OPINION: The Subscription Snare- How Companies Will Drain You of Your Last Penny
The days of product ownership are gone, and now even your home printer may be at the mercy of a subscription.
By Stephanie Schneider
When you walk into an office space, chances are you will find at least one product made by HP. Printers, computers, and fax machines, all made by a long-trusted company and built to last. But what if you had to pay a monthly fee to use your trusty printer? Would you still buy it?
Unfortunately, this is the reality HP has brought to consumers. HP has implemented a policy that allows the company to manually disable printers if the “HP Instant Ink” subscription is cancelled, and this policy also applies if a user uses third-party ink cartridges rather than HP cartridges. Outside of printers, actually owning something outright these days is a rare luxury. Streaming services, applications, and even home maintenance; all these things are in the hands of their company to be stripped of you at any second. The worst part? These expensive monthly payments are purposefully challenging to cancel.
Buried in the most random and insignificant pages of a website, cancelling a subscription is an ordeal that will likely take hours out of your day and often ends in failure or additional service charge.
How do you “subscribe” to home maintenance?
A question for the ages. What do you mean I’m subscribing to my plumber? Amid the murky swamp of subscriptions and scams, a new contender has entered the fray. Home services. Some companies have begun offering to handle your plumbing, electrical, and structural repairs on a monthly payment plan. Plans can range from $230 a month to $146 per visit. One of these companies, Willow, offers their services for the bargain price of just $400 a month! They also provide a handy chart of all the reasons why Willow is better than your typical handyman.
However, it’s still hard to see the actual benefit of these subscriptions. You still must schedule them. You have to call and set a time. It will still be a stranger entering your home. No matter how well they know the “history of your home,” it is just another handyman there for a job, except this one costs $400 for some reason.
It’s free! …With a subscription
Many companies, especially on television, have taken to referring to content as “Free with subscription,” a vacuous oxymoron fueled by greed.
Adding insult to injury, services often offer multiple subscription plans, leaving you without access to the content you subscribed to in the first place.
A great example of this is Prime Video. Once upon a time, Prime Video was included in the Amazon Prime membership. Now, they have not only separated, but the Prime Video subscription is no longer just an entry ticket to the collection of shows and movies; it now requires its own subscription to watch, on top of the base Prime Video fee.
Let’s say you want to rewatch your favorite show, Dexter. You search where to stream it, and hooray! It’s on Amazon Prime Video, which you have! But wait, you need the Paramount+ subscription actually to watch it. So, what is even the point of having the Prime Video plan? That question is yet to be answered, and probably never will, because there is no point.
It’s just more money in Amazon’s pockets. This redundancy of subscription plans is all too common among every site you may visit. Disney+ and Hulu bundle. Disney+ and Hulu bundle premium. Disney+, Hulu, ESPN “select” bundle. Disney+, Hulu, ESPN “select” bundle premium- the list goes on, but it would just be two more pages of the same recycled package names.
Most people don’t even know which plan they are subscribed to, and can’t be bothered to navigate the superfluous list of plans and wording.
Subscriptions are often a trap. However, we will likely never unsubscribe, because we love our shows and movies, and every company knows this all too well. And attempting to unsubscribe from any service is typically a dreadful and arduous process.
Sites like Rocket Money are great for tracking your subscriptions, but once you want more advanced features… You need to subscribe to use it.
It never ends. Streaming services have us gripped by the throat and don’t intend to let go.
But, hey, at least you get all the stuff that comes “free” with your subscription!
