Anyone else getting subscription burnout?

I ditched a lot of subscriptions recently and I was encouraged by Scott Galloway in doing so.
 
Last edited:
fez said:
I'm not quite sure how you came to that logic.

Their costs will have gone up over the past 5 years by probably 20% or more. They will likely have gone up that much simply on salary increases due to inflation unless they haven't paid their staff in line with inflation.

Their profit margin might have been comfortable 5 years ago and now its not comfortable. They may have been eating into their cash reserves or barely turning a profit as a result of these cost increases.

This might not mean anything to you but Zwift did the same thing. Didn't raise prices for 7 years or something and then suddenly raised them by 25% saying that they wanted to invest in the product and that they hadn't increased prices in years. They would have been far better off and received far less backlash if they charged 3% more every year despite the delayed increase being better for customers because of the shock and the backlash.

----

What did really **** me off recently was getting a letter from three saying that due to changes in the rules about making price increases transparent they have to do it in monetary amounts not a percentage. So they have increased contracts arbitrarily by X pounds depending on the type of contract.

Mine was £16/month and it was going up by £1.90. Thats basically 12%. I would have just ignored it if it was 3-4% on the price I was paying but the ******* cheek to use rule changes designed to make it more obvious what increase you were being charged to just charge way more annoyed the hell out of me.

Phoned up and threatened to cancel and ended up on a £7 month contract for the same plan essentially. If they had just been remotely fair instead of complete *****...



I'm sure if you asked them to explain it i'm sure they would have a decent list of cool things they have added. All software runs into the same fundamental issue though. There comes a point where the vast majority of your userbase either doesn't want to learn new features or has no interest in them. They use 20% of your product and the value proposition is based on that usage. You can make the product 100x bigger and better but if they don't care, they won't pay more. Adobe found this out with photoshop. A hell of a lot of people simply want to do really basic stuff to images with a good UI, myself included. Thats worth about £5/month to me. Its not worth £20/month. I don't doubt that professionals who use a lot of the advanced stuff see waaaay more value in it but I don't.
Click to expand...

They should have put the price up at the time, explaining what the features were that justifies the more premium price.

In fairness, if they need me to ask them what's improved then perhaps the improvements aren't that valuable.

I absolutely get that businesses are facing higher costs, but they should say that's the reason, rather than spinning some PR story about it being about features. Our local brewery have put costs up several times in 18 months, and they're quite open about it:

We are very sorry to let you know that our shop beer prices will be increasing by an average of 3.8% from today (Monday 16th February).

Like many businesses, we’ve recently been affected by significant ongoing cost increases including recent duty increases. We’ve worked hard to limit this increase as much as possible.

In practical terms, this means an increase of 20p per litre (11.4p per pint) on fresh beer and 15p on 500ml bottles. Our Membership Club will also see a small increase. There is no change to pricing in the Tap Yard at this time.

We know price increases are never welcome, and we truly value your continued support and understanding.
Click to expand...

In fairness to them, they have tried to limit alcohol duty previously by reformulating their IPA to a lower abv.
 
Mekrel said:
In fairness to them, they have tried to limit alcohol duty previously by reformulating their IPA to a lower abv.
Click to expand...
I can't believe we are going back to the 1990s 3.4% swill. I wonder if the "export" beers will make a comeback. I really hope so. I don't drink much so when I do I like to enjoy my beer.

OTOH some would rather save money so maybe it works for them so having 2 lines like the older days makes sense.

as for subscriptions....
we recently binned Disney.

we have apple but only because it's included with my bank.
we have prime because we use most of the service (free games, free postage, prime music and prime reading as well as TV)

and we have Netflix mainly because my mum uses it so we pay a family sub and I don't want her to lose it .

but it is out of hand and to be honest with piracy so. simple imo it will bite them!. with a simple add blocker on brave (otherwise it's full of dodgy popups) if I choose to I can access any TV shows and movies I want via a free streaming service (which I won't link here) which is just as user friendly as any official service.

Am not saying i use it ;) but it's there and if I wanted to I could lose every paid tv sub I have and not miss it.
 
Last edited:
We got rid of netflix, Disney plus and Amazon prime/ music. Changed YouTube subscription to family through another country and utilise other self hosted means of watching films and TV.
 
Last edited:
I spend my money on stuff I feel is worth it. If you take my money and in return add ads to the products I already pay for, whilst turning the films in to absolute bottom-of-the-barrel junk, you bet your bottom dollar I'm cancelling it, and very likely still gaining access to your stuff.

Present me with a good product, which doesn't make me feel like its sole objective is to rinse me for every penny it can, and I'll happily pay for it.

I'm tired of being milked, my udders and nipples are all sucked dry, now I'm softening them with lovely sea water from my nice wooden ship.

And you know what? It feels like a victory.
 
We don't have time to watch TV, let alone live TV so cancelled TV licence about a year ago. Don't get to watch anything on iPlayer but not concerned. We get loads of letters though about the licence.

We have Spotify, Netflix and Amazon Prime but thinking of dropping Netflix. We still buy the odd CD and Vinyl so giving Spotify a thought too.
 
This time last year we had:

Prime
YouTube premium
Disney+
Netflix
Google one

Binned the lot of them in the past 12 months. Adverts, prices going up, inability to buy them abroad. We are now subscription free!
 
The only subs I have are
YT premium (family plan via MM) - paid yearly in advance
Amazon prime - paid yearly
Blink basic - paid yearly
FFXIV

Screw the others lol
 
Diddums said:
I spend my money on stuff I feel is worth it. If you take my money and in return add ads to the products I already pay for, whilst turning the films in to absolute bottom-of-the-barrel junk, you bet your bottom dollar I'm cancelling it, and very likely still gaining access to your stuff.

Present me with a good product, which doesn't make me feel like its sole objective is to rinse me for every penny it can, and I'll happily pay for it.

I'm tired of being milked, my udders and nipples are all sucked dry, now I'm softening them with lovely sea water from my nice wooden ship.

And you know what? It feels like a victory.
Click to expand...

I'm sick of this profiteering. Particularly the movie studios.
Netflix looks successful, I want a bit of that.

But no one studio can make enough content to be worth it. But they all need their own infrastructure (costs)

Now you have how ever many services... All wanting similar prices.

And it's worse than that. Content quality has dropped. Massively. So you're paying more, for less.


I do think more and more people are getting to their personal price limit for streaming. Spotify is probably one that still has a lot of room to increase charges. But the TV stuff? Must be near max cost.

I do wonder if piracy was ended (ie impossible) what would happen.


I don't watch much full stop anymore. There's just so little good stuff out there anymore. Can't remember the last really good series that was good all the way through. Maybe stranger things stands out here.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom