The Agony and The Ecstasy of Subscribing to Stuff
Remember when you didn't have to subscribe to food?
Do you even remember a time when you didn’t have to subscribe to everything?
Sure, maybe you paid an annual fee. But you didn’t subscribe to anything except magazines.
Remember magazines? No?
Well, the weird thing is that they’re incredibly cheap now (except for The New Yorker, of course, you tote-bag-pushing bastards). I get Elle for $10 a year. Vogue used to be something like $50 a year and it’s probably just as cheap now. I think I’m paying $5 a month for New York Magazine just so I can pretend I don’t live in Ohio.
Vanity Fair is $14 a year, but it’s a steaming pile of crap since Christopher Hitchins died, Graydon Carter left, and now Anna Wintour is the Chief Content Officer (whatever that means) of all Condé Nast magazines.
Anna Wintour is 72 years old. I’m just saying, if I’m out of touch with the culture, well….
Let’s call it the inverse law of magazines. The more precarious their situation becomes, the cheaper they get.
If you had told somebody 20 years ago that they would one day subscribe to food, they would’ve looked at you like you were crazy.
Why would anybody subscribe to food?
I actually tried subscribing to food. Twice. Same results both times. There’s only so much organic buffalo with quinoa and tiny cubes of summer squash vacuum sealed in a styrofoam container that you must receive EVERY WEEK OR YOUR UNBORN CHILDREN WILL BE SACRIFICED TO SATAN that I could handle.
“Can I just order some meals when I feel like it?”
NO, IT COMES EVERY WEEK UNTIL YOU HAVE SO MUCH FOOD IT’S BURSTING OUT OF THE WINDOWS LIKE YOU LIVE IN A GIANT CORNUCOPIA.
I had high hopes for the soup sub, but it turns out that “clean and healthy” is code for “bland and disgusting”. At least I got a nice spoon out of it. And some socks.
The socks were a surprise, but hey, who doesn’t need socks?
You can also subscribe to:
Snacks from other countries (fish skin, anyone?)
Snacks and toys for your dog/cat/hamster/rabbit
Cosmetics, perfumes, clothing
Mystery boxes (don’t know what’s in them, but who doesn’t love a mystery?)
And that’s why these vendors have gift in their names.
But it’s not really a gift if you buy it for yourself. Is it?
And yet it feels like a gift, and that’s the hook. Even if it’s a gift for your dog, it’s like a surprise birthday party every single month.
And so people are paying not for the things themselves, but for the dopamine rush of having a package waiting for them when they get home that contains not one big thing, but many tiny things?
Sure, you’re paying a premium, but how can you put a price on five minutes of happiness?
And companies, of course, know this.
The greatest lie the Devil ever told was “You can unsubscribe at any time.”
Because you won’t. People be laaazzzzyyyy. But the lure of that faux escape valve gets me every time.
“I’ll just try it. It’s free for 30 days. If I don’t use it, I’ll unsubscribe.”
And therefore you end up paying more than you would have had you not subscribed, and possibly much, much more as the months tick by and you ignore the money leaking from your bank account like the air from a pool toy.
I would love to be able to afford a subscription to Blue Apron. I am indescribably tired of eating cereal for dinner.
The lure of meal kits is that you don’t have to shop at the grocery store or chop vegetables. You do, however, still have to cook the food and clean up the dishes. A tiny chef and waiter are not included in these packages, despite the astronomical price, which may explain the slump in meal kit popularity (that and the general tanking of the economy).
In keeping with our times, you can also subscribe to a service that helps you unsubscribe to all the things you subscribe to that you forgot you subscribe to.
I can’t even.
The services themselves get paid by taking a percentage of the amount you saved in the first year (and if it can’t save you anything, it won’t charge you anything). Rates vary by company, of course, but range anywhere from 33-50%. There is no way to circumvent these fees if the service does save you money, but at least you still end up with some extra cash each month. Ironically, these services all offer subscription plans that unlock access to all features like financial coaches, medical bill negotiation, and automated credit card payments. — Reviewgeek.com
I’m shopping for a new (dumb, cheap) television for my mom. Best Buy wants to charge me $199 annually to deliver and install it. Annually. How many TVs do they think I buy?
In my eternal quest to maintain my cash flow at the same net miserableness, I changed my Hulu subscription to an annual plan (with ads—the horror), thereby saving me $100 per year, which I promptly turned around and spent on an annual subscription to the Criterion Channel.
I will never watch the Criterion Channel. But it gives me great comfort to know that Catherine Deneuve, in all her lovely French nubile-ness, will always be waiting for me in The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg. Unless Criterion drops it.
In which case, there’s always Rashomon.
But not coffee at Panera, which is continually trying to get me to subscribe.
Right? I’m like, how is this saving so much time??