How to streamline your subscriptions
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Why do hidden subscriptions drain our wallets?
The Claire Byrne Show on News Talk. With Aviva Insurance.
Subscriptions. Subscriptions on apps and online. Have they made a lot of your spending almost invisible? Many of us are subscribed to all sorts, aren't we? Whether it's podcast or streaming services or internet providers, and it can be quite tough to keep track of and keep the spending down. Colin Baker is with me, CEO of Back From the future. Hello Colin. Good morning, Claire. How are you? I'm very well. Are you laden with subscriptions? Uh had a look this morning. I had a little check. We're okay. We're good. Because I do tend to every couple of months go in and check and cancel stuff that I have. It's amazing how they're
kind of insidious and they emerge almost of their own making. Yeah, and
you've you've seen this happen as with some of your clients who come in.
Well we deal with m both businesses who have very serious subscriptions and very expensive subscriptions, but we also deal with consumers and end users. Um we actually had a case only on Saturday of a a lady who was tearing her hair out with a fifty euro per month subscription through Apple that she couldn't isolate, she couldn't figure out how to cancel it. And she'd kind of been putting it off for months. And it turns out about a year ago When I m dug into her phone and her app store and her logins, that she'd su she'd taken a free trial for a yoga app, a perfectly legitimate yoga app. And it was a five day trial at the time. You don't have to pay free trial, but sign up to paying a monthly fee. This is a really insidious way that uh apps and subscriptions get us with this free onboarding or free trial period of
Yeah, I forget about it then. Forget about it. And you think, you know what, I'll cancel it in a week. I need it now. Um I'll I'll get it now. I'll use the free trial and I'll offload it because I won't need it again. And of course you forget about it. You might get an email in amongst the hundred other emails saying, Oh, this is just about to charge you, you miss it. And then six months later you've kicked the can down the road and you've spent she had spent a year's worth of fifty euro per month on this yoga app that she used once. And never went back into. Worse still, I ended up paying for my brother's ex-girlfriend's Netflix for nine years. What? Yes. Now I mean I I God bless her. I I I I hope she's well.
I hope she enjoyed the Netflix. But I thought 'cause I'm I'm quite a sort of generous soul, and I had two Netflix accounts from my parents, my sister, a couple of my friends. Back in the day when you could share out your Netflix, you can't do that anymore. And I ended up I geeze I worked out I think I could have bought a small derelict cottage in Leitram for the money I'd spent on that cottage.
Well, if it happened to you it could happen to anyone. It can,
absolutely. And like you, every month now, and I always say to people, look, go into the because I think people are averse to bank reconciliations. It's a horrible word. And all it means is just going through your bank, your Revolute, your uh your your subscriptions on your app store, and just toiling through them and figuring out what do I really need? What am I really using? Particularly Particularly the transactions on the bank, because uh the the subscriptions that you sign up to through the app store or through the Play Store.
How can a free‑trial turn into a €50‑per‑month nightmare?
You can see things really
clearly. But but sometimes when you're looking on your bank statement, it's very hard to work out what is that two ninety nine. And you know,
sometimes it's through PayPal, and that really bugs me because PayPal will just have PayPal 1298485 some random code. It doesn't tell you what it is. And then you ring the bank and they don't know. And then you're trawling through figuring out how am I going to cancel this. And often the banks aren't a whole lot of use on that. So you really need to go into detective mode. I always say that. Go trawl through, take a couple of months. and take a note of what you don't recognize and then get dig deep and find out where it's coming from, and then ask the honest question, do I really need that?
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