In addition to ads on their web properties, they still have a sizeable (though aging) userbase that they milk for unnecessary services. I cancelled my mom's AOL subscription years ago and they were charging something like $25/mo when the only thing she used was their (free) email service -- though of course during the cancellation they touted things like antivirus and ID theft protection that she apparently had access to. It's a legacy of when people paid them for their internet access -- no telling how many retirees (or estates) continue paying each month.
"Unexamined legacy subscriptions paid without a thought," is another way of saying, "Has too much money." If this is a widespread Boomer phenomenon, it explains a lot. I still kick myself for spending 6x MVNO pricing on my cell phone plan with a legacy carrier whose features I didn't need.
>"Unexamined legacy subscriptions paid without a thought," is another way of saying, "Has too much money."
I constantly see ads for services like RocketMoney which helps people find and cancel subscriptions. I could arguably be in the "too much money" camp, but I couldn't imagine seeing an unknown/unused charge on my credit card bill and not immediately cancelling it. Nonetheless, RocketMoney seems like a widely used product.
Doesn't help that sometimes the charges are coded like *TST VENDOR ACCT #1541*
I don't go over my bill every month but get a notification upon every new charge, and sometimes the only way I know that a charge I just put on at a store is the same one I got a notification for is because the charge amount is some relatively unique number.
> I still kick myself for spending 6x MVNO pricing on my cell phone plan with a legacy carrier whose features I didn't need.
I have a friend who tried to switch to a MVNO (Cricket, I think) to save money and immediately switched back. Even though both companies were on the same network, the MVNO customers must have had a lower priority, because their service level was noticeably worse when literally the only thing that changed was the SIM card.
There's a good reddit, i think NoContract, where you can go to learn more about MVNOs. There are several tiers of them in practice and they each have their own "catches" and "advantages". I used Cricket many years ago when they had a punishing speed cap. In the modern days some of these caps have been relaxed, but as you suspected, prioritization is the main way the actual carriers differentiate themselves from the MVNOs that sell access to the same towers. The worst MVNOs have terrible priority and in any well-populated area congestion makes them super slow almost all the time.
The thing is, this is highly variable -- and also geographically variable -- and some MVNOs can now offer similar priority as a mainstream plan. US Mobile is one, which I've been using for a couple years. Their neat advantage is that they will sell you a SIM (or e-sim) that rides on your choice of the big 3, and they'll also let you port between them without any other change to your account. They call this "Tele-Port". Some people will do that even just to go on a vacation to a state with different "best carrier", since there's nothing stopping you.
The only time deprioritization has been a problem for me is when I've run out of data on my limited plan. With the major carrier, it was still usable; with the MVNO, it was not. As long as you stay below your plan limit (or, for those on unlimited, don't try to tether and use hundreds of gigabytes a month), it's essentially the same service.
I switched from T-Mobile to Google Voice a few years ago for this reason. With 5 lines on the plan the T-Mo version was way too expensive. But then Google Voice raised their prices and T-Mobile offered as much better multi-line discount and I ended up switching back. Also, Google Voice tech support is absolute dogshit.
It is easy to miss a subscription for something on a bill when it is less than £30. I had a match.com subscription I had forgotten about for about 7 years.
That business model is what a lot of tech companies actually bank on that why they require a credit card on a free sign up.
The way you are using irresponsible is perverse. e.g. Being Irresponsible in this context would be remortgaging your house, while unemployed and using all the money to buy gadgets.
Forgetting that you have a small amount deducted for a service you are no longer using, isn't. It is minor oversight.
The way that language is abused by people when it comes to these sorts of subjects is bordering on semantic manipulation. Which in itself is a form of deceit.
It's a difference of degree, not kind. 30 bucks thrown into a corporate black hole instead of a handful of meals, or gas for a day of driving delivery, or medicine. An hour or two or three of a low-income earner's productivity, every month, possibly for years, because... you didn't care to spend 5 minutes looking at your bank or credit card statement? Come on.
But, of course, no one can tell off the comfortable class. It's "perverse" and "abuse" and "deceit" and "manipulation". eyeroll
If the subject were as minor as you say, you wouldn't be trotting out that kind of characterization. I hit a nerve.
I hate to admit it, but it’s like me and my Digitalocean bills (:
I don’t want to think about how much money I’ve paid them over the years for VMs I no longer need. A week ago I finally pulled the plug on those servers. Not a moment too soon…
Ain't just boomers. Anybody with kids, and no existential financial crisis. I just finally managed to cancel an unexamined legacy subscription paid without a thought — after I noticed WTF I have one Adobe subscription, not 3, across 2 cards ... unfortunately the noticing part took like 3-4 years.
Additionally: it seems likely that it was the result of gas station pump skimmers, just because the card in question had never been used for any other kind of transaction.
At least for my parents, there was a real fear of losing access to their 20+ year old email address if they stopped paying. I don't know if it was founded on anything, but it got them to keep paying through a decade-plus of non-AOL broadband.
I wasn't even aware they were still around until a couple of days ago I received an email from an aol.com domain. Best bet is they're just a dead mall.
In addition to ads on their web properties, they still have a sizeable (though aging) userbase that they milk for unnecessary services. I cancelled my mom's AOL subscription years ago and they were charging something like $25/mo when the only thing she used was their (free) email service -- though of course during the cancellation they touted things like antivirus and ID theft protection that she apparently had access to. It's a legacy of when people paid them for their internet access -- no telling how many retirees (or estates) continue paying each month.
"Unexamined legacy subscriptions paid without a thought," is another way of saying, "Has too much money." If this is a widespread Boomer phenomenon, it explains a lot. I still kick myself for spending 6x MVNO pricing on my cell phone plan with a legacy carrier whose features I didn't need.
>"Unexamined legacy subscriptions paid without a thought," is another way of saying, "Has too much money."
I constantly see ads for services like RocketMoney which helps people find and cancel subscriptions. I could arguably be in the "too much money" camp, but I couldn't imagine seeing an unknown/unused charge on my credit card bill and not immediately cancelling it. Nonetheless, RocketMoney seems like a widely used product.
Doesn't help that sometimes the charges are coded like *TST VENDOR ACCT #1541*
I don't go over my bill every month but get a notification upon every new charge, and sometimes the only way I know that a charge I just put on at a store is the same one I got a notification for is because the charge amount is some relatively unique number.
A surprising number of people clearly simply do not look at their credit card bills.
> I still kick myself for spending 6x MVNO pricing on my cell phone plan with a legacy carrier whose features I didn't need.
I have a friend who tried to switch to a MVNO (Cricket, I think) to save money and immediately switched back. Even though both companies were on the same network, the MVNO customers must have had a lower priority, because their service level was noticeably worse when literally the only thing that changed was the SIM card.
There's a good reddit, i think NoContract, where you can go to learn more about MVNOs. There are several tiers of them in practice and they each have their own "catches" and "advantages". I used Cricket many years ago when they had a punishing speed cap. In the modern days some of these caps have been relaxed, but as you suspected, prioritization is the main way the actual carriers differentiate themselves from the MVNOs that sell access to the same towers. The worst MVNOs have terrible priority and in any well-populated area congestion makes them super slow almost all the time.
The thing is, this is highly variable -- and also geographically variable -- and some MVNOs can now offer similar priority as a mainstream plan. US Mobile is one, which I've been using for a couple years. Their neat advantage is that they will sell you a SIM (or e-sim) that rides on your choice of the big 3, and they'll also let you port between them without any other change to your account. They call this "Tele-Port". Some people will do that even just to go on a vacation to a state with different "best carrier", since there's nothing stopping you.
Not all MVNO are the same in this regard, some sell the same quality of service data tier.
The only time deprioritization has been a problem for me is when I've run out of data on my limited plan. With the major carrier, it was still usable; with the MVNO, it was not. As long as you stay below your plan limit (or, for those on unlimited, don't try to tether and use hundreds of gigabytes a month), it's essentially the same service.
I switched from T-Mobile to Google Voice a few years ago for this reason. With 5 lines on the plan the T-Mo version was way too expensive. But then Google Voice raised their prices and T-Mobile offered as much better multi-line discount and I ended up switching back. Also, Google Voice tech support is absolute dogshit.
It is easy to miss a subscription for something on a bill when it is less than £30. I had a match.com subscription I had forgotten about for about 7 years.
That business model is what a lot of tech companies actually bank on that why they require a credit card on a free sign up.
It's only easy to miss if you're irresponsible. Having enough (some would say, "more than enough") money makes being irresponsible less painful.
The way you are using irresponsible is perverse. e.g. Being Irresponsible in this context would be remortgaging your house, while unemployed and using all the money to buy gadgets.
Forgetting that you have a small amount deducted for a service you are no longer using, isn't. It is minor oversight.
The way that language is abused by people when it comes to these sorts of subjects is bordering on semantic manipulation. Which in itself is a form of deceit.
It's a difference of degree, not kind. 30 bucks thrown into a corporate black hole instead of a handful of meals, or gas for a day of driving delivery, or medicine. An hour or two or three of a low-income earner's productivity, every month, possibly for years, because... you didn't care to spend 5 minutes looking at your bank or credit card statement? Come on.
But, of course, no one can tell off the comfortable class. It's "perverse" and "abuse" and "deceit" and "manipulation". eyeroll
If the subject were as minor as you say, you wouldn't be trotting out that kind of characterization. I hit a nerve.
I hate to admit it, but it’s like me and my Digitalocean bills (:
I don’t want to think about how much money I’ve paid them over the years for VMs I no longer need. A week ago I finally pulled the plug on those servers. Not a moment too soon…
Ain't just boomers. Anybody with kids, and no existential financial crisis. I just finally managed to cancel an unexamined legacy subscription paid without a thought — after I noticed WTF I have one Adobe subscription, not 3, across 2 cards ... unfortunately the noticing part took like 3-4 years.
Additionally: it seems likely that it was the result of gas station pump skimmers, just because the card in question had never been used for any other kind of transaction.
It wasn't until the end of last month that they finally turned off dialup:
https://help.aol.com/articles/dial-up-internet-to-be-discont...
And I have people in my contacts whose active email ends in "@aol.com".
At least for my parents, there was a real fear of losing access to their 20+ year old email address if they stopped paying. I don't know if it was founded on anything, but it got them to keep paying through a decade-plus of non-AOL broadband.
They got own branded Chromium with extra features: https://youtu.be/z_NpZmk61Qo
I wasn't even aware they were still around until a couple of days ago I received an email from an aol.com domain. Best bet is they're just a dead mall.