Asklemmy

My first subscription was World of Warcraft, back in vanilla and when I was a dipshit high schooler only starting to get a feel for things like managing money.

And even then, right out the gate it felt like bullshit. Did it anyway cuz peer pressure, but back then and ever since, subscriptions almost all feel like blatant ripoffs.

Not subscription, but the first service I thought "wtf is this money-making model?" was Plants vs Zombies 2. The game wasn't that good. And, oh, my most recent guilty pleasure is Monopoly Go; it's entertainingly boring?

Apart from that, I've tried to keep subscriptions that I really like or use constantly:

• ~~UberPass~~ Uber One (mainly for when depression hits)
• Deezer (just because I get 20% discount)
• Kagi (first month atm, but it has a minimum % of trash results)

Netgear. Being told to "subscribe" for basic customer service made me get a whole new modem cause I'm not putting up with that bullshit

There was never a last straw for me, because I never subscribed to any bullshit. I read and understood the dangers of SaaS as a school kid long before the term was cool and long before privacy community and corporate industry popularised it. Unless something really requires realtime work collaboration, like Google Docs/Office 365, or if there are realtime social activities like multiplayer gaming or messaging/chat/videocall, just about everything else does not require an active internet connection, and should be doable locally on a system. This is why devices like iPhone, iPad, Chromebooks and so on are NOT real computers, but merely rented kiosks.

I guess I’m in the minority because I don’t mind subscriptions much. If I think it’s unreasonable I just won’t pay for it. Nobody is forcing me to.

This Google 1 shit. I love my Pixel phone, but they give shit for memory options so that you are forced to pay for the experience of Gmail and saving media. Pisses me off that I can't just save it to my phone.

America Online.

That was a 6 month fucking ordeal to cancel, and it ended up taking bank intervention and the changing credit cards for it to finally go away.

When Sony Plus became required for online play on the PS4. Xbox already had similar going on at that point. The last console I have ever bought was a PS3 as a direct result of this.

At one point I had
Spotify, Wow, Runescape, Netflix, Hulu, HBO, Disney+, Amazon, and Doordash. I didnt even realize it but one day I was just like, why the fuck am I paying for all this. Cut it allllllll away. Now I just have Spotify and HBO. Not as bad and if I want to watch something on the other platforms I cancel HBO. One streaming service at a time.

Sync for Lemmy. I was looking forward for the app, but the subscription to remove ads made me stick with Connect instead.

2020 Design. The software costs $1500 a year.

Cable TV.

Literally when there was only netflix and then Disney+ came out

Just watching all these new subscription services for everything gave me the fatigue and started my self-hosting and actually-owning-things journey, even just paying for Netflix (when I still did) was too much for me, it didn't have everything I wanted, if it did it would remove it after a year or so, and every couple years the price would hike.

My mobile plan. The standard is signing for 24 months. I can't really choose a plan that suits me, they stick virtually unlimited calls (which I barely use), and add mobile data that I can't use up either. Settling for less barely reduces my bill if at all for whatever reason. On top of this, despite me signing for a set fixed amount to pay, they decide to "index" an extra 10-15% every year due to "unforseen circumstances" like inflation. And every time I sign a new contract I get an extra 10% on top of my bill for the same features I don't use. Oh and they add a "happy call" where the call signal sounds like a piercing annoying very low quality melody, despite me denying the service. Switching to another telecom doesn't really remedy the problem, the other two on the market here seem worse than mine in every respect.

Looking at the prepaid features, we're looking at a 40-50% reduction in monthly fees, just paying for what I use, whenever I want to use it. It's needlessly annoying switching from a subscription to a prepaid plan. You'd have to switch telecoms for a month and switch back to the one you like the most if you want to keep your number.

So yeah, as soon as my contract expires, I'm done with renewing. I'm sick of this.

I was questioning myself when I started paying close to $25 for Netflix. Cancelled once I heard about pw-sharing no longer being a thing. Couldn't justify the cost of 4 screens if my family couldn't use it.

Now for most things, It's either self-hosted/FOSS/ or proprietary one-time fee. else I do without.

I bought a new PC in 2021 (because building was hard due to supply shortages) and it came with GamePass Ultimate. When I combined my existing Xbox Gold subscription, it gave me something like 1.5 years worth of GamePass Ultimate, which was really great! Once that subscription expired, I had saved up for a year worth of another subscription up front, but noticed they only offered month-to-month at that point. I realized I wasn't playing GamePass games enough to warrant the subscription (might have been different if I could install on my Steam Deck, not through a Windows install or streaming).

Once that GamePass subscription came up, and then Netflix started cracking down on password sharing that I was sharing with my sister in the next city over, it made me question a lot of recurring subscription. For streaming TV shows/movies, I think going forward we'll have one service subscribed to but bouncing around to catch up on shows that my wife and I may want to watch. For GamePass, I'll probably resubscribe once Starfield comes out.

Everything kind of. Netflix, Dinsey, YouTube, Prime, HBO, Spotify, Apple Music and so much more. I rather sail the seas.