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Comment by swagasaurus-rex | Hacker News Reader

I think subscriptions are fine; it is the banks that give power to corporations by making it impossible to control who bills your accounts.

If you could easily see recurring billing charges and cancel on your bank's end easily, companies would have to step up and offer a useful service.

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Part of the problem is that they handle much differently than purchases. To buy something you need to have enough money at some point in time. Subscriptions require you to have a stable cashflow. The former is usually easier than the latter.

On top of that, subscriptions are also relationships you have to keep track of. With a lot of subscriptions, it can become overwhelming.

Most subscriptions are on credit cards, and having available credit implies a stable cashflow (even if you are operating at a loss).

Visa/Mastercard debit cards are a thing.

In fact, I'd argue that credit cards are US thing. You can pay for most stuff on-line with debit cards just fine. Over the past decade, I had to use PayPal maybe 3 times, because some braindead payment system wouldn't accept debit cards.

(It may differ between classes and countries, but over here in Poland around people I know, having a private credit card is like shaving with a straight razor - it's awesome if you can handle it without hurting yourself, but most people can't and are smart enough to not even try.)

You can pay for almost anything online with a debit card if you get a Visa/Mastercard debit card, which is included with practically every bank account over here in Australia. Obviously Visa/MC charge merchants more to accept their debit cards than the national domestic EFT payment networks, but it works well from the consumer experience point of view.

Over here it's quite normal for middle-class people to have personal credit cards, but it's not as important for building up a good credit rating or anything like that as it is in the US.

In the US, the fraud protections on credit is way better than debit

> having a private credit card is like shaving with a straight razor - it's awesome if you can handle it without hurting yourself, but most people can't and are smart enough to not even try.

as someone who treats a credit card like a charge card (pay it off in full every month, without exception), I don't really understand this mentality. imo, managing a debit card is way harder. I have to ensure that I have enough money in my checking account every time I make a purchase. it feels like inevitably my payday will line up in such a way that I overdraft on a purchase I could have easily afforded by the end of the month.

To use debit card, all you have to do is to know how roughly how much money you have. You have to know this even if you have a credit card, otherwise you risk not being afford to pay it off.

The danger with having a credit card is that you have an option to not pay it off. With debit cards, it's impossible. You can overdraft a little if you're tricky, but that's about it - whereas with a credit card you can end up going negative and finding it difficult to get back to black (whether because of your own faults or external circumstances).

I compared a credit card to straight razor because both are useful and safe in skilled hands, but create danger of hurting yourself if you're unskilled - a danger that doesn't exist with safety razors / debit cards.

I agree but at the same time I feel like companies are bolting “as a service” onto literally everything. Take Rosetta Stone for instance. There’s zero need or benefit from that to being subscription but there it is. Games as a subscription also make we want to die unless it’s an MMO where you’re constantly getting new content.

I don't know, I was falling into a pattern in games where I kept spending $40-60 just to find out I don't really like a game. A subscription service lets me try out a bunch of stuff and sink time into what I actually like.

Steam lets you refund a game for any reason if you have under 2 hours playtime. I have never found that I liked a game for the first 2 hours and didn't like it at all after that.

In the UK that is (and has been for a while) the case:

If you set up a direct debit (allow a company to withdraw money from your account) you will be able to view all the details about it on your web banking (which company, how much and when the last debit occurred).

But most importantly, you can unilaterally cancel the direct debit from within the web banking interface. It will notify the company that you cancelled it on your side and you are guarnateed to not have any money withdrawn from them.

This makes life easier but does not solve the problem completely. Cancelling a direct debit does not cancel any debt you have (obviously) but it also doesn't cancel your account/contract with the company. So there is nothing stopping the company from continuing to bill you. It will just make it harder for the company to recuperate their money.

Interesting, what if your bank account is a UK account but with a US based bank that also has branches in the UK (is that even a thing)?

This is UK specific, so if the bank has a UK banking licence and it implements direct debit then they have to adhere to those laws and regulations.

People try to do this by using one time use credit card numbers, but being able to easily cancel the payment method does not release you from the agreement you made with the vendor for their service. It’s simple contract law and I can see how banks would not want to wade into those murky waters.

PayPal has many issues, but this is one of the things they get right, and I tend to steer in their direction for anything recurring as a result.

You can cancel a recurring payment with a few clicks.

Good to know! Is it all administrable from mobile?

SEPA direct debit (and the earlier non-SEPA versions) allow the bank to do just that: show a list of charges, set monthly limits and cancel the authorization.

Unfortunately, most foreign companies don't offer SEPA, but my bank also offers virtual CCs that are tied to a single biller, so not only I can revoke them at any time, they are also useless if leaked.

Regular CCs are a pain in comparison.

>I think subscriptions are fine

Is that correlated with having ample money to pay for them?

Many useful things take money to accomplish, I would be suspicious of anything that provides a service for free.

That being said, health insurance is an example of a subscription in the USA I find predatory.

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