The Expert Podcast

So we've all been there. We have subscriptions we've signed up for. It might be streaming video, automated delivery, products that show up in your mailbox, or newsletters that you receive. You have something you pay $15, $20, or $30 a month for on your credit card every single month. If you look at your online banking or your credit card, you're going to see a lot of subscriptions. Some of those you only have because it's hard to cancel, and you may have forgotten about them.

Most of these subscription companies make it very easy to sign up. They offer free trials—sign up for free for seven days or one month. Then, when you want to cancel, it's very difficult. You say, "Well, the heck with that! I'll just keep it; maybe someday I'll use it." Does that sound familiar? Well, they're proposing a law that companies have to make it equally as easy to cancel something as it was to sign up for it.

As an example, we normally subscribe to the Wall Street Journal online to read the news. Every once in a while, we'll cancel it for six or eight months when we're not using it. Every few years, we do this. The problem is that when you sign up for it, you can do it online with just a click of a button. However, when you want to cancel it, you have to call them up and wait on hold. It doesn't seem fair that you have to do more work to cancel than you did to sign up.

The government is proposing to make a law to make this process easier. A lot of people don't like government rules and regulations, and this one is controversial. However, my personal opinion is that this will actually help companies. I'll tell you why: there are many times that I see, personally and within our company, a potential for an online subscription trial, a free trial, or maybe a tool we can use for our business that is a resource or some type of automation process. It might be great—something we could really use—but we don't sign up for it because we know how hard it will be to cancel.

If we knew it was going to be easy, we would sign up for it in a heartbeat. But we don't want to spend an extra hour later trying to cancel something or forget to cancel it and end up spending $30 a month for seven months—couple hundred bucks that we didn't count on. So, we don't sign up for a lot of things that could be good resources.

I suspect that companies, even without this rule, would benefit from making it easy to cancel. They could include that in their marketing: "You don’t have to do anything to cancel; just click a button." Some companies don't even require a credit card. This cancellation issue is creating payment fatigue for consumers and businesses. I'm sure you feel the same way. There are probably things you would have signed up for three or four years ago, but now you don't because you know what it will be like to try to cancel.

What are your thoughts on the government making a rule to make it as easy to cancel as it was to sign up for? Do you think the government should be involved with this, or do you think it's an overreach? Or do you take it upon yourself not to sign up for things unless you're 100% sure?

Another question is: why does everything have to be a subscription? Why can't you just pay for something once and then own it? They are even starting to put subscriptions on car options. For example, if you have heated seats in your car, you might have to pay $10 a month for the heated seats to work. If you don't pay that $10 a month, they will shut it off, and you won't have heated seats in your car.

So many things are moving to a subscription model because people think it's a profit center, but I believe many consumers are getting away from that. They don't like having their budget drained for no reason.

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