[HN Gopher] Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publicatio...
___________________________________________________________________
Nearly a third of new subscribers to news publications cancel in
the first 24H
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 113 points
Date : 2022-07-13 13:06 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.niemanlab.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.niemanlab.org)
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| What's needed is a credits system that works across multiple
| sites on the order of pay as you consume. I don't mind paying. In
| fact, I want to pay. Gladly.
|
| What I don't want is to overpay and/or take on a payment
| agreement (i.e., subscription) that's too easy to forget about,
| or too difficult to cancel (i.e., dark pattern).
| es7 wrote:
| I would pay a decent chunk of money per month if I could get
| access to all news sources. But my news consumption is never done
| by going to a source. I just want to read articles linked from HN
| or Google News or Reddit, etc.
|
| I need something like Spotify for news sources. Ad-free access to
| any content. I'll pay for that. But I'm not going to subscribe to
| each source individually.
|
| Edit: I would want a way to avoid paying for clickbait that I
| accidentally click on. Maybe sources could be paid per active-
| viewing-minute and definitely not for clicks.
| popcube wrote:
| but people collected best article and published on HN, this is
| difficult to have a competitive prices when best part of your
| products had been stolen.
| Lendal wrote:
| I feel like news is an example of something that actually did
| work better 30 years ago. Is that just because I was young and
| everything seemed better?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| I'd argue that you're objectively correct because:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_cross-ownership_in_the_U...
|
| Specifically the "Cross ownership rules of 1975" were
| fantastic. The "Telecommunications Act 1996" started the
| downward trend.
| derbOac wrote:
| I have a family member who still gets the paper and I swear
| it's better than the online equivalent. The layout is better,
| and the ads are actually useful, in the sense that they are
| placed with the understanding that "someone looking at this
| content might also be interested in this", and nothing is
| popping up or stealing clicks.
|
| My sense is newspapers have been totally lost in the internet
| era for some reason, and never figured out the basic "provide
| these services in this way and be nice to customers." I think
| these problems then trickled back to some extent with the paper
| versions too.
|
| There's entire content categories (local event calendars for
| instance) that have essentially vanished locally in the way
| they used to be there.
|
| I think it's possible to run a news organization well and my
| guess is there are some out there being run well but I don't
| think it's just your age.
| charlescarver wrote:
| I'd like to see the same stat for LinkedIn premium...
| spicymaki wrote:
| I would not mind a more a la carte purchase of individual
| articles or perhaps a set articles released for the day. Access
| to that particular/set of article(s) would need to be permanent.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| My last few news subscriptions also let me sign-up online and
| required an email to cancel.
|
| I don't know why someone hasn't done it yet but offer auto-renew
| on/off at the onset and when you log on the 1st time after expiry
| a popup with onceoff "top-up", with out any nagging emails or
| notifications along the way.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Most news should be free. People don't want to pay to hear about
| current events.
| SaulJLH wrote:
| just a heads up Re this comment of mine directed to you
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32076788
|
| TY/BR
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| If you want me to respond then can't you comment directly on
| that submission?
| tinyhouse wrote:
| Of course. Every time I signed up for a new publication it was to
| be able to read one article I cared about. I didn't need the
| subscription after that until the next article... Which doesn't
| happen often.
| DaSHacka wrote:
| This is almost certainly it, surprised I'm not seeing it
| brought up more often in this thread. Of the 6 or so news
| publications I've signed up for this past year, I only actually
| wanted to be sent updated from one of them, signing up for all
| the rest just to get access to an article.
| njharman wrote:
| 40% are "sleepers". Meaning nearly half of their subscription
| revenue is from people who forgot they had it, don't use it, and
| will keep getting auto-renewed until something reminds them
| they're paying for this thing they don't want.
|
| When your product is so worthless and uncompelling on nearly half
| customers don't use it and your business model relies on them
| forgetting they're paying for it, then your industry is DONE.
|
| Mainstream/Legacy newstainment is absolute garbage. Not worth
| your time if it is free.
| kippster wrote:
| > When your product is so worthless and uncompelling on nearly
| half customers don't use it and your business model relies on
| them forgetting they're paying for it, then your industry is
| DONE.
|
| I think this is the model most commercial gyms operate on.
| dymk wrote:
| And with that let me plug the YMCA. It might vary by region,
| but the ones around here (PNW) are month to month payment, no
| sign up fees, far larger and cleaner than any LA Fitness or
| Planet Fitness. All around a wonderful gym option.
| mywacaday wrote:
| This is not surprising, I got a deal with the NYT and attempted
| to cancel through a phone call where they extended the offer. 12
| months later same call, they asked what would I need to stay and
| I said same offer indefinitely, 1$ a month is worth it but not
| much more as a European when its not my main source of news. For
| some reason I still prefer dead trees when I can find the time.
| kmbfjr wrote:
| I prefer dead trees because they're not reporting what I'm
| reading, for how long nor where the cursor travels on the page.
| I find people recording my reading habits and preferences to be
| extremely dangerous given the current political climate.
|
| The Wall Street Journal still publishes a PDF of the print
| version. If all papers did this, I'd have a lot less problem
| subscribing. Instead, they want you to use their app or log
| into the site.
| bombcar wrote:
| Subscribe and cancel is what I do with anything that doesn't let
| me turn off auto-renew.
| dboreham wrote:
| I'm missing something about this. What benefit do you receive?
| You performed work to subscribe then more work to cancel. What
| did you receive in return? Not service, I assume since you
| canceled immediately.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Subscriptions have trials, or fixed periods. You take the
| trial, cancel to prevent auto renew and still use the trial /
| subscription until the period runs out.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| In my experience, you buy the service in billing-cycle-length
| increments. E.g., if Hulu's auto-renew charges you monthly,
| then even if you cancel, you still have Hulu access until the
| next time they would have billed you.
| zinekeller wrote:
| Most subscriptions are fixed-periods: this means that once
| you pay, it is non-refundable. Doesn't matter that this is
| illegal in Australia, NZ and EU: they only sporadically
| enforce it anyways. In practice, this means that you cancel
| for the _future_ subscription, not the current period.
| brk wrote:
| Because almost nobody offers refunds once the payment goes
| through, you can cancel immediately but retain access through
| whatever the subscription period is (usually 1 month).
| bombcar wrote:
| Exactly as the others mentioned. Subscribe to Disney + for a
| year, cancel immediately - now I have it for a year and don't
| have to think about it at all.
|
| And when it stops working, if I notice, I can resubscribe. If
| I don't notice - well then I didn't need it anyway.
| phailhaus wrote:
| It's wild to me that the default payment plan for publications is
| a subscription-based model. The audacity! I'm just trying to read
| an article every so often, that is _not_ worth whatever you 're
| charging per month.
|
| It feels like microtransactions are the appropriate model to use
| here, but it will likely have negative incentives (e.g.,
| prioritize clickbait even more.) The Apple News model is also
| fairly promising, but unclear if publications can support their
| businesses with it.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I think news might be the only exception here- newspaper
| subscriptions have been around a very long time.
| phailhaus wrote:
| I think that's a vestige of the non-digital era when you had
| to actually get a paper delivered to your door. Now, I'm
| spoiled for choice and I can read 100 articles across 100
| sources easily. No way I'm paying a monthly subscription for
| each one!
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I get a paper delivered to my door as well as magazines
| like Atlantic, New Yorker, and Economist.
|
| Worth every penny.
| phailhaus wrote:
| Cool! Anyways, most people don't do this because they
| don't read articles frequently enough, or they read from
| too many sources.
| shishy wrote:
| I am surprised this isn't higher... I always cancel immediately
| for auto-renewals.
| gumby wrote:
| > "You'll need a thought-out plan using proven tactics to start
| forming habits early. Email newsletters, a welcome letter from
| the editor, a mobile app download, podcasts, subscription
| benefits reminders and/or a series of reminder emails over the
| first week and month have all proven successful with audiences."
|
| I don't want any of that crap. I just want the articles you used
| to produce in print, except now through my RSS feed. The energy
| you put into hiring podcast consultants or generating auto play
| video would be better spent on reportage.
| badpun wrote:
| I think the subscribtions are just too expensive for a lot of
| people. For example, $7 a month to listen to somebody's paywalled
| podcast is $84 a year, just to hear that one person alone. For
| some people that's a drop in the bucket, but, for many, it's just
| too expensive. Makes more sense to subscribe once a year for a
| month, go through all the content, come back in a year and repeat
| the process.
| ykevinator2 wrote:
| AlbertCory wrote:
| The headline is misleading; it's not just news publications.
|
| >Email newsletters, a welcome letter from the editor, a mobile
| app download, podcasts, subscription benefits reminders and/or a
| series of reminder emails over the first week and month have all
| proven successful with audiences.
|
| Nope, nope, nope to all of that. Annoying me has the opposite
| effect to what the MBAs want.
|
| As someone below notes: you can go to privacy.com and set up temp
| credit cards, with a limited $$$ amount. They can try to auto-
| renew all they want, but they'll just get declined.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > you can go to privacy.com and set up temp credit cards, with
| a limited $$$ amount. They can try to auto-renew all they want,
| but they'll just get declined.
|
| Doesn't your credit report (unfairly) take a hit if you do
| that, the same way it (fairly) does if you don't pay your
| electric bill?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Good question. I should check.
|
| Of course, privacy.com will say Yes to any name & address you
| give with your credit card, so you don't have to use your
| real PII. Or your regular email. How would that show up on
| your credit report?
|
| It's easy to imagine that _everything_ you provide is
| checked, but it 's not true. Just the credit card number,
| expiration date, and security code.
| awinter-py wrote:
| I mean if it's me I'm trying to read a single wsj or FT article,
| and there's no way to do that, so I'm unsubscribing asap as a
| signal to the publication to be less shitty
|
| not entirely their fault -- the entire electronic payments system
| has evolved to make non in person micropayments difficult
|
| also possible pubs aren't confident enough in the value prop of
| individual articles to price them
|
| I hate virtual economies + in-game currencies but for newspapers
| specifically, as an alternative to subscription-gating, it might
| be an improvement
|
| anonymity is also a consideration; KYC fine, but the payment
| processor can know who I am without telling the content vendor
| Victerius wrote:
| Some newspapers require subscribers to call a phone number to
| cancel their subscription.
|
| I refuse to subscribe to any service I can't unsubscribe from in
| a few clicks, regardless of the content.
| est31 wrote:
| In Germany, a new rule (SS312k BGB) has come into effect on Jul
| 1st (a few days ago!), that if a provider offers people to open
| new contracts on the internet, the provider is also required to
| let customers cancel their subscriptions via a button on the
| website. If there is no such button, customers can cancel any
| time.
|
| Links in German.
|
| https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__312k.html
|
| https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/suche/faire-verbrauch...
|
| https://www.verbraucherzentrale.de/aktuelle-meldungen/vertra...
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| Had that happen with the WSJ, will never subscribe to them
| again. Plus they had limited hours in one time zone.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I wonder if we can (legally) fight using the same methods
| that the companies use.
|
| E.g., suppose their phone system can handle 1000 people in
| queue + 20 live conversations. Companies keep _the callers_
| waiting, with no regard to the cost to the caller, so the
| company can minimize _their_ customer-service costs.
|
| So how about we even things up? Create company-specific
| automated services that call in using _customer-oriented_
| robots. Have logic that knows how to navigate each company 's
| phone system to reach an appropriate real person. And once
| they reach a live customer service rep, play the message,
| "Thank you for your business. We value you as a vendor, and
| will connect you with your customer as soon as possible! Your
| expected wait time is...", and have them wait while this
| middle-man service gets your attention.
| yesplorer wrote:
| why will they wait?
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm not sure about the legalities, but some possible
| answers are:
|
| a) Because the automated system will continue to call
| them until they connect a real person to the customer.
|
| b) If the law is silent about which party can impose
| bureaucratic hassles on the other, then perhaps this
| system would satisfy some legal obligations.
|
| I.e., if the law allows a _business_ to argue, "The
| customer who wanted to cancel their subscription never
| stayed on the phone long enough tell that to our customer
| service rep!", then perhaps the law also allows a
| _customer_ to argue, "I _tried_ to cancel my
| subscription, but they kept hanging up on _my_ voice menu
| system! "
|
| Perhaps I misunderstand the law, but my (potential) pet
| peeve is that businesses get away with imposing time-
| consuming, costly friction on their customers in the form
| of paperwork, call-waiting time, etc. I think it would be
| just for customers to repay that in kind.
| salawat wrote:
| Your Call Center workers would be instructed to hang up
| immediately, and systems would be programmed to try to
| recognize that system. You have hit on something important
| though:
|
| Customer call centers are generally one of the first places
| to be aggressively ootimized, and if you hace a call center
| that has long queue times, this is a powerful signal about
| what management really thinks is important.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| Many call centers do not allow the workers to disconnect
| the call without going through some sort of formal
| procedure, so this could be exploited until that policy
| changes.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| > Your Call Center workers would be instructed to hang up
| immediately, and systems would be programmed to try to
| recognize that system.
|
| I'm curious if this has the potential to become an arms
| race similar to email spam generation / detection.
|
| Although perhaps in the U.S., STIR/SHAKEN would mean more
| creativity is required.
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Yeah, The Times (UK) does this, you cannot unsub unless you
| call a help-line that is firewalled by Rube-Goldberg UI
| contraption that takes rubix cube levels of motivation to get
| through.
| ssully wrote:
| Are there any publications that have tried to recreate the
| experience of buying a physical paper? Like pay a one time fee of
| $2-3 dollars and get access to all of the news from this past
| week? Or maybe get an additional 10 articles?
| jwie wrote:
| This is just lack of auto renew protections. Consumers are wise
| to this, and they're not really canceling. I bet if you could
| turn off auto-renew they wouldn't cancel.
|
| But, to nobody's surprise, the MBAs don't like options where the
| user doesn't give away money by accident.
|
| Auto renew is one of those things that should be illegal to
| default users into.
| hef19898 wrote:
| If you replace MBAs with Growth Hackers I agree fully.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| "Growth hackers" imply they're doing this for the long term,
| which I don't believe at all. All these strategies do is give
| the organization a short term bump in exchange for a negative
| long term reputation and customer loss.
|
| I've literally been warned not to sub to the New York Times
| by random people without prompting when the newspaper was
| mentioned in passing. Is that "growth hacking?" They've made
| having a subscription a life choice because cancellation is
| so painful, and they have so many predatory pricing dark
| patterns.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I just cancelled my NYT subscription, took me 5 minutes.
| Trying to cancel my Wired subscription, non-US subscriber,
| means I have to wait for the next delivery to use a number
| on the envelope to identify myself in order to cancel the
| subscription. Well, be it I guess.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Wired is the worst. It's literally impossible to cancel
| online, and they still keep spamming me with "renewal
| notices" snail mail even after my subscription ended.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I'm already looking forward to it!
| NSMyself wrote:
| I use virtual credit cards with a fixed expiration date
| precisely to avoid this issue; auto-renewing will never work no
| matter the shenanigans they throw at you
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| At one point I lived in the greater Providence, RI area. I
| bought an online subscription to a big local paper [0], mainly
| to help support local journalism.
|
| The subscription _did_ give me full access to their articles.
| But it did nothing to eliminate the crap I really hate:
| interleaving of "sponsored content" with actual news,
| irrepressible autoplay videos, etc.
|
| The unavoidable, usability-destroying advertising is why I
| cancelled almost immediately.
|
| [0] https://www.providencejournal.com/
| Someone1234 wrote:
| The harder a service is to cancel, the more unlikely I am to
| ever re-subscribe.
|
| That's something they need to start studying in business/MBA
| school. That SOME customer churn reduction strategies directly
| lead to indefinite loss of customers.
|
| To give a specific anecdote: Ooma offers a very interesting
| service, hassle-free "landline" (VoIP) turn-key phone service,
| the price is reasonable, and they have multiple offerings to
| suite many needs. I wanted to use them for a specific project,
| but cancelling was so toxic (call to cancel, waste my time to
| cancel, argue to cancel, etc) that after cancelling once
| instead of re-subing next time like I had PLANNED I went to a
| competitor. See also:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ooma/comments/7he9zh/my_two_attempt...
|
| So they lost a customer for life. Verizon lost a customer for
| life. SiriusXM lost a customer for life. All because
| cancellation was a PITA. Why do MBAs keep pushing this? Are
| they TRYING to exchange short term retention for long term
| viability? Why is business education so bad?
|
| I feel like Costco, LEGO, or Ikea need to open a business
| school or something, just to teach a generation of people who
| want a business to survive a hundred years and go from one
| success to another. MBA education in the US feels like a "pump
| and dump" scheme right now.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| My guess is that the MBAs are right, and losing the business
| of people like you is outweighed by larger gains.
| lamontcg wrote:
| They're usually right that juicing their numbers in the
| short term means they can cash out with higher stock and
| better bonuses in the next 5 years.
|
| There is a cliff though where if you go over it you do
| alienate everyone and sentiment turns against the company
| and it'll fail. That isn't measurable though so nobody
| cares, and they'll just leave and land at a different
| company and try to juice it as well.
|
| But overall with every business in the country doing this,
| it becomes pretty toxic. You're not actually producing
| things that people really want, you're producing things
| that maximally exploit consumers.
|
| At some point, though, does the whole culture and economy
| fall over that cliff and you get systemic failure?
| Someone1234 wrote:
| And by "people like me" you mean customers that don't want
| a business to treat them poorly?
| copperx wrote:
| Once you understand that most people live in a semi-
| conscious state because of mental overwhelm, physical
| frailty, and general life problems, abusive business
| practices such as this one, loan sharks, etc., start
| making a lot of sense.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| No, people who will do something about it.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I've always felt like the rule should be really simple:
| whatever means allow you to sign up should allow you to
| cancel too.
|
| The number of things I can do to modify my plans in-app - all
| _except_ cancel - is not only striking, but clearly done
| maliciously. It's a very deliberate decision that is easy to
| identify, there's very little grey area.
|
| Forcing people to call just to cancel is particularly evil.
| [deleted]
| gnome_chomsky wrote:
| I cancelled my years long nytimes subscription a few years
| ago once someone told me that they had to call in and suffer
| through customer service retention reps in order to cancel
| their sub. I just couldn't stand the thought of being bled
| for cash due to their making it too inconvenient for
| subscribers to cancel.
| LanceH wrote:
| I used to tell the newspaper I was moving to Madagascar
| because they wouldn't have that on their script. Now
| they'll just push the electronic edition.
|
| One of the big problems is the CSR's only have incentives
| to retain people now. There is no extra penalty for
| alienating someone from ever coming back, it's the same as
| a non-renew.
|
| With the web versions of this, every app that badgers me
| gets a 1 star review for badgering me by insisting that I
| review it. Every cancellation, I select "other" and tell
| them I don't do business with people that hold my
| subscription hostage until I answer questions.
|
| Personally, I feel there is some fraud (or some other legal
| term here) going on when I press a "Cancel Subscription"
| button and it doesn't cancel. A regular confirmation box is
| fine and understandable, but they can't help but change the
| default colors and text on those, or word them oddly to
| make me want to back out. Bu "cancelling" followed up by
| mandatory questions/answers about why I'm quitting is
| forcing me to work for them building their data sets
| without compensation. Maybe I should send them a bill.
| koofdoof wrote:
| Try telling them you're going to prison instead. I can't
| imagine they'll have an inmate edition.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| They're piloting a tablet program in the Feds. The tablet
| is free. They even offer free books. Nice, right? What
| they don't advertise is that the system also charges
| something like a dollar a minute to 'use'. Wonder what
| those free books actually come out to costing. So far
| this is only in the womens prisons. I'm sure they will
| use it as an excuse to get rid of the actually library
| that inmates donate all the books sent from home to.
| Wrote way too much to say soon they might.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's in some county jails too.
| noasaservice wrote:
| "I'm going in for assisted suicide tomorrow, and getting
| my affairs in order."
| LanceH wrote:
| I appreciate this as darkly humorous, but there is the
| off chance they send the police around to check on you.
| copperx wrote:
| I've used "I was a temporary worker and my visa expired"
| with great success.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Rotfl, the ultimate in customer retention.
| yencabulator wrote:
| Customer detention.
| losteric wrote:
| > Why do MBAs keep pushing this? Are they TRYING to exchange
| short term retention for long term viability?
|
| Isn't that the stereotype? Join to juice some metric, jump
| ship while everything looks green, leave the mess to someone
| else
| techdragon wrote:
| It's not just a stereotype it's often their explicit job
| description! They get hired or promoted with a performance
| metric for juicing those metrics either as an expectation
| of the job or as a requirement for performance incentives
| and bonus pay...
|
| This all of course tends to be set up by fellow MBAs higher
| up the corporate food chain and since everyone keeps
| personally profiting no one sees any reason to stop, all
| the dead and destroyed companies were accidents, bad
| decisions, acts of god, etc... never due to systemic
| misunderstanding of business management principles...
| because that might actually be something the shareholders
| could sue over, and no one wants that, at a primal
| subconscious level it's unthinkable.
| retcon wrote:
| I think that corporate sponsorship of education needs of
| to be outlawed. We've had at least three generations of
| exponential feedback of antisocial principles dominating
| business education. Taking much longer to go hockey
| stick. MBAs can't keep resting on the laurels of bringing
| the first GI Bill gen from draft to serving technical
| competence to industrial relevance. For a start the
| foundation for the qualification is absolutely rooted in
| post war growth imperatives.
| popcube wrote:
| this sound like natural selection, if they decide to
| support the education that only generated employees who
| give their company negative influences.
| mjparrott wrote:
| By the way, at some companies where you are sponsored to
| go there is a 90%+ acceptance rate of people into
| business school. It is effectively a 'backdoor' into MBA
| programs. They like them because the same companies come
| on campus to recruit and hire people back into their
| company. It's a nice circle to be inside, but locks
| others out.
| gherkinnn wrote:
| Seagulls. Swarm a pretty beach, shit all over the place and
| fly off again.
|
| Of course, this doesn't exclusively apply to MBAs. I've
| seen plenty of consultants and developers do the same.
| vitaflo wrote:
| Swoop and poop.
| LaundroMat wrote:
| The customers they lost don't show up on any metric.
|
| I've often wondered about how to measure aversion instead of
| conversion.
| lamontcg wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McNamara_fallacy
|
| > US Air Force Brigadier General Edward Lansdale reportedly
| told McNamara,[3] who was trying to develop a list of
| metrics to allow him to scientifically follow the progress
| of the war, that he was not considering the feelings of the
| common rural Vietnamese people. McNamara wrote it down on
| his list in pencil, then erased it and told Lansdale that
| he could not measure it, so it must not be important.
| smegsicle wrote:
| was mcnamara autistic?
| nico wrote:
| > The harder a service is to cancel, the more unlikely I am
| to ever re-subscribe.
|
| Adobe's subscriptions are hell to cancel. It's easier to
| cancel the credit card via the bank.
|
| Btw, some time ago I was kinda shocked when Digital Ocean was
| able to charge an expired card of mine, multiple times.
|
| The card had expired, and I had renewed it, but I didn't have
| access to the DO account anymore, so I couldn't update the
| card info. Somehow DO was still able to charge the expired
| card, and since I couldn't access my account (and support
| wasn't super helpful either), I had to contest the charge via
| the bank, about 5 times, until they finally cancelled the
| subscription and account.
| lfowles wrote:
| This is a service provided by the card companies. For
| instance here's Visa's:
| https://developer.visa.com/capabilities/vau
| aeruder wrote:
| I worked for a company that used A/B testing to justify call-
| to-cancel; makes me angry every time I think about it. I
| guess that's one of the tricky things about A/B testing - it
| is easy to measure that call-to-cancel decreases customer
| churn, not so easy to measure the number of people that will
| never sign up for your service or the number of customers
| that do churn and swear to never use you again.
| bbarnett wrote:
| And, word of mouth is still a thing, which no advertising
| buddget can fix, when deeply bad, toxic, prevalent.
| pfranz wrote:
| It also shows people just want to pay for a single piece of
| content--not an ongoing relationship. I want to buy a magazine
| or two off the newsstand before I sign up for a subscription.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| I use Privacy [1] for this. Create a new card, set max amount
| to $1, and move on. I always get a chuckle when I get those
| "Oops, looks like your payment failed" emails. It also serves
| as a great reminder, because in some cases I actually do renew
| the service (by modifying the card) if it was providing value.
|
| [1]: https://privacy.com
| vasco wrote:
| Without auto renew half the SaaS tech landscape wouldn't exist.
| Many tech companies operate primarily a gym without knowing it.
|
| Easy to subscribe, hard to remove, and 0 costs to keep up
| accounts of people that don't use it, that sounds like a gym
| subscription to me.
| zippergz wrote:
| Not wrong, though my experience is that most of them _do_
| know it. At least the finance people do, if they're paying
| any attention at all.
| steve_taylor wrote:
| Auto-renew is fine, as long as the product's billing system
| has the necessary protections, such as
|
| - low-friction cancellation
|
| - email users a few days before monthly renewals and twice
| before annual renewals
|
| - ability to remove the payment method altogether
|
| - don't require a credit card for a free trial
|
| If cancellation takes effect immediately, the service should
| provide an immediate pro rata refund.
| m348e912 wrote:
| Credit card companies could really make a difference with
| helping manage subscription services. For example, they
| could allow you to decline future charges from certain
| merchants essentially cancelling your subscription. You
| wouldn't even have to cancel with the provider, you can
| cancel with the cc company. Some credit card companies do
| the opposite! Apple Card will automatically provide
| merchants with your new card number if you order a card
| replacement, and you can't do anything about it. It's the
| reason I am no longer an Apple Card user.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| I do see the flip-side where that's a feature.
|
| You get a new card and you have to make sure you migrate
| over all of your subscriptions and bill-pay to the new
| cc. Would be nice for Apple (or someone) to build more
| features around that so it's easy to see recurring
| charges and bills automatically.
| m348e912 wrote:
| >>Would be nice for Apple (or someone) to build more
| features around that so it's easy to see recurring
| charges and bills automatically.
|
| That's why they do it I believe. But if they pair that up
| with subscription management it would be nice.
| Interestingly they do this exact thing with App Store
| subscriptions. You can cancel anytime it's done through
| Apple, and not the service/app you subscribed to.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > don't require a credit card for a free trial
|
| This doesn't bother me as much as most of the other
| complaints here. How else can you keep someone from
| creating multiple accounts to get multiple free trials?
| cmsonger wrote:
| Yep. This is exactly me:
|
| > This is just lack of auto renew protections. Consumers are
| wise to this, and they're not really canceling. I bet if you
| could turn off auto-renew they wouldn't cancel.
|
| In my mind: "If they are going to both make it hard to cancel,
| and charge me without prompting, then I am going to figure out
| how to cancel exactly right now and when it stops working, if I
| notice, then I'll go back and renew."
| Spoom wrote:
| I'm seeing more companies terminate accounts immediately upon
| cancellation, especially for free trials. This makes people
| back out of cancellation while it's on their mind, and then
| they forget to cancel before the deadline. It's a dark pattern
| I really wish the industry would stop pushing.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why isn't it already illegal for cancellation to take effect
| right away for prepaid services without being given a
| prorated refund? Isn't that basically theft?
| lexapro wrote:
| The law should take care of dark patterns like this.
| bendergarcia wrote:
| Agree one hundred percent!
| thibautg wrote:
| Apple is also culprit of this.
|
| I activated the free trial for Apple Arcade because an ad for
| it was prominently shown in the settings app.
|
| If you cancel the free trial, they immediately terminate the
| access. But worse: they did not send an email before charging
| the first non-free month. When I saw a EUR4.99 charge on my
| credit card, I canceled the trial (that I did not even use).
| I was disappointed about Apple using such dark patterns.
| eganist wrote:
| Got names? Useful to know and to avoid.
| irowe wrote:
| ClassPass is one example I recently ran into. I've already
| bought credits for the month and am planning to cancel my
| current plan, but if I do I immediately forfeit my
| (prepaid!) credits.
| brigandish wrote:
| I'm currently subscribed to something _for a year_ because of
| auto renew. The subscription is something useful but was going
| to use a competitor but once I 'd paid it they made it so
| painful to back out I let it go, turned off auto renew
| properly, and will never use them again once this one lapses.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| What's the service, if you don't mind saying? I'd like to
| avoid them if I can help it.
| brigandish wrote:
| I'd tell you if it was in person, sorry. Just watch out for
| those settings!
|
| I wonder if there's a service that handles this kind of
| thing, it would be worth a subscription.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| How do things play out if you call your credit card company
| and say, "Please don't allow any more charges from this
| vendor. I'm trying to cancel but they're making it hard."?
| hef19898 wrote:
| I canceled a credit card over a un-cancellable MS Office
| subscription. MS, all of a sudden, came back to me. After
| two months or so, they forgot about it and it had no impact
| on the other subscriptions I had at the time.
| brigandish wrote:
| I have used my credit card company to do this, but like I
| say, it wasn't that I was particularly unhappy with their
| service, just wanted to use a competitor (grass looked
| greener). Ironically, the auto renew was the first real
| problem I'd had.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| > it wasn't that I was particularly unhappy with their
| service
|
| "The service is prohibitively difficult to cancel" is a
| perfectly sensible justification for being unhappy with
| the service.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Semi-related: If you don't want to go through the process
| of trying to work with your bank to refuse auto-renewal,
| there are services like Privacy (privacy.com) that allow
| you to essentially make "virtual" credit cards.
|
| You allot a specific amount of money to one of their cards,
| then use that to sign up with.
|
| It also claims to help keep your accounts a bit more safe,
| since if that data gets leaked, it's not your _actual_ card
| number, but it 's really more of centralizing the risk on
| Privacy's servers instead at 10 different vendors.
| valarauko wrote:
| > services like Privacy (privacy.com) that allow you to
| essentially make "virtual" credit cards.
|
| Is there an option to create virtual "credit" cards on
| Privacy? I only can make debit cards.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| Ah, sorry I was using the terms interchangeably. I think
| it's actually a debit setup, kind of like a gift card?
| I've never actually used the service, just heard some
| reviews about it.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| I wish I could cancel a credit card recurring payment as
| easily as a standing order or direct debit.
|
| But guess what - it's in the interests of the business and
| the credit card company for me to keep paying
| eganist wrote:
| It's even more in the interests of the credit card
| company to retain your long term business. That's why
| chargebacks are so frequently abused (and accepted by
| card issuers).
| mywacaday wrote:
| setup a virtual temp card number with revolut/paypal etc,
| change the card on the account then cancel the card.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| >>> I wish I could ... as easily as ...
|
| ;-)
|
| Thank you - that is actually a "solution" i will looking
| to it
| bendergarcia wrote:
| The internet is full of these dark patterns. It really should
| be illegal to use tricky language to get people to opt into
| things they're not really interested in. In this case auto
| renewal but often it's sharing contact info or tracking without
| explicit consent.
| yomkippur wrote:
| If crypto is allowed to exist this would be a drop in the
| bucket, its not going to get fixed.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| The reason being: a single publication gives a vary narrow
| perspective
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What publications are you subscribed to? Which publications do
| you read?
|
| I find that high quality publications give quite an honest and
| objective view.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Right, AN objective view...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What publications are you subscribed to? Which publications
| do you read?
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| They signed up to read one interesting article.
|
| The experience of news subscriptions, and especially
| cancellations, is terrible.
|
| Where are the pay as you go plans? I'll give your site $20, then
| you can debit my account some fee per article that I actually
| read. And no auto-renew.
| markus92 wrote:
| Blendle tried this, but it didn't really work out for them.
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| Hmm, never heard of it. I was thinking more of a per-
| publication offering, in the same way there are per-
| publication subscriptions, rather than a separate aggregation
| service that wants to be in my Inbox all the time. I think
| not every article has the same value either, not sure how one
| gauges the value of a given article exactly.
|
| My point really is that I'm willing to pay a reasonable
| price, but I'm not willing to sign up in perpetuity and I'm
| not willing to go through an onerous cancellation process.
| Treat me like a valued customer and let me buy the pieces I
| want. I don't really care to support parts of the paper/news
| I don't consume - which is what a subscription does.
| globalreset wrote:
| The real puzzle is why anyone subscribes in the first place.
| LegitShady wrote:
| exactly this. I'm surprised 2/3 of subscribers don't cancel as
| well.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Everybody who sends email notifications wants to send me about
| 10x as many as I can handle.
|
| It's one reason I hate substack.
| welfare wrote:
| I "almost" cancel my subscriptions periodically, they usually
| have a "wait before you cancel" offer in the last step
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| What I hate about subs for news media these days is the trend to
| have hidden tiers for subscribers.
|
| Basically, you pay a monthly/yearly fee and then all of the
| sudden you realize that are certain publications that are
| _Exclusive_ for 'Gold' members or whatever! what a scam. They
| took a page from the SaaS business-space.
| ctxc wrote:
| Reminds me of Amazon Prime where many movies have an extra
| paywall ("rent?") even if you own a subscription. So annoying.
| fluidcruft wrote:
| I haven't rerun the analysis but back in the day (ten-to-
| fifteen+ years ago) it was actually cheaper to subscribe to
| purchase new digital episodes of series you liked on Amazon
| VOD (at something like $2-$3/episode) rather than to pay for
| cable. Back then (pre-streaming) TiVo boxes would auto-
| download the new episodes overnight and poof there they are
| to watch. We are again getting to the point with
| subscriptions that just buying whatever content is becoming
| cost-effective again. The problem is that once I start
| bothering to hunt to buy something, it's not a lot harder to
| hunt for $0 versions so ethics becomes the only barrier. How
| much does it cost to purchase Stranger Things every few years
| vs pay Netflix monthly?
| auggierose wrote:
| Would you prefer the movies you can rent were not there at
| all?
| Larrikin wrote:
| I only watch shows on Apple TV that have been recommended
| to me through word of mouth or on a review site so that I
| know it was produced for the service, precisely because the
| UI is so terrible with the mixing of content. 99% of the
| time I will have wasted part of my life looking for
| something interesting to watch only to find out I have to
| pay more money on top of the subscription.
|
| They're handing out free subscriptions constantly to build
| the service, but the mixing of subscription content with
| pay content actively makes me use the trials less and makes
| me never want to pay for the service.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| What an odd question. I would prefer the movies that are on
| the service I pay for to be included in my package.
|
| It's a different service, rentals, smashed into the service
| I pay for, prime "free" videos. That is what makes it
| frustrating. I do in fact sometimes end up renting those
| videos which is why they include them. But it's not a good
| customer experience by any means.
| auggierose wrote:
| That's only an odd question if you assume it costs Amazon
| nothing to include videos in prime. So the alternatives
| are: a) Only free prime videos. b) Free prime videos +
| videos you can rent. There is no option c) All videos in
| the world available for free on prime. As much as you
| would maybe like it.
| registeredcorn wrote:
| I'd prefer a higher subscription rate for the service. The
| sensation of paying for something, then paying _on top_ of
| that thing is infuriating. It 's like paying admission to
| enter a theme park, then having to pay a fee for each ride:
| either let me enter for free, and pay for each ride, or pay
| to enter, and ride for free.
|
| Assuming a higher subscription rate would be prohibitively
| expensive, then yes, I would prefer no option at all.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| You can change Amazon video to only show free options. A
| subscription that made all the rentable movies free would
| be prohibitively expensive. You should basically be
| thinking of prime video and the movie rental service as
| different businesses.
| ascagnel_ wrote:
| Really the issue is that Amazon is trying to use a single
| app ("Prime Video") for both the Prime Video service
| (all-you-can-watch library of limited content) and their
| video storefront (a la carte purchases of a larger
| library). They should have split them out years ago, or
| at least done a better job of segmenting the two.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Completely disagree here. It's kinda like going into
| blockbuster used to be. You can spend $1 on the cheap
| movies (eg, the free ones on prime), or you want to watch
| a brand new major release, you spend more.
|
| Cable has done the same thing for decades. Subscription
| includes a ton of free content, and you can pay more for
| PPV or on demand new releases.
| thewebcount wrote:
| I mean, for a long time, when a new movie came out on
| iTunes, I would first check Netflix to see if it was
| included in my subscription, and about 50% of the time it
| was. You likely wouldn't get the same selection, but it
| would not be prohibitively expensive to have at least
| some of the movies available on their service.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think you can pay to watch movies _a la carte_ on
| Amazon even if you don 't have a prime subscription.
|
| Personally I've enjoyed paying for individual movies on
| Amazon because the selection of free movies on Prime is
| underwhelming. (e.g. they have all the "C" sci-fi movies)
| fluidcruft wrote:
| What I really hate is that there doesn't seem to be some sort
| of Netflix-type subscription thing (or if there is I'm not
| aware of it and the subscribe now! banners blasted over
| everything never seem to suggest them).
|
| If there's an interesting story in, say, the Austin local
| newspaper and I live in Idaho or wherever I am _not_ bothering
| to subscribe to Austin 's local newspaper just to see if the
| rest of the article is actually interesting. And sure sometimes
| you get three articles or whatever but even then it's insanity
| to subscribe.
| ssully wrote:
| Apple News+ or whatever it is called does this. It has a good
| spread of papers across the country (Houston Chronical, LA
| Times, Kansas City Star, etc), but obviously doesn't include
| the bigger publications like the NYTimes or Washington Post.
| sseagull wrote:
| I was seriously looking into Apple News+ a few months ago,
| but it turns out you have to use the app (from what I
| remember), which of course requires an Apple device.
|
| I only have an iPhone, and like to read news on my computer
| or tablet which doesn't run iOS. So that's a no-go for me
| :/
| thewebcount wrote:
| It does include the Washington Post. I read WP articles on
| it all the time.
| ec109685 wrote:
| This is unethical:
|
| "It makes sense that sleepers churn: They aren't getting much
| value from their subscription. Yet they don't churn right away.
| In any given month, 90% of sleepers will simply continue to stay
| inactive. It's only when they wake up again and come back that
| their cancellation rates soar, generally accounting for about 30%
| of active churn.
|
| This makes re-engaging sleepers difficult. How do you bring them
| back into the fold and "wake them up" without prompting them to
| cancel?"
|
| They are advising to trick users into continuing their
| subscription by not reminding them they are subscribed.
|
| I am sure they are also against reminding folks when it is time
| to auto renew.
|
| These are all tactics that hurt the overall subscription industry
| by making people not trust companies. The ethical thing to do is
| ensure each subscriber is subscribing by choice.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I've seen the hazards of "raise the dead" campaigns before. You
| send out a campaign to your inactive users and get 20%
| engagement. Half of those are cancellations. With 30% sleeper
| rate, you just immediately 3% of your users. Not fun.
|
| What I haven't seen is an analysis of the effect on retention
| rate. That's going to play out over time. Some of the users who
| cancelled were going to anyway and some people you reactivated
| were saved. It would be very handy to have a formula of what
| values make sense to send out these campaigns so you can
| stomach the short term loss for the long term gain.
| nerdponx wrote:
| > These are all tactics that hurt the overall subscription
| industry by making people not trust companies. The ethical
| thing to do is ensure each subscriber is subscribing by choice.
|
| Tragedy of the commons.
|
| See also: taxis. Uber succeeded in part because taxi cartels
| had become so incredibly unlikable.
| banannaise wrote:
| And now Uber is its own unlikable taxi cartel, and so the
| cycle continues.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| So many newspapers want a subscription to read _anything_. I mean
| get real, if I visit your news site to get information about some
| unusual newsworthy event I 'm not going to subscribe.
| Markoff wrote:
| This just shows banks don't offer enough virtual single use bank
| cards for protection against renewing.
| DavideNL wrote:
| The first thing i do right after buying a subscription on the
| AppStore, is cancel it. It's the only way to stay in control and
| avoid accidentally paying for things i don't use;
|
| I bet many people do this, for any type of subscription.
| cletus wrote:
| Som eyears ago I was thinking of joining my local Equinox. A few
| of us went for a tour and here's what I remember most. In the
| lobby there were 5 "membership consultants" for signing people
| up. None of them were doing anything at that point. While there
| one of them answered a phone call. The person on the other end
| clearly wanted to cancel. "I'm sorry, no one can help you with
| that right now. You should come in tomorrow."
|
| In my case at least it would've been a payroll deduction so I'd
| never have to deal with cancelling. I'd just cancel the payroll
| deduction (as in it was a corporate rate).
|
| A lot of people don't like Adobe having subscription services. I
| actually think subscriptions are a better fit for software. You
| never really "own" your software as much as you think you might.
| You've just created an incentive for the company to bump the
| major version and sell you an "upgrade" while abandoning your
| version. Adobe did this cameras they'd support with their RAW
| plugin. The RAW plugin just had completely nnnecessary minimum
| versions to force people to upgrade.
|
| But Adobe's subscription model sucks. You have to purchase a year
| minimum. There are lots of dark patterns to auto-renew. Actually
| cancelling is difficult.
|
| Compare this to Jetbrains (which I pay for). When you cancel you
| get to use any version you've paid for in perpetuity. They send
| you advance notice about renewals. I'm happy to pay it.
|
| There are a number of news publications I'd like to support but I
| just don't want to deal with an opaque "introductory pricing" and
| having to call someone to cancel. I'm not supporting such
| practices with my money.
|
| I realize some MBA somewhere has done the math on new subs lost
| vs continuing subs they'd lose but this is a classic example of
| short-term thinkin gyour way into extinction.
| mjparrott wrote:
| Didn't the FTC make it illegal to "click to subscribe, call to
| cancel"? The issue is just that it is not enforced at all.
|
| https://boingboing.net/2021/11/17/ftc-says-click-to-subscrib...
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