Subscription services irony

[moonshadow]

subscription.jpg

It's often stated that subscription services are getting out of hand... and you can read all about it in this WSJ piece from a few years ago, however it will require... a subscription...

[FranTastic444]

As Alanis Morissette would no doubt state, "Isn't it ironic, don't you think?" I may listen to that tune on Spotify later on (one of my many subscriptions!)

ARR - annual recurring revenue. It's the only metric that anyone seems to care about in my field of work. Recurring revenue is valued so much more highly than one-off payments.

The whole newspaper / magazine industry is in a total mess right now. Good journalism costs money to produce and, unfortunately, too many people have become used to not buying news publications and instead getting content for free over the Internet (that Berners-Lee guy has a lot to answer for ) . Not enough people are buying hard copies and publishers can't fill the funding gap through advertising on their websites.

On one level I see why newspapers in particular have gone down this route, but I dislike their underhand tactic of making it very easy to sign up (by Internet) and very difficult to cancel (can only be done by phone and you get a lot of pressure from the person you speak to to keep the subscription going). ISTR there was a movement towards persuading such publications to offer a way of unsubscribing via the Internet. The other slightly underhanded feature of subscriptions is that it is all too easy for someone to get a free / discounted deal that they then forget to cancel even though they are making little / no use of the service.

[Barleymower]

My car insurance is up for renewal. As a curtesy my insurance company will auto renew. Every year I tell them to not auto renew the policy and every year they send me the auto renew notice.
This is a proper money spinner. God bless the internet.

[moonshadow]

The whole newspaper / magazine industry is in a total mess right now. Good journalism costs money to produce and, unfortunately, too many people have become used to not buying news publications and instead getting content for free over the Internet (that Berners-Lee guy has a lot to answer for ) . Not enough people are buying hard copies and publishers can't fill the funding gap through advertising on their websites.

I try to go easy on the journalism outlets. Really I've got no beef media subscriptions, from journalism to other entertainment services (e.g. Netflix, hulu, Disney+), and even services that provide something like unlimited free shipping (Amazon prime), and I don't take issue with offering software on the basis of subscription, especially considering that software will likely have to be constantly patched, and that subscription basically pays for the programmers that patch the software.

Microsoft Office even offers a one time fee of I believe around $200 just to buy the license outright, however you still lose some features and of course I'm not sure if you'd get any software updates and patches as once the license is purchased, it basically is what it is.

Where I sound the alarm and get irritated is this trend of companies "bricking" actual hardware products like printers [0] and even automobiles if you don't pay the subscription service to keep it active. I understand an automobile lease is basically a "subscription" and yes, if you don't pay your lease/car payment your car should be bricked so the repo man can collect the property, but if I own something out right, I don't think I should have to pay money to keep it operational unless I choose to, (such as in the case of a service contract).

I see this becoming the future with these electric cars, which I'm increasingly becoming disenchanted with, not that I was ever fully onboard to begin with. I think history will look back on the electric car as we know it today as one of the biggest cons of the decade, possibly the century, and I'm only wondering who's palms are getting greased to push these unenviromental, dangerous, and expensive status symbols onto the masses.

Anyway, I digress. This current trend into pushing anything and everything into a subscription business model seems to smack of the slogan "in the future, you'll own nothing and be happy"...

[0] Footnote on printers: I've not owned a working printer in over a decade. Ever since the PDF file became more widely used and basically "free" for most purposes, I find simply printing to pdf, or using "cam scanner" on my phone to convert any image to a free PDF rules a printer unnecessary in most matters of business. In that rare case I do need to print a hard copy out for some reason or another, simply paying the local UPS store a dollar or two to do the job is sufficient. The library may even do it cheaper.

[rode_kater]

Anyway, I digress. This current trend into pushing anything and everything into a subscription business model seems to smack of the slogan "in the future, you'll own nothing and be happy"...

The thing is, it does have advantages in many areas. For complicated devices that are difficult to fix it's really attractive to just pay a monthly fee and make the maintenance somebody else's problem. If you rent your central heating boiler and something breaks, you ring them and they come immediately and fix it, without any extra charges. The whole thing needs to be replaced? Not your problem. Half the attraction of leasing a car is that all maintenance costs are included. Replacing tyres, annual services, all somebody else's problem. As a side-benefit, it encourages manufacturers to build devices that don't break.

The customer decides. You don't want to rent a device? Don't. Manufacturers will get the hint, or not.

EVs are the future sorry. We've just seen the beginning of their capabilities. The first 1000km/600mi range car is now available. In a decade that will be some middle of the range car. And they're so much more pleasant to ride in. If I never have to visit a petrol station again I'll be happy. They're such dreary places.

[Midas]

EVs are an aberration. If you resent the five minutes occasionally spent in the petrol station you must love the 45 minutes needed to charge an EV in some grotty service station. They aren’t even green, as you have to do a seriously high mileage to break even on the additional carbon cost of making the car in the first place; and that’s before the carbon cost of road damage caused by the extra weight. It also assumes you get all your electricity from windmills, ha ha!

I had a Volvo XC90 hybrid for over six years. It was the most unreliable car I’ve ever had, all issues caused by the electric part of the car. I’ve just bought a new XC40, but a petrol version. It’s brilliant and as my mileage is now much lower than it used to be will last 20 years if I wish.

EV? I won’t have one at any price.

[crfriend]

EV? I won’t have one at any price.

I'm in that camp for the moment as well. Why?

1) Right now, at least in the USA, these are "relocated emissions vehicles" because of the way we generate electricity. Things are getting a bit better, but will get vastly worse soon,
2) There's too much money involved -- with much of that in the hands of very corrupt and influential people who all want MORE money. This is not sustainable,
3) Range and time-to-charge. The energy density of batteries is vastly lower than that of gasoline or diesel leading to very long charge-times, limited range, and large expense (see 2).
4) Battery reliability. New England has recently had a cold-snap that resembles what things were like 50 years ago -- and which nobody is used to now. There are repeated reports of Tesla batteries failing in the cold (and likely other makes as well), and in a proper New England winter, freezing to death is a real possibility in the case of vehicle failure.

Electric cars worked quite well when trips were short; this is the role in which they were quite popular at the turn of the 20th Century; however, traffic and travel patterns have changed and we're travelling more now and for longer distances. In that role, the limitations from (3) above come into powerful relief and can easily scupper the idea of going all-electric.

[Fred in Skirts]

EVs may be OK in Europe where the towns are much smaller and the distance between them is small, BUT in the US towns are much bigger with distances between them so much longer that EVs do not work. So if you like your EV I hope you live in a small town and have plenty of charging stations handy. Oh Yes and a good and fast fire department to try to save your car after the battery catches fire!
As for me my gas powered car is doing just fine it may not be new (2008) but it gets me there and if I need fuel I can get it at any of the 300 gas stations in a 20 square mile area in my town!!

[rode_kater]

EVs are an aberration. If you resent the five minutes occasionally spent in the petrol station you must love the 45 minutes needed to charge an EV in some grotty service station.

If you're charging at a service station you're doing it wrong. Electrons are available everywhere, your car is idle most of the day anyway, just plug it in when you get home or at the office and you'll never visit a service station again.

2) There's too much money involved -- with much of that in the hands of very corrupt and influential people who all want MORE money. This is not sustainable,

You're talking about Big Oil, right?

Electric cars worked quite well when trips were short; this is the role in which they were quite popular at the turn of the 20th Century;

You may be one of the few people who travel far enough for it to be a problem. The vast majority of people don't travel very far. But the US just has stupid city layouts making people drive much further than necessary.

As for New England, if Norway can do it, so can you. But what you or I think doesn't matter much anyway. In time the economics will drive the changeover anyway.

[Uncle Al]

For me, an EV would not be cost effective nor efficient.

My car, a 2001 model year Mercury Marquis, built in November of 2000, gets 17-20 MPG on the highway.
In town, I average 16-17 MPG. 18 gallon fuel tank.
My Suburban, a 1997 model year, built in October 1996, gets 18-21 MPG on the highway and
15-17 MPG in town. 42 gallon fuel tank.
I get the best gas mileage at 70 MPH at 2000-2100RPMs, in both vehicles.
I don't have any car payments.
Insurance is less.
I can tow a trailer with my Suburban.
Repairs are easy and not expensive. I don't need a computer degree to do minor repairs my self.
I drove the Suburban, from my home near Dallas, TX., down to Houston and back
on 1 tank of gas. 497 miles round trip. Still had 8 gallons of fuel left when I got home.
( I have 249,000 miles on the Suburban and 152,000 miles on the Marquis. )

No, I'll keep my "gas guzzlers" due my now limited driving requirements. I'm able to get 1 months
worth of driving on a single tank of gas. (Sometimes, up to 2 months.)

Uncle Al

[pelmut]

It amuses me that owners of electric cars are so pleased about the lower fuel bills. If you remove the tax from petrol and diesel, they are far cheaper than electricity. Wait until the government finds it is losing fuel revenue and starts looking for a way to recover it by taxing electricity or vehicle mileage.

[geron]

For me, an EV would not be cost effective nor efficient.

My car, a 2001 model year Mercury Marquis, built in November of 2000, gets 17-20 MPG on the highway.
In town, I average 16-17 MPG. 18 gallon fuel tank.
My Suburban, a 1997 model year, built in October 1996, gets 18-21 MPG on the highway and
15-17 MPG in town. 42 gallon fuel tank.

Many European readers will now have bruises under the chin resulting from those jaw-dropping figures -- even allowing for the smaller size of the US gallon.

For cost- efficiency, you set a very low bar!

[Kirbstone]

I drive a Swedesteed V70, 2014. Built like an armoured personnel carrier, very slippery shape but very roomy for an Estatewaggon. Turbodiesel with tall gearing and converting Kms to miles and liters to Imperial gallons (makes sense to someone my age), the thing regularly returns 52-3 MPG, giving a range of something like 900 miles on a 70 liter tankful, taken on board in minutes. It never needs oil between annual services.

No current EV will get anywhere near that, nor claim to.

Tom

P.S. Such performance is very useful for crossing the trackless arid wastes of the Great Central Irish Desert, which I must do to reach my home-from-home in the Kingdom of Kerry. Btw. there is a warning on the approach road to the Bridge to Newfoundland.......'No filling stations or services for 2,845 miles' !

[phathack]

Subscriptions:
I complained for years that I only watched a couple of channels on Cable TV and did not want to pay for the 100+ channels I'm not going to watch. Dropped the TV and kept the Internet.

Today I subscribe to a couple of channels in place of the Cable TV service.

The big thing is to stay on top of is my internet provider to keep them from jacking up the service cost. Fortunately, I have multiple providers available, so if one won't play ball and lower the rate, I'll switch to the other one at a lower rate. Unfortunately it's Fiber vs Cable and Cable is slower than Fiber, particular on Upload where cable is highly non-symmetrical with OK download speeds and lousy upload speeds.
Fiber is symmetrical, 2x the speed of Cable at the same price, and I'm happy with their slowest speed 500 Mbps.

Wireless Internet is also available, but their speeds are really slow and variable, with really slow speeds during the day.

EVs vs ICE:

EV's have been around in one form or another for over 100 years, and just in the last 10 years or so they have decided they are going to make them a viable alternative to ICE.
I'm going to stick with my ICE vehicles since they are paid for, and I expect them to last me for the rest of my life.

[Myopic Bookworm]

My car, a 2001 model year Mercury Marquis, built in November of 2000, gets 17-20 MPG on the highway.
In town, I average 16-17 MPG. 18 gallon fuel tank.
My Suburban, a 1997 model year, built in October 1996, gets 18-21 MPG on the highway and
15-17 MPG in town. 42 gallon fuel tank.

Many European readers will now have bruises under the chin resulting from those jaw-dropping figures -- even allowing for the smaller size of the US gallon.
For cost- efficiency, you set a very low bar!

You can say that again! When I bought a car in the US, I was stunned by the pathetic MPG figures that were bandied about.

I drive a Skoda Fabia diesel estate and a petrol-driven Vauxhall Corsa. I would be disappointed to get less than 45 MPG - and that's converting to US gallons (it's around 54 MPG UK). With careful driving on a long journey I can get close to 50 MPG (US).

US drivers are hoodwinked by the oil companies and the car manufacturers. They are constantly pestered to get an oil change for their car every couple of thousand miles, even though it is completely unnecessary (unless American engine oil is significantly worse quality than what we get here). I get the oil changed in my car at its annual service, and that's all.