It pays to Cancel

[Bernmc]

It infuriates me how poorly companies reward loyalty.

I've had three subscription services renew recently, all of which tried to up the price significantly for another year. All suddenly came up with significantly better deals when I hit the 'cancel' button:

Dropbox pro. Subs increased by over 20%. Cancelled, and got an offer that worked out the same price as the year before.

Financial/investment newsletter. Cunning barstewarts sent me a 'special' offer of US$50 off if I renewed immediately. Cancelled. Re-subscribed for US$100 less.

And the biggie: Adobe Creative cloud. I had to do some further study for work, so back to uni study and got a student discount on an annual subscription last year. Offered renewal for over $500 this year (still as a student plan) - double what I was paying. Hit the cancel button, got offered 3 months free, plus a subscription at the original student price after that.

Moral of the story - don't accept the renewal price unless it's a significant deal.

[justonething]

Another thing I hate is automatic renewal. They saved my credit card, all without asking my consent. 6 month later, send me an email to say my subscription is automatically renewed. There is a button buried deep inside the account setting. I changed the setting now so it won't be renewed again.

[China]

Same situation with insurance

[Chief Tiff]

RACQ do a similar thing with their insurance policy renewals; they mail us the renewals but when we redo the policy online or over the phone we get a cheaper price for the same product. This has been happening for the thick end of 10 years now.

[verawood]

I agree with all the above.
Some call it a "loyalty tax"
whereby the companies up the prices and hope you wont notice.
Loyalty appears to be only one way.

[D.W.]

customer loyalty programs have never really been that. They've been retention advertising spend and customers were dippy enough to buy the idea that they could get a better deal with customer retention programs than they could shopping around.

There was a lack of metric analysis at companies at that point, and now data mining shows them the way that makes the most money. Larger professional services firms have always recognized things (Because clients were large enough to do analysis) the way retail services are being done now.
1) if someone pays their bill, it increases. Discounts go elsewhere because those are your profitable customers
2) you bid competitively on new work if that's the situation that the work comes in (new customers get better price than current customers)
3) if current customers cancel, you can't just give all of them price #2 or you'll kill your profitability

In short, recognize everything that a company does for what it is -an attempt to increase market share, or an attempt to increase profitability. Sometimes they do both. If you can help it, you want to be in the former, and in this case, that means you have to become part of someone else's market share (or none).

I used to work for a large consulting firm. The worst thing you could ever do is never complain about a bill. The second worst thing you could do is complain too much (people would stop thinking about your needs because they'd assume you wouldn't pay the bill, anyway - so why bother doing work and booking time?).

[D.W.]

forgot my favorite example of this here in the US. Any taunton magazine. Finewoodworking would send me magazines and I'd look at them and think "i'm not subscribing to this for $40 a year, but I probably would for $20". There's no option for that, so I lapsed. Good. Out of sight, out of mind.

I started getting ridiculous postcards that said "your skills are already in decline. renew immediately" (the price on the card was the regular full high subscription price).

I got several of those. The next card came and said the same thing, but said "refer a friend at the same time and you can pay full price and the friend can get their first year for $25"

Awesome. I called them and said I'd subscribe for $25, but there's not $40 of value in the magazines, and they said, no, that offer only applies if you renew - a friend can then get a discounted subscription to start.

At the time, I was figuring out how to build good hand planes. I couldn't recall a single useful article in fine woodworking about how a hand plane really works and what it takes to make a really good one (one at least as good as what you can buy). https://i.imgur.com/RnBIwC0.jpg


letting the subscription lapse and not coming back was definitely the right idea. you can only stand so many articles about how to do something in a mediocre way.