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A comment on FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations. Parent comment

Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by dreamcompiler on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @12:37AM (#40714124)
There seems to be a perception in big companies that if you're not pissing off your customers enough to drive them away, you're leaving money on the table. So there's this constant pseudo-optimizer running to get the maximum profit possible.

Thank you Harvard Business School.

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by draugadrotten on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @02:59AM (#40714839)
For another example of the same behaviour, watch the development of Sports in European cable - Viaplay for example. Starting 2016 the headlines of the press has been "Viaplay chockhöjer priserna" ( Viaplay shockingly raise their prices ) They have now jacked up their prices to a level where customers are now not only leaving(1), but actively hating the company online(2 - see comments), as well as teaching friends about pirate IPTV alternatives. At the same time the management of Viaplay have raised their compensation levels to ridiculous levels. The company itself is suffering financially from all this, but management is richer and fatter than ever before(3).

1. https://teknikveckan.se/det-krisar-hos-viaplay-over-25-proce...

2. See comments - https://twitter.com/ViaplaySportSE/status/180153322166384670...

3. https://omni.se/sparkade-vdn-jobbade-fem-manader-far-18-milj...

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by etrvic on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @08:35AM (#40717074)
The same thing happend with Netflix raising prices. Probably everyone nobody canceled their subscription after the increased price just becouse it’s not worth the effort. And the price raise is incremental just so nobody will complain.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by jnsie on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @08:46AM (#40717186)
Boiling the frog, so to speak
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by inquist on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @09:32AM (#40717663)
Turns out frogs are smarter than we thought

https://web.archive.org/web/20240118204920/https://www.fastc...

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by sierra1011 on Wednesday June 19, 2024 @04:13PM (#40731955)
That story actually came about from a scientist doing experiments on frogs. Frogs with removed brains. Arguably the frogs are not smarter than we thought

See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog under the Experiments header.

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by throwway120385 on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @05:49PM (#40722475)
I canceled my subscription when I found out they wanted me to buy two subscriptions -- one for each home I own.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by fennecbutt on Friday June 21, 2024 @07:37PM (#40754961)
Not really gonna cry for somebody that owns two houses.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by skeletal88 on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @04:59PM (#40722152)
Where I live Viaplay bought the licenses for showing football matches on all levels for the next years. Previously we could see the football WC and European championships, and national games on the national tv channel. With the new viaplay deal the games would only be possible to see on their platform or whatever it is.

Fortunately they fell into financial troubles before the deal became active.

They massively overpaid for showing all of the matches, to force everyone interested in football to get a subscription. But probably most people just watch it on tv, because "hey, why not, national team of x country (or our own team, for whom winning a match is a miracle) is playing, lets watch it". Not "I will happily pay tens of € each month to some company to watch stuff".

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by harha on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @01:23AM (#40714307)
As an upside, once you’ve pissed off enough customers, you can also quit and provide them with an alternative that packages an open source tool with some enterprise features with marginally better terms
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by interludead on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @03:44PM (#40721430)
Yeah, it feels like I saw an example somewhere
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by postmodest on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @03:00AM (#40714848)
"We can cut costs if we sell to a few whales and not a broad audience"
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by Dalewyn on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @01:28AM (#40714330)
I once read that business is the art of ripping someone off without pissing them off.

For better or worse, I agree. If you aren't ripping them off you're leaving money on the table, but if you go too far and piss them off they're going to take away all the money on the table with them.

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by amelius on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @03:33AM (#40715042)
Well you can piss people off in some ways, yet in other ways give them value.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by alickz on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @05:15AM (#40715588)
> If you aren't ripping them off you're leaving money on the table

You're leaving money in their pocket that you might get later

How do you quantify loyalty? Because it seems to me that it's very easy for individuals to prioritise short term gains at the cost of medium and long term losses due to trust erosion

I wonder how much client satisfaction and trust would be worth on the quarterly report, if it could be calculated. I think it would be immense for most companies

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by Dalewyn on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @06:10AM (#40715913)
Money in their pocket is not money on the table. You are in fact reinforcing my point: Client loyalty and trust is critical in business, you're a lousy businessman if you've damaged that by ripping off your clients too hard angering them.

The most effective business is getting all the money on the table and making your client happy. Thusly the art of business, ripping off your client without pissing them off.

Absolutely nobody gets ahead in business by selling wares cheaper than what they could have gone for, unless you are deliberately underselling the market to gain share by sheer force of will. Likewise by selling wares higher than what they could have gone for, clients will just look elsewhere because you're just another one of many merchants.

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by queuebert on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @11:01AM (#40718599)
> Absolutely nobody gets ahead in business by selling wares cheaper than what they could have gone for, ...

Explain Costco then.

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by Bloating on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @11:12AM (#40718719)
Volume. Its all relative to your less efficient competitor
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by BenjiWiebe on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @11:45AM (#40719177)
Didn't Costco get volume by selling things cheaper then they could have?
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by brianwawok on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @07:00PM (#40722991)
They also have less items for sale so each sells more.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by datavirtue on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @03:25PM (#40721227)
People with Costco memberships view shopping as a sport. Instead of golfing, they go buy shit and eat hot dogs.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by lupusreal on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @04:56PM (#40722139)
They do have the best hot dogs.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by 100721 on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @07:57PM (#40723333)
Where both shopping and golf are about getting a low score ;)
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by isk517 on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @01:36PM (#40720221)
Costco makes the majority of profit from membership fees, they've already profited from you before you have even made your first purchase. Arguable any profit they make from what you purchase is where you are being 'ripped off' but because the savings and return policies are better than the competition they avoid the 'pissing off'.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by gopher_space on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @06:35PM (#40722808)
Isn’t a membership like $35 a year?
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by brianwawok on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @06:59PM (#40722984)
$60 or $120
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by queuebert on Wednesday June 19, 2024 @10:56AM (#40728913)
Are you sure about that? Their average markup is around 10%, so that would mean that the average member would be spending $600 or less in the store per year.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by isk517 on Wednesday June 19, 2024 @11:29AM (#40729198)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/shelleykohan/2023/10/24/costco-...

I've seen the same numbers in multiple articles state that 72% of Costco's profits came from the membership fee in a year that they saw record sales.

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by vasco on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @03:01AM (#40714861)
I've seen business cases predicting 70% churn that were entertained for months because of the revenue potential.

Reminds me of the "men only want one thing and it's disgusting" meme but with executives.

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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by dd82 on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @08:48AM (#40717202)
At a certain size company, you being a professional asshole is a requirement for any position. Also being very good at lying and deceiving. The danger begins when those people start believing their own lies.
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by interludead on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @03:42PM (#40721406)
When aggressive, deceitful behavior becomes normalized...
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by interludead on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @03:41PM (#40721389)
Indeed, businesses can maximize profits by pushing the limits of customer tolerance. And I see that often now
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Re:FTC sues Adobe for hiding fees and inhibiting cancellations by iamleppert on Tuesday June 18, 2024 @04:22PM (#40721836)
It's important to recognize that the only thing that matters is how big of a bag you can get. Making money is the only point of tech. Get in, get your bag, and get out!
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