Paid subscription stress!

I don’t know about you but I CANNOT mentally handle another paid subscription service. I’m done. I’m out. I don’t even care if that puts me in the dark ages.

Yesterday, I wanted to buy a book that was only available in audio format and was sneakily guided to Audible where a £7.99 a month subscription was pushed on me! The book I wanted was just dangling there like a carrot behind the classic pitches like ‘30 day free trial!’ and ‘first book free!’. Maybe this was an over reaction, but I very ‘audibly’ groaned and marched to my poor husband to unload my frustrations. “I can’t take it anymore! Are they trying to bleed us dry??”

The thing that miffs me about paid subscriptions is how deceiving they can be. They dazzle us with a low price, or trick us with a free trial that they know we’ll forget to cancel. Then once they’ve got us, they often raise the price each year or make us tread through a goddamn obstacle course to cancel.

And when it comes to yearly renewals, they conveniently fail to remind us that the payment is coming up and once it’s taken (and yearly prices can be quite high) the fine print conveniently states NO REFUNDS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE.

If you really want to give yourself a fright, add up all of your paid subscriptions (that’s streaming, apps, newsletters, food delivery, Amazon, EVERYTHING) and prepare to weep.

The thought of adding anything else to the pile causes me legitimate stress. And I’m realizing I only have myself to blame for some of these subscriptions. Wether I signed up in a moment of impulse or with the best of intentions, I’m definitely not using them enough to get my moneys worth. Well, not anymore!

I’m taking a stand and making a promise. I’m going to set up reminders to cancel any yearly subscriptions I barely use. I’m adopting a ‘one in, one out’ policy to keep streaming services limited to 5 because we have so many yet still find ourselves flicking through all of them over and over looking for something appealing. And my promise is to never ask any of you to pay me a monthly fee for anything, ever.

I know it’s a trend right now for some recipe creators to charge a small subscription fee for their weekly/monthly newsletter and yes we all deserve to be paid for the arduous work we do, but I can’t contribute to this bank account siphoning practice. What I share tends to be mutually beneficial, I get to hone my food writing skills and you get (hopefully) awesome recipes to try out! I’d feel guilty trying to make a buck out of that.

I ended up finding that audio book through a different avenue that didn’t require a subscription, phew! But I’m sure I have many battles ahead of me when it comes to avoiding paid subscription traps. What’s next, subscribe to see the weather forecast? Probably.