It began like most culture-blacking atrocities these days did—with an email. “Introducing changes to your streaming plan!” the subject line screamed, laced with enough insincere capital letters that I immediately felt queasy. Been on the internet enough years to know those sales when I see them.
I’ve been a StreamBox (not the real name, surely they’ll sue me for THAT privacy agreement I clicked yes to) subscriber for almost three years now.
For eleven dollars a month I watched whatever shows and movies weren’t already on Netflix (RIP). Not great.
Sure, their recommendation engine still thinks I’m interested in murder mysteries because I watched Fridging Amanda eight seasons ago. But it was fine! And it only cost me eleven bucks.
Well. Until now. That dang email sat in my inbox for two whole days.
You know how when you find a weird lump or notice your car’s making a funny noise you instantly know something’s up but you try to ignore it because the second you take it to the shop they’ll find a million reasons why it costs more than you make? It’s the same with corporate emails. But curiosity killed me and when I accidentally clicked to open it from my Promotions tab (I KNOW STREAMBOX, THE PRIMARY TAB) I saw what I knew was coming:
“In order to continue bringing you cutting-edge content and premium features, we’ve decided to raise prices across all plans.”
Fuck you guys, I thought.
Swiveled in my chair to glare at my computer but it just sat there blinking back at me, useless. “We believe this will provide our members with more options and value.”
My eyes skimmed greedily for numbers. $19.99.
They jacked my price by TEN DOLLARS. I blinked at the screen so hard I saw Jesus. “Plus members will also receive:
○ StreamBox Ultra Quality (I have Sprint) ○ Stream from more devices (I watch at home or on my laptop) ○ Early access to StreamBox Exclusives (most of which get canceled) ○ Reduce your ads experience”
Hold the phone, did I pay to have NO ADS?
! Okay, fine. Lets’ see how much they upped my price.
“As part of our commitment to improving your experience, we’ve decided to simplify things by eliminating the Standard plan, renaming Premium to Premium Plus, and lowering the price of our Basic plan. Current Standard members will be switched to Premium Plus in 14 days.”
Holy shit. Not only was my bill doubling, they were gonna make it my fault if I didn’t go into my settings and switch plans.
Because heaven forbid “updating your preferences” be a straightforward process of “downgrading.” Nope, after three menu selections and a purposely obfuscated comparison chart I found out my new “basic” plan would be $7.99 but would now include “reduced ads” and allow me to “stream on one device at a time.”
Fantastic. So now I could either pay twice as much to stream almost the same thing I was already streaming or I could pay less to stream less. Unless I wanted to cancel StreamBox entirely.
Swiped to my friend Diana’s icon. Also had StreamBox. “Hey did you get the dreaded StreamBox email yet?”
Three dots.
Fuck technology and it’s existential threats to real communication. “YOU BETTER BELIEVE I DID. RIP SCAMMING OLD ladies”
“I was thinking about it.”
“But we finally finished thatshow about the family with problems.”
“That’s what they want you to say,” she texted back.
Brilliant. I decided I needed a lay of the land: how did this price increase compare to all my other subscriptions? I logged into all my services and started clicking.
What I found out made me want to immediately delete my social security number. Behold, the sum of all my subscription sins:
StreamBox ($8.99, now $17.99) Netflix ($12.99) Spotify ($10.99) Pandora ($4.99) Xbox Game Pass ($14.99) HuffPost ($5.99) Kindle Unlimited ($9.99)
$68.93 a month. Ninety dollars if I get suckered into StreamBox’s new pricing.
Ninety dollars a month to listen to podcasts I mostly skip through, read articles I don’t have time for, watch shows and movies I’ll probably only watch half of. And this was just my SUBSCRIPTIONS. This doesn’t count the three trials I forgot to opt out of four months ago and spent actual money thinking were free.
How did this happen? Wasn’t Netflix like seven dollars and they had EVERYTHING?! Now it takes three services minimum to keep up with your friends, all of whom have casually referenced a dozen shows I’m too embarrassed to say I haven’t seen.
And they hire psychologists to study how to addict us to their sites, how to get every last dollar from our wallets while giving us just enough to make sticking around feels slightly worth it. I called customer service. “I’m calling about the price increase.”
“No problem how can we help you?”
“No, I don’t want to discuss my ‘options’.
I’ve been a loyal StreamBox customer for three years and I think it’s bullshit that you guys are doubling my price.”
“Um…okay? MonitorSound has changed our pricing to give you the best experience possible.”
“And why is that?” I knew I was being ridiculous yelling at a customer service representative but what could I say? Someone had to say it.
“We’ve added new features and investment into our content to give you more… VALUE.”
“Well I don’t want or need any of these new features. Is there any way I can keep my current plan?”
“We don’t have that option. We’re restructuring our plans.
The current StreamBox plan is being discontinued.”
“It’s not a person. Stop personifying it. It’s a price point.”
“Look,” she said, and oh God does that SoundMI terrible.
The thing I love about customer service reps is they can barely hide how annoyed they are with you. “I can offer you 10% off your first 3 months of Premium Plus.”
Right. So instead of robbing me they’ll take twice as much money then throw me a bone to keep my kidnapped funds in theirill-gotten-for-prison-cell banks.
I hung up and checked my options on the new Basic plan. “The Basic plan is ideal for those with simpler streaming needs,” she read from her computer like I wasn’t literally on the phone with her. “However, I must caution that downloads will not be available to Basic members, quality will be reduced, and you will have limited access to the SoundBox library.”
“Oh—limited access?
As in what shows will I have access to?”
“Um, we don’t have that list handy but generally speaking newer releases and some SoundBox exclusives may not be available for Basic subscribers.”
Say what now? I’m currently paying $8.99 a month to have access to ALL OF THEIR CONTENT. They were going to charge me $17.99 to continue doing that OR I could pay less to not have access to… whatever they didn’t want me to see.
How was that legal? I hung up, mouth AGH. Still scrolling through social media like a good little consumer when I saw it.
The zeitgeist had boomeranged right back into my mentions. Every single brand’s Twitter account was exploding in notifications. Spotify was raising prices by almost nine dollars.
Amazon Prime Video wanted to charge me seventeen dollars more. Hulu. Apple Music.
Google Play. “GOD LIBERATE US FROM PAYING MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTIONS”
Some guy responded with a literally on fire $100 bill. 40.7K Likes.
I did some digging. There’s a name for this nonsense. Expand and extract.
Charge artificially low prices at launch to rake in subscribers, then start adding “features” customers don’t need. Then once they’ve been added they extract as much money from you as possible before you finally click enough and say f*ck it. My blood began to simmer when I realized HOW they were forcing me to choose.
Their new basic plan wasn’t just DOUBLE my current price it was WORSE than what I was currently getting. And that, my friends, is called bumping. Hoping you’ll stay because the alternative they’re forcing you to “choose” is so horrific you don’t see it as a choice at all.
Oh and there’s this magical thing called the endowment effect, which is basically the amount of time you’ve been invested with a service (did Hulu just say three seasons!? You’ve ONLY been watching FOR THREE YEARS?!) directly correlates to how you VALUE said service.
Even if it sucks. And doesn’t actually deserve the increase. They manipulated me psychologically into thinking a company was going to charge me TWICE AS MUCH to use their service.
I marched back over to StreamBox’s website, ready to cancel this pussy-ass subscription. The bright red “cancel now” button I proudly clicked when I signed up three years ago had morphed into small gray text at the bottom of the “Manage Account” page, two buttons below “Enhance Your Experience” and “Refer Friends” (lol who do I know that hates their lives? ).
It took me five screens of guilty pleading to finish the cancellation process. “Are you sure you want to cancel your StreamBox account?”
“Yes.”
“Here’s what you’ll be missing.”
“NO.”
“How about we give you 15% off for six months?”
“Fk off.”
“Please tell us why you’re canceling…”
“Because YOU GREEDY BASTARDS”
“No. Type it in the box.”
I didn’t.
“NEW SEASON OF INSERT SHOW I WAS BINGE-WATCHING ADDRESSES NEXT MONTH. Do you really want to miss out?”
BOOM. Cancel culture was real.
“You’re all set! You’ve successfully cancelled your StreamBox account.”
I’ll never know what punishments they lied about because as soon as I clicked “cancel” a pop up appeared informing me I would have access to all features until the end of my billing cycle. Which was, of course, not until NEXT MONTH.
Pro tip: they always give you until the very last day you’d be worried about missing content. Makes it that much easier to cave and subscribe again. I want to say I stood strong.
Wanted to say I tossed my laptop out the window and rekindled my love for books/god/healthy relationships with my fellow man. But there’s always a but. I canceled StreamBox and felt GREAT.
Went about my day, send my first prime video cancellation email… until they emailed me back. “We’ve missed you!
Come back to StreamBox and enjoy six months of $9.99/month!”
ONE dollar more than I was already paying.
You’ll accept that price increase because it’s only a dollar more than you’re currently paying. THAT is how much companies understand you.
THAT is how much they know you’ll pay. I’d love to say I unsubscribed from their email list. What I actually did was google how long nine months was.
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