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Re:Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021) by skeeter2020 on Saturday July 30, 2022 @09:59AM (#32286878)
If you sold furniture you would also sell a heck of a lot more of it on very low, very long payment plans. Even more extreme with cars, resulting in leases that are essentially long term rentals or "subscriptions"
Re:Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021) by Brian_K_White on Saturday July 30, 2022 @11:21AM (#32287484)
But RentACenter is only RentACenter, and unlike a lot of on-line services, I don't have to use them to furnish my house.

It's fine for the rental option to exist, the problem is only when no other option exists, and, increasingly, no other option exists.

Please don't waste our time pointing out how this is generalization and alternatives do exist technically for most things. It's obviously not 100% services, but the entire world of software is becoming more and more each day, worse today than yesterday, worse tomorrow than today, a choice between two opposite ends of a spectrum: 0% ownership in the form of services, and 100% ownership in the form of open source. Each of those are fine in various circumstances.

For many things, and increasing, no practical alternative to "RentACenter" software exists because in most cases an individual is not realistically free to do their own thing if they want to sell to customers and buy from vendors and interoperate with family and friends who all take the easy path and use all the major services, or even without interoperation issues the alternative option simply doesn't do the same job or doesn't exist. And the damning thing is that it used to exist, meaning the rental model is not a required aspect to produce the product to do the job.

Re:Dear startups: I hate subscription services (2021) by TrueSlacker0 on Saturday July 30, 2022 @11:00AM (#32287297)
But you now own the product at the end of the term.