Why You’re Spending Over $300 A Month On Subscriptions
Why You’re Spending Over $300 A Month On Subscriptions
And how "subscriptionification" has wormed its way into your printer.
Ownership of everyday items is becoming contingent on whether you keep paying for a subscription, even after you’ve shelled out money for the product.
Maggie, a woman who recently spoke with More Perfect Union, said her HP printers would no longer use up the rest of their ink cartridges if the subscription to the company’s Instant Ink service was canceled. This method of cutting off vital services for products you’ve already purchased upfront is not only found in printers but across all sorts of “smart” items — even in your car or your baby’s bassinet.
It’s a practice known as software tethering, and it’s frustrating more and more American consumers — bringing about calls from consumer protection groups for changes to the relationship between a product and the consumer.
Software tethering is a relatively new business practice in which a company can render a product virtually useless by no longer offering updates or even technical support for the product. When you purchase products from companies like HP, Tesla, and Adobe that have adopted the “subscriptionification” model, it’s often no longer the case that you are just buying a product at a flat rate that will last 15 to 20 years and work as intended; you are also expected to continue forking over money for “premium” features attached to the bought item.
The problem, though, is that these features are often what you’d expect to be included in the upfront costs of the product you’ve bought. In one egregious example, anyone who bought a Snoo bassinet prior to this summer for a whopping $1,700 was suddenly thrust into a scenario where features available to them at no extra cost were now locked behind a subscription plan of $20 a month. The company Happiest Baby now also disincentivizes the purchase of a refurbished Snoo by offering new purchasers a “free” years’ worth of a subscription to those features.
It’s not just the Snoo, though. Nowadays, there are monthly fees to watch movies, play video games, brush your teeth, or even just use the seat warmers in your car. In fact, the average American spends almost $300 on subscription services a month.
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“Over time, companies have seen this as a new revenue stream, as a new way to squeeze a little bit of extra money out of consumers,” Aaron Perzanowski, a professor at the University of Michigan, told More Perfect Union.
While subscriptions have been around for a very long time, it’s only been in the last 20 years — buoyed by companies like Salesforce, Microsoft, and Adobe — that the service has evolved away from upfront purchases towards lifetime subscriptions as the mechanism for paying for software and hardware.
“Those kinds of subscription offerings aren't adding new value,” Perzanowski said. “They're just imposing a tax on using the things that we feel like we've already paid for.”
The tide, however, could finally turn back in favor of the consumer. The Lina Khan-led FTC just recently announced its click-to-cancel rule, which would require companies to allow you to cancel a subscription online if you signed up for it online. The Biden administration is also suing Adobe for concealing the true prices of their subscriptions and making them difficult to cancel.
Consumer advocacy groups are demanding that action be taken by the FTC to ensure that subscriptions can’t hide key features behind a paywall and that companies are required to inform consumers of how long they should expect their products to remain functional.
We looked into the history of subscriptions and how they’re impacting your wallet, your time, and your peace of mind. With growing consumer awareness of this issue and a Federal Trade Commission pursuing better protections for would-be buyers, maybe your printer will soon finally work the way it’s supposed to.