this happens again I will.

That's actually a great tip. Unfortunately I can't set them to expire at will, but using a 24 hours one (the usually available option here) is enough to get one month subscription without worries about the price hike.

Agreed! I'm a long time privacy.com customer. It completely flips the script on subscriptions. I'll create a new card with only a budget for 1 month of the subscription. If I actually care about it I'll see the 2nd month's charge fail and quickly fix it. Also great for making sure free trials don't become forever subscriptions.

Exactly this. When I looked at Wisprflow at $12/month, I realized over 2 years I'd pay ~$290 for software that runs entirely on my Mac with near-zero server costs on their end.

The "forgot to cancel" revenue model works, but (like you implied) it's predatory when the software doesn't need ongoing infrastructure.

You might want to check out https://whispernotes.app - it's a one-time purchase, no subscription. For offline apps with no ongoing server costs, I think buy-once should at least be an option alongside subscriptions.

It's not that you make more money with subscriptions. It's because you make some money to survive at all if you're not a big company. People who run a small business understand this.

I get that subscriptions help small businesses survive. But when the software runs 100% locally and doesn't need servers, one-time seems fairer. That's what I'm testing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com