Comment by cj

9 days ago

For Christmas I got an alarm clock that basically doesn’t function without a $50/year subscription. For an alarm clock (Hatch.co).

Consumers need to get better at understanding TCO when buying things. Or maybe the government should be slapping those “annual cost” stickers like they do on washing machines to understand how much electricity they use.

14 comments

cj

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njovin  9 days ago

I almost fell into this trap when buying a 'smart ring' for my spouse this year. Oura wanted $349 for the silver (!) and a subscription fee on top of that.

RingConn was cheaper, the build quality seems great, and there's no subscription fee. That made the decision a no-brainer.

port11  8 days ago

I’m working on an app as part of my unemployment trajectory. It was going to be a one-time purchase thing, but almost everyone on the business advisory team thinks it’s a bad idea. I’m running out of excuses/arguments as to why I think the app should not be subscription-based, seems like bad business to do so.

infecto  9 days ago

I would never buy this product but it seems pretty clear on the website the sub is highly integrated and most likely required.

bitwize  8 days ago

TIL. Business model: Juicero for alarms. Great paired with your EightSleep brand cloud-enabled bed.

andruby  9 days ago

That's a terrible gift! Did the g(r)ifter know it needed such a subscription?

  • jerf  9 days ago

    An immense amount of abuse is being done to "consumers" because most people don't have a mental model for how expensive subscriptions are and end up counting them as nearly free, because they are not even tomorrow's problem, but next month's problem. Entire industries run on that principle, like the burgeoning buy now pay later space (which promise no interest but I promise you they're not making money on a whole bunch of "0% interest" loans so you do the math). Meanwhile companies love the recurring revenue. It's a perfect storm of corporate greed meeting a consumer blindspot.

    Even if they "knew" they may well have not been accounting for it properly. I've been annualizing all my subscription fees for a long time now and dealing with the resulting number, but that's still an unpopular approach. Subscription fees are bleeding more people than ever dry.

    • cruffle_duffle  9 days ago

      “I've been annualizing all my subscription fees for a long time now and dealing with the resulting number, but that's still an unpopular approach.”

      This is my trick. I simply take the monthly price and multiply am by ten to quickly get a crude imperfect annual cost (adding two more months if I wanted to be exact)

      Then I’ll look and go gee is this thing actually worth $150 or whatever the value is and ask “or more” assuming I wouldn’t cancel?

      The answer is usually no. I’m slowly teaching this trick to my elementary school daughter.

      1 reply →

    • andruby  8 days ago

      Are most people really this naive? I might be "the exception", and have had this discussion with friend _who are accountants no less_ and they all consider the monthly price "cheaper" than when presented as a yearly price.

      Should we start a "subscription review day": make a list of all your subscriptions, change them to yearly amounts and ask yourselves "am I getting that much value out of it"?