> with each subscription comes a business relationship you have to manage, which is annoying and prone to being forgotten
Though, this is one advantage of centralized services like Paypal and the iOS ecosystem.
At any time, I can see the iOS apps that are auto-billing me and I can rescind the contract from that UI. I don't need to call anyone or hope their <button>Cancel</button> actually does anything. I don't need to watch my statement like a hawk just to make sure they actually stopped billing me or that the 7-day trial that I canceled actually canceled.
Anyone can complain about yet another subscription. But tools that help us stay on top of our subscriptions are essential for subscriptions that aren't a bad deal. The banking/financial industry stopped evolving long ago and should have built ubiquitous tools for this.
Finally, the complaints about subscription services in this thread aren't very compelling. Nobody wants to buy a subscription yet the app transaction they want on their terms (e.g. buy once, never expire) presumably doesn't exist. It's a pebble's throw from just complaining that you'd prefer if everything was free so that you could keep your hard earned money.
Aside, iOS doesn't go far enough. Just so I don't seem like I'm too kind to Apple and subscription services here, they still have a long way to go. If they cared more about consumer protection, they would enact these changes:
1) iOS notification every time we get auto-billed. Every time we get charged, we should get reminded to consider if we actually want the subscription and that people aren't just getting taken advantage of by forgetting. iOS does nicely show you your auto-renewing subscriptions, but my parents don't know how to access it.
2) nuke the ability for weekly charges. A monthly billing cycle should be the minimum because that's what people are used to. It's kinda disgusting that an app can charge $7/wk when 99.9% of auto-renew cycles are monthly, and the user has to happen to notice the "wk" when they agree to it. And if weekly billing is allowed, then the iOS pricing page should standardize it showing you how much that costs per month to make it clear that it's not $7/mo.
3) An app shouldn't be able to default to the yearly billing cycle, it should default to monthly and the user can choose a yearly cycle if they want to, ugh. So many apps will default to the yearly cycle (so, 12*fee upfront) and even require you to pick that one if you want the 7-day free trial. It's hard to see how Apple could design the system to allow this behavior without knowing it's going to make people commit to a billing cycle they don't actually want.
4) You shouldn't be able to display a full-screen interstitial that makes it seem like you have to subscribe to use the app. I was just looking for a good daily workout iPhone app this week and every app had a full-screen splash page where you had to notice the tiny "X" to skip.
That said, still better than the US system where giving someone your debit card number in 2021 lets them pull money from your account for years just because you bought a $3 hotdog from them once.
> Nobody wants to buy a subscription yet the app transaction they want on their terms (e.g. buy once, never expire) presumably doesn't exist
It used to. The subscription model is pretty new and has only become common in the last decade or so (generously; it's probably even more recent). Buying a perpetual license to use a copy of software was the way to buy software up until fairly recently.
You can characterize this shift as malicious, as a result of corporate greed and a desire to protect IP. Or you can characterize it as simply companies struggling to generate stable, predictable revenue with the old model, and finding subscription revenue to be more healthy. Regardless, subscription models are new, not the long-time status quo.
> It's a pebble's throw from just complaining that you'd prefer if everything was free so that you could keep your hard earned money.
No, it's not, and it's disingenuous of you to suggest that's where people are going with this.
Though, this is one advantage of centralized services like Paypal and the iOS ecosystem.
At any time, I can see the iOS apps that are auto-billing me and I can rescind the contract from that UI. I don't need to call anyone or hope their <button>Cancel</button> actually does anything. I don't need to watch my statement like a hawk just to make sure they actually stopped billing me or that the 7-day trial that I canceled actually canceled.
Anyone can complain about yet another subscription. But tools that help us stay on top of our subscriptions are essential for subscriptions that aren't a bad deal. The banking/financial industry stopped evolving long ago and should have built ubiquitous tools for this.
Finally, the complaints about subscription services in this thread aren't very compelling. Nobody wants to buy a subscription yet the app transaction they want on their terms (e.g. buy once, never expire) presumably doesn't exist. It's a pebble's throw from just complaining that you'd prefer if everything was free so that you could keep your hard earned money.
Aside, iOS doesn't go far enough. Just so I don't seem like I'm too kind to Apple and subscription services here, they still have a long way to go. If they cared more about consumer protection, they would enact these changes:
1) iOS notification every time we get auto-billed. Every time we get charged, we should get reminded to consider if we actually want the subscription and that people aren't just getting taken advantage of by forgetting. iOS does nicely show you your auto-renewing subscriptions, but my parents don't know how to access it.
2) nuke the ability for weekly charges. A monthly billing cycle should be the minimum because that's what people are used to. It's kinda disgusting that an app can charge $7/wk when 99.9% of auto-renew cycles are monthly, and the user has to happen to notice the "wk" when they agree to it. And if weekly billing is allowed, then the iOS pricing page should standardize it showing you how much that costs per month to make it clear that it's not $7/mo.
3) An app shouldn't be able to default to the yearly billing cycle, it should default to monthly and the user can choose a yearly cycle if they want to, ugh. So many apps will default to the yearly cycle (so, 12*fee upfront) and even require you to pick that one if you want the 7-day free trial. It's hard to see how Apple could design the system to allow this behavior without knowing it's going to make people commit to a billing cycle they don't actually want.
4) You shouldn't be able to display a full-screen interstitial that makes it seem like you have to subscribe to use the app. I was just looking for a good daily workout iPhone app this week and every app had a full-screen splash page where you had to notice the tiny "X" to skip.
That said, still better than the US system where giving someone your debit card number in 2021 lets them pull money from your account for years just because you bought a $3 hotdog from them once.