Digital subscriptions | How I Saved $1400 in One Hour

Netflix or Disney+? Club Illico or ICI Tou.tv? Spotify or Tidal? Digital subscription offers abound, and many consumers, like our journalist, don’t choose: they take them all. Or almost. There are, however, very effective ways to avoid “digital oversubscription”, he found by consulting the right people.

Karim Benessaieh
The Press

Five hundred dollars a month. I realized last fall, with a simple Excel file, how the ideal client I was for digital subscription sellers and telecommunications companies.

Well, let’s take out of that total the $320 for the internet for the house and the cottage, as well as the family’s four cell phone plans. Some savings to go there, but that will be for another file.

We are left with $180 per month of digital subscriptions that have accumulated over the years.

It starts with Spotify and Netflix in home format and 4K, because everyone wants their own music in their room and nobody wants to listen to movies in low definition: $40.21 a month.

How to do without Apple Music, its incredibly adapted lists and the possibility of having your own music library in all Apple devices? Come on, let’s take the large Apple One package, at $18.34, which also gives us Apple TV+, Arcade and 50 GB of storage. It’s hard not to fall for Tidal’s high-definition music, with quality headphones for those late-night walks. I’ve probably canceled four times in two years to re-embark a few months later.

Then $79 a year to receive packages from Amazon in less than two days with no shipping costs, while enjoying Prime Video and Music, that’s a bargain. Add to that subscriptions to online video game services PS Plus and Xbox Gold, taken to try a particular game and never cancelled. Sonos Radio HD and Amazon Music Unlimited, even indolence. Cafeyn and its hundreds of French magazines for $14.91? A godsend, even if I never have time to browse them.

ICI Tou.tv, for $8.04, is not enough to hope that my daughters watch a minimum of Quebec content. A total failure. And the list ends with Disney+, which was tried for free last year and became impossible to cancel without sparking an uprising in the house.

And to think that we got rid of cable in 2017 to save money.

“A large family”

“It is indeed the reality of many people, notes Anaïs Beaulieu-Laporte, analyst at the Union des consommateurs. In many cases, people have terminated their cable subscription because they found it too expensive, and switched to $15 platforms that accumulate. You have to be aware that the costs go up very quickly. »

We do not know what precise percentage of Quebecers suffer from this abuse of subscriptions. A quick look at the most recent Digital portrait of Quebec householdsthe NETendances 2021 edition, however, gives some indications regarding video platforms.

According to this report, 71% of Quebecers subscribe to at least one paid online viewing service. At the other end of the telescope, add up the percentages of the different departments: you get 143%. In other words, Quebec subscribers would have about two online viewing services on average.

In the United States, according to a Deloitte Insights survey conducted in February 2021, it would be even more spectacular: subscribers would have an average of four video services.

In short, I am far from alone. “You are part of a very large family,” reassures me Bruno Guglielminetti, host of the digital news podcast My notebook. “I have Netflix, Prime Video, Club Illico, I wander between Apple TV and Disney+, I cancel them, I get back on board, and I occasionally go to CraveTV. And I also have Google Stadia. »

Gabrielle Thibault-Delorme, who presents herself as a “blogger for semi-voluntary simplicity”, has precisely dealt with this question in an article for the magazine Urbania.

She wrote knowingly.

“I was subscribed to almost everything. Four years ago, I was crazy-headed in general. I ended up with a nice debt of $24,000. My expenses, I let them go and I did not portray all that. I found myself in the schnoutte. »

Browse the platforms

Small precision here: it is rather exceptional that the multiplication of subscriptions is the main cause of financial difficulties. “The leisure budget is the one that people cut when they have no more money,” notes Anaïs Beaulieu-Laporte, of the Union des consommateurs. This observation seems to be confirmed at the ACEF in the east of Montreal, where we looked at the request of The Press the files of consumers who have been in financial difficulty for a year.

“In the forty files selected at random, none of them had subscriptions to these platforms”, specifies Sonia Saint-Pierre, coordinator.

Gabrielle Thibault-Delorme’s method of avoiding falling back into debt is simple: she gives herself specific budgets for various expenses, including $30 per month for her video and audio subscriptions. As she still keeps Spotify, she walks every three months between the different video platforms. Her main criterion: which series are available at a specific time and which she wishes to watch.

“Apple TV+, I took it for Ted Lasso, but I changed quite quickly. Right now I’m on CraveTV because I wanted Succession. I’m a little over my three months, I’m really happy with Crave. »

This transition from one platform to another is all the easier since most do not offer financial incentives to take out an annual subscription, notes Bruno Guglielminetti. “From a business perspective, I don’t understand. They don’t provide any incentive for loyalty, we have no economic advantage. But for the consumer it is interesting and convenient. »

Cut in the fat

Another advantage for subscribers is that most platforms offer a free trial period. “It’s super interesting to see the content available,” says Anaïs Beaulieu-Laporte. When there is only one program that interests you, there is a great opportunity to watch it and end the subscription afterwards. »

More generally, she recalls that there are “basic tips” to follow for subscriptions, digital or otherwise. “We cannot realistically consume everything at the same time. It seems important to me to choose only what you need. You have to remember that there are only 24 hours in a day. »

I followed the advice of my interviewees. Shortly before writing this article, I cleaned up my superfluous digital subscriptions. I’ll spare you the long list. Tidal, Apple One and Amazon Prime, among others, have gone by the wayside, as have online video games and under-read magazines. Amazon rolled up screens to convince me to stay, Cafeyn got me through PayPal for the cancellation, and ICI TOU.TV gave me a $3 discount for six months. But it only took a short hour to eliminate $116 in expenses per month.

Or $1400 for a full year. Unless I relapse by then.