WhoRoger

Have you heard of this "classic"?

An old AVGN review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyaF_gCKWsI

Have you heard of this "classic"?

An old AVGN review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyaF_gCKWsI

Up: The web site's snippet says PS4 disc that works on PS5, but the actual live text doesn't. Maybe they've changed it.

I don't know if it has a subscription per se, but holy crap/crab

cross-posted from: https://feddit.de/post/3190681

You've seen Louis's rant about how difficult it is to cancel gym memberships. But I think he's mad at the wrong thing here, or at least not at the main wrong thing.

The worse issues, as I see them, are:

The main issues are:

1. Why does a gym require membership/subscription in the first place? Ok sure, fixed expenses and stuff, but that's the case of every business ever, and my grocery store doesn't require me to sign up for membership to buy bread.

Where I live (Europe), gyms, swimming pools and other such establishments are walk-in. You come, pay an entry fee and leave whenever. Memberships and tickets for multiple entries are offered, but it's just to save money if you want it and are a regular anyway. So there's a steep discount coming with those. Businesses need go actually earn your membership money.

I kept seeing people joking about gym memberships in US TV shows and comedies, and just had to shake my head.

Not that people aren't trying to bring this subscription/membership rot here. One large local gym/wellness chain now requires membership and a phone app to enter. The membership itself is free (presumably you pay with your data in some way) and there are still just single entrance fees, but fuck that.

2. I'd say it's good manners to accept cancellation of a contract by the same method as the sign-up. But in absence of good manners by businesses, laws should exist to enforce exactly this.

As far as I know, Europe-wide laws require cancellation of contracts to be easily available, at least using the same way as you can sign up.

So if the laws don't demand this, and businesses don't respect this simplest, basic logic, then there's something fundamentally more wrong than just "making it difficult to cancel".

And overall, it also just shows how far can things get when subscriptions are just accepted as normal thing. It always gets worse and worse, unless the law intervenes (if it does). That's why it's pretty much best to avoid subscription services and memberships whenever there's an alternative available. Sure, exceptions apply, but always think what the situation with your service will be in 10 years.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/tech/t/433816

BMW has made a U-turn on a controversial subscription service that saw drivers pay a fee to activate the heated seats fitted to their car.

//

How nice of them. But I'll bet my tyres that even worse subscriptions will come from all sides, and we won't need to wait long. These tiny wins against corporate nickle and diming only make sense, when we keep fighting them. More often than not, people get tired of complaining about the same thing over and over, until it just gets fully normalised.

In other words, don't buy cars with subscription seats, don't buy shitty subscriptions and try to not support companies that push that kind of shit.

Sorry for being a downer and not celebrating, but that's the point.