The New Service Wars

My credit card expiry date rolled over recently, so I got sent a new card with a new expiry date. As a consequence, I had to go through my banking records and track down all my recurring subscriptions so I could update my payment information. I ended up having to create a spreadsheet for the task.

I was surprised at how much it added up to. And it will probably only get worse, as Sam Rutherford points out in this Gizmodo article. 

The beauty for companies is that once you sign you up, they’ve got you. It’s one thing not to buy another product from a specific company, but it’s another thing entirely to cancel one of your countless subscriptions, delete your account (and maybe migrate your data), and switch to another platform (assuming that’s even an option). After all, it’s just $10 or $15 a month, right? That’s nothing.

This evolution has spawned an endless variety of monthly subscription services looking to sell you crates filled with your favorite nerdy swag, foreign confections from around the world, dental hygiene supplies, and basically anything else you can imagine. It’s a subscription service feeding frenzy out there. But it’s the tech companies that have perfected this model, as they have transformed things that once seemed like everyday pleasures into services that feel more like a tax on your paycheck. It sucks. When you combine these services with monthly bills for important things like housing, utilities, and internet, suddenly, a big chunk of the disposable income you think you have vanishes into the ether at the beginning of the month.

In my case, I don't have any music subscriptions (unless you count the music part of Amazon Prime), but I have three online newspaper accounts (which will become two at some point), three online data storage accounts (again, which will be whittled down two), and three online video subscriptions (again, probably down to two as I think Netflix will be going).

So it's worth tracking all of these in detail. You might be surprised at just how much you're spending.

As an alternative to paid services, you could check out some of the networks listed in this article from Wired. If your library has it, Kanopy is especially good, with much of the Criterion Collection available.