@hchavers Income Taxes, Sales Taxes, Excise Taxes (including on gasoline, communications, utilities,…), Capital Gains Taxes, and Property Taxes.
Oh yeah, and Taxes.
And they don’t even smile while they are screwing you.
Magazine subscriptions that zap you for ten times as much at renewal as the “intro” sub cost, and they make it really hard to figure out what that charge relates to.
Website hosting fees that are five times higher per month at renewal than they were when you signed up two years ago, partially because they upsold you “at no charge” to more capacity than you really needed to begin with.
@werehatrack let it lapse. Since only a few big publishers own the whole lot of them, it may only take one lapse to give you better rates. After a month or two, they’ll be offering introductory rates or better.
Adobe Creative Suite “subscription”, the expense that never stops costing (if you still need it) no matter how little you use it.
Microsoft Office 365 - they try really hard to convince you that the subscription model is the only deal in town, and it’s not.
@werehatrack it’s THEIR only deal in town (because MSFT, as a near company/monopoly, put their futures in “rental units” rather than “home units”). As times evolve and people try to fight engineered “planned obsolecense”, either by squeezing more miles out of a used product or “farming” a DIY alternative, software giants double down by offering “forever” (subscription/lease) software.
The ultra cynic in me (thankfully still in the back trunk, unlike the cynic who has crawled into the driver’s seat) wonders how many more generations it will take before Adobe can get royalties on all products made using their tools.
On the positive side, there are plenty of alternative (Google Apps), lower profile (WPS apps), even free (Libre Office), solutions. They might be slower, clunkier, and rely on word of mouth for specific upgrades (rather than uniformly compulsory updates large scale manufacturers can push) but they are out there.
Oh and this is also something of a nihilistic “everything will corrupt eventually” mindset. Even free, open source software has differing categories: MIT,.GPL 2, GPL3, etc.
@bgammill@pooflady Have you tried calling and threatening to quit? I’ve done that a couple of times, seriously intending to, and they offer me deals until I finally grudgingly accept “for now.”
@bgammill@pooflady My local paper wants $35 a month for just the Sunday paper, so I get my local news through AM radio of all things. Maybe poke around and see if there’s a station near you still broadcasting.
@bgammill@brennyn@pooflady
Used to get (and still miss having) a paper thrown in my driveway every daynearly every daymost days every now and then… Got to be so sporadic that it was taking too much time filing for the credit when it didn’t make it.
I get it… no one wants to do that job since there are so few getting the physical paper any more.
Still miss holding a paper in my hands, but ended up getting a ‘digital’ subscription which is presented JUST LIKE THE PAGES OF THE PRINT VERSION. This way I can read it on a tablet or computer and I am not confronted with the endless click-bait crap that is on the main website with a bit of real news scattered in between.
cost is about $10/month…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@bgammill@brennyn@chienfou@pooflady
I really should switch - them you don’t have the actual papers piling up either. I just kind of hate to, for nostalgia’s sake, and because I already do too much reading on screens.
@Kyeh
Papers piling up was one of the benefits as far as I was concerned. I used them to line the space between the rows in my veggie garden to keep the weeds down and the moisture in the ground.
@Kyeh
yeah… thanks but not thanks. I actually still have a few boxes left in the barn that will be used in the next few years. After that I will start using the Amazon boxes etc. instead.
@chienfou@Kyeh That’s what we do. We seem to collect a lot of cardboard, so I cut it into ~18" strips with a razor knife to put down on the paths between the rows in the garden.
@chienfou@Kyeh@pakopako The cardboard strips are laid flat on the ground along the paths between rows of crops. They do breakdown eventually after getting wet, but stay intact long enough to block weeds and other undesirable things from growing in the paths. In the spring, it all gets tilled under.
Also, prices on Glade Air Freshener by SC Johnson “A Family Company” prior to the pandemic my local store charged 82 cents for the 8 oz. can…I just noticed yesterday, they are now charging $2.19 for the exact same product! There is NO WAY this can be justified! So, I am investing in clothes pins for noses!
@bgammill I have never in my life seen name brand air freshener aerosol cans for less than a dollar and I’m 34 years old…$2.19 per can is a bargain. Most of them are like $5 here, anyway…
The proliferation of streaming services that lock content behind dozens of individual paid subscriptions to the point you’re paying more than a modest cable bill just to watch the 10 shows you like. The current streaming environment is horrid.
Netflix was about $7 a month when I first started subscribing. Now, their base monthly plan cost is upwards of $15…and that doesn’t even include 4K resolution!!
@growyoungagain I, too, came to write about my ISP, Spectrum/Suddenlink/Altice/whatever name they call themselves to get away from the debt collectors this week. I have an actual fibre attached to my house and they insist on serving cable internet down it - most of the time. When I have service at all, I often struggle to get above a single digit upload speed (many times, that digit is 1mbps) and have highly variable download speeds and latency which has often been in the 3-4 second range and has topped 6 seconds before. Not milliseconds, seconds. With an actual fibre attached to my house.
For this “gigabit down/50 up” service, they are charging a little more than a hundred dollars a month. I devotedly fill out their forms for billing reduction any day they interrupt service, but they have yet to compensate us. It wouldn’t be so bad if not for the monopoly they negotiated.
Yet for all that, taxes are still worse. Maybe not a lot, but worse.
@growyoungagain@jsfs Xfinity is the most hated company in the country so if you ever get any choices and think about switching I’d suggest not them. That company has a monopoly in much of this town. Talking to a human with them takes an act of god, suffering through them doing resets, hanging up on you and telling you to call back in 10 min if there are still problems even if that is not what you are calling about but the bot has no choices for that, and close to 4 minutes to get past the bot.
I have no choices so I have Internet through them. TV is antenna with not so much in the way of reception but even basic cable is priced too high for my budget. Luckily I have ACP with my internet so I am not paying for all the service interruptions where it has to be 48 hours to get any credit, which you have to do over the phone (see above for getting through), and then what you get varies by customer service rep for the same outage.
I’d suggest picking a day you have hours to be on hold where you are by a phone charger and call your stupid company to talk to them about the failure to give you the credits and demand action and then “compensation” for their lack of action.
@growyoungagain Not only that, but they’ve got us for nearly $250 a month for 100 MBPS Internet, and cable TV service with a level of reliability that makes satellite TV in Florida look like perfection…
@jsfs@Kidsandliz I feel your pain on everything you said. I’ve been on the ACP plan for about a year, but that $30.00 has already been wiped out. They raised my rate $16.00 in the spring and then $10.00 last week. Why? because they can. Everyone I know has a loud and visceral response when mentioning Spectrum/Charter. Even one of my doctors and he has money.
@PooltoyWolf now that is a hefty sum!! Frequent drops and my company has been doing updates after midnight a lot this past year,( to improve our service??)I’m up all night so this is a major nuisance and I can’t afford the higher tiers of the streaming services so I can download movies or tv shows.
Paying the state sales tax for digital downloads. I can sorta see taxes for things that are physically delivered since that requires the use of roads. But I am already paying state tax on my internet and phone services, so paying an additional tax to use said services is just an added insult.
@rockblossom it’s coming to you on the wires physically located in your state which have to be maintained /s (though I could see this being part of the “rationale”…)
@rockblossom Almost all of the states with such a levy call it a “Sales and Use Tax” which allows them to demand payment of sales tax on something bought elsewhere and brought into the state for usage there. TTBOMK, only Florida is obsessive about trying to ding people who buy stuff while out of state and bring it home with them. (There are so many reasons why I would never consider moving back to that hellscape…)
I find the odd little dance required to have phone and other utilities vary in prices until you call and threaten to switch to a different provider to be annoying in the extreme. “Oh we’re sorry, ma’am, you were on an old package. Our new package is half the price what you were paying and gives you twice the download speeds.”
“Oh we’re sorry, you were on our old plan for storage, if you switch to the new plan you’ll save $20”
@hpph Yup. When I bought my current vehicle I got a 6-month “free trial” of SiriusXM. Just short of the 6 months, they tried to “automatically renew” my service for a ridiculous amount but didn’t have my credit card info. I canceled the service, but they had my e-mail and home addresses provided by the auto dealer. They bombarded me with junk mail “offers”, at different prices, on both. I sent the e-mail to junk files, but still got the snail mail crap weekly, then monthly for a couple of years. Four years later, I still get a letter about every 3 months with some new “offer” of “cheap” service. The thing is - if they worked like most of the streaming services with up-front prices and the ability to sub/unsub at will, I would probably have kept the service. It was their grifter sales tactics that made it a “Hell no, now and forever!” for me. If I want to stream music on a long trip I can just link the phone to the car speakers and use Spotify.
Contacts. Why should I have to pay a subscription to freaking see
@TheGreatNico See also: hearing aids as a service.
All of them. It’s my money!!
Insurance
VMP. (Kidding!)
All of the Choices & More!
Directv. Why do I have a subscription and still have to watch commercials?
That damn scoundrel Mr. Reynolds.
Income Taxes, Property Taxes, Vehicle Registration, City Utility Taxes, etc., etc.
@hchavers Income Taxes, Sales Taxes, Excise Taxes (including on gasoline, communications, utilities,…), Capital Gains Taxes, and Property Taxes.
Oh yeah, and Taxes.
And they don’t even smile while they are screwing you.
@hchavers I see you’ve expanded your tax toll since I started my reply.
@hchavers Love how all of my city related stuff gets split into like six different bills even though it all lands on the same person’s desk.
@brennyn
they are in cahoots with the post office…
@hchavers @phendrick
https://tenor.com/view/power-rangers-mighty-morphin-kimberly-hart-pink-ranger-excuse-me-for-living-gif-19237648
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/79509107-0dc0-42e6-a4f4-911e30b2aba2
@hchavers @pakopako @phendrick
Mafia “protection” fees…
@shahnm would’nt want somethin’ to happen to doze fees, now would ya?
@Oldelvis Well, it’s a nice place I’ve got heah. Be a shame if somethin’ was to happen to it…
@shahnm Mafia branded insurance
Income tax is theft.
Insurance and Taxes
Magazine subscriptions that zap you for ten times as much at renewal as the “intro” sub cost, and they make it really hard to figure out what that charge relates to.
Website hosting fees that are five times higher per month at renewal than they were when you signed up two years ago, partially because they upsold you “at no charge” to more capacity than you really needed to begin with.
@werehatrack let it lapse. Since only a few big publishers own the whole lot of them, it may only take one lapse to give you better rates. After a month or two, they’ll be offering introductory rates or better.
Adobe Creative Suite “subscription”, the expense that never stops costing (if you still need it) no matter how little you use it.
Microsoft Office 365 - they try really hard to convince you that the subscription model is the only deal in town, and it’s not.
@werehatrack
came here to say software subscriptions. Really chaps my ass… I want MY software on MY computer thankyouverymuch…
@werehatrack it’s THEIR only deal in town (because MSFT, as a near company/monopoly, put their futures in “rental units” rather than “home units”). As times evolve and people try to fight engineered “planned obsolecense”, either by squeezing more miles out of a used product or “farming” a DIY alternative, software giants double down by offering “forever” (subscription/lease) software.
The ultra cynic in me (thankfully still in the back trunk, unlike the cynic who has crawled into the driver’s seat) wonders how many more generations it will take before Adobe can get royalties on all products made using their tools.
On the positive side, there are plenty of alternative (Google Apps), lower profile (WPS apps), even free (Libre Office), solutions. They might be slower, clunkier, and rely on word of mouth for specific upgrades (rather than uniformly compulsory updates large scale manufacturers can push) but they are out there.
Oh and this is also something of a nihilistic “everything will corrupt eventually” mindset. Even free, open source software has differing categories: MIT,.GPL 2, GPL3, etc.
Subscription to the local newspaper. They go up, cut content, raise prices, cut out features, then go up on their prices.
@bgammill I’m paying over $600 a year for the newspaper and that’s only six days a week, they don’t do a paper one on Saturday.
@bgammill @pooflady Have you tried calling and threatening to quit? I’ve done that a couple of times, seriously intending to, and they offer me deals until I finally grudgingly accept “for now.”
@bgammill @pooflady My local paper wants $35 a month for just the Sunday paper, so I get my local news through AM radio of all things. Maybe poke around and see if there’s a station near you still broadcasting.
@bgammill @brennyn @pooflady
Used to get (and still miss having) a paper thrown in my driveway
every daynearly every daymost daysevery now and then… Got to be so sporadic that it was taking too much time filing for the credit when it didn’t make it.I get it… no one wants to do that job since there are so few getting the physical paper any more.
Still miss holding a paper in my hands, but ended up getting a ‘digital’ subscription which is presented JUST LIKE THE PAGES OF THE PRINT VERSION. This way I can read it on a tablet or computer and I am not confronted with the endless click-bait crap that is on the main website with a bit of real news scattered in between.
cost is about $10/month…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@bgammill @brennyn @chienfou @pooflady
I really should switch - them you don’t have the actual papers piling up either. I just kind of hate to, for nostalgia’s sake, and because I already do too much reading on screens.
@Kyeh
Papers piling up was one of the benefits as far as I was concerned. I used them to line the space between the rows in my veggie garden to keep the weeds down and the moisture in the ground.
@chienfou Ohhhh. Wish I could send you some! (I mean, I could, but it would be kind of costly!)
@Kyeh
yeah… thanks but not thanks. I actually still have a few boxes left in the barn that will be used in the next few years. After that I will start using the Amazon boxes etc. instead.
@chienfou @Kyeh That’s what we do. We seem to collect a lot of cardboard, so I cut it into ~18" strips with a razor knife to put down on the paths between the rows in the garden.
@Kyeh @macromeh
it’s great worm food as well!
@chienfou @Kyeh @macromeh Dumb question, but wouldn’t rain reduce paper walls (cardboard or not) to mush?
@chienfou @Kyeh @pakopako The cardboard strips are laid flat on the ground along the paths between rows of crops. They do breakdown eventually after getting wet, but stay intact long enough to block weeds and other undesirable things from growing in the paths. In the spring, it all gets tilled under.
@chienfou @macromeh @pakopako
Yeah, a great substitute for mulch.
@Kyeh @macromeh @pakopako
Yes… That exactly!
Also, prices on Glade Air Freshener by SC Johnson “A Family Company” prior to the pandemic my local store charged 82 cents for the 8 oz. can…I just noticed yesterday, they are now charging $2.19 for the exact same product! There is NO WAY this can be justified! So, I am investing in clothes pins for noses!
@bgammill I have never in my life seen name brand air freshener aerosol cans for less than a dollar and I’m 34 years old…$2.19 per can is a bargain. Most of them are like $5 here, anyway…
The proliferation of streaming services that lock content behind dozens of individual paid subscriptions to the point you’re paying more than a modest cable bill just to watch the 10 shows you like. The current streaming environment is horrid.
Netflix was about $7 a month when I first started subscribing. Now, their base monthly plan cost is upwards of $15…and that doesn’t even include 4K resolution!!
@PooltoyWolf With ads is still $6.99…without $15.49. Dropped them long ago so sales tax may apply.
@detailer Insane.
Spectrum/ Charter cable and internet.
I can’t contain the ire that I have towards this monopoly.
@growyoungagain I, too, came to write about my ISP, Spectrum/Suddenlink/Altice/whatever name they call themselves to get away from the debt collectors this week. I have an actual fibre attached to my house and they insist on serving cable internet down it - most of the time. When I have service at all, I often struggle to get above a single digit upload speed (many times, that digit is 1mbps) and have highly variable download speeds and latency which has often been in the 3-4 second range and has topped 6 seconds before. Not milliseconds, seconds. With an actual fibre attached to my house.
For this “gigabit down/50 up” service, they are charging a little more than a hundred dollars a month. I devotedly fill out their forms for billing reduction any day they interrupt service, but they have yet to compensate us. It wouldn’t be so bad if not for the monopoly they negotiated.
Yet for all that, taxes are still worse. Maybe not a lot, but worse.
@growyoungagain @jsfs Xfinity is the most hated company in the country so if you ever get any choices and think about switching I’d suggest not them. That company has a monopoly in much of this town. Talking to a human with them takes an act of god, suffering through them doing resets, hanging up on you and telling you to call back in 10 min if there are still problems even if that is not what you are calling about but the bot has no choices for that, and close to 4 minutes to get past the bot.
I have no choices so I have Internet through them. TV is antenna with not so much in the way of reception but even basic cable is priced too high for my budget. Luckily I have ACP with my internet so I am not paying for all the service interruptions where it has to be 48 hours to get any credit, which you have to do over the phone (see above for getting through), and then what you get varies by customer service rep for the same outage.
I’d suggest picking a day you have hours to be on hold where you are by a phone charger and call your stupid company to talk to them about the failure to give you the credits and demand action and then “compensation” for their lack of action.
@growyoungagain Not only that, but they’ve got us for nearly $250 a month for 100 MBPS Internet, and cable TV service with a level of reliability that makes satellite TV in Florida look like perfection…
@jsfs @Kidsandliz I feel your pain on everything you said. I’ve been on the ACP plan for about a year, but that $30.00 has already been wiped out. They raised my rate $16.00 in the spring and then $10.00 last week. Why? because they can. Everyone I know has a loud and visceral response when mentioning Spectrum/Charter. Even one of my doctors and he has money.
@PooltoyWolf now that is a hefty sum!! Frequent drops and my company has been doing updates after midnight a lot this past year,( to improve our service??)I’m up all night so this is a major nuisance and I can’t afford the higher tiers of the streaming services so I can download movies or tv shows.
Amazon Prime membership fee
@heartny What do you get with that that’s worth the annual… I forget how much it is now?
Paying the state sales tax for digital downloads. I can sorta see taxes for things that are physically delivered since that requires the use of roads. But I am already paying state tax on my internet and phone services, so paying an additional tax to use said services is just an added insult.
@rockblossom it’s coming to you on the wires physically located in your state which have to be maintained /s (though I could see this being part of the “rationale”…)
@rockblossom Almost all of the states with such a levy call it a “Sales and Use Tax” which allows them to demand payment of sales tax on something bought elsewhere and brought into the state for usage there. TTBOMK, only Florida is obsessive about trying to ding people who buy stuff while out of state and bring it home with them. (There are so many reasons why I would never consider moving back to that hellscape…)
I find the odd little dance required to have phone and other utilities vary in prices until you call and threaten to switch to a different provider to be annoying in the extreme. “Oh we’re sorry, ma’am, you were on an old package. Our new package is half the price what you were paying and gives you twice the download speeds.”
“Oh we’re sorry, you were on our old plan for storage, if you switch to the new plan you’ll save $20”
What on earth is this dance all about!?
@hpph
It’s a variant of “You snooze, you lose.” If they can take more by remaining silent, it’s in their own interest for the current quarter to clam up.
@hpph Yup. When I bought my current vehicle I got a 6-month “free trial” of SiriusXM. Just short of the 6 months, they tried to “automatically renew” my service for a ridiculous amount but didn’t have my credit card info. I canceled the service, but they had my e-mail and home addresses provided by the auto dealer. They bombarded me with junk mail “offers”, at different prices, on both. I sent the e-mail to junk files, but still got the snail mail crap weekly, then monthly for a couple of years. Four years later, I still get a letter about every 3 months with some new “offer” of “cheap” service. The thing is - if they worked like most of the streaming services with up-front prices and the ability to sub/unsub at will, I would probably have kept the service. It was their grifter sales tactics that made it a “Hell no, now and forever!” for me. If I want to stream music on a long trip I can just link the phone to the car speakers and use Spotify.
Electric. I reduced my usage 5% yoy, but the price went up 9%…
Utilities. Weekly grocery bills. Internet. Rent.
Things that are required to live, y’know.
@DocJRoberts sorry, life is now too precious to spread around. Please recycle your organs to the nearest rising middle class person.
https://tenor.com/view/power-rangers-mighty-morphin-kimberly-hart-pink-ranger-excuse-me-for-living-gif-19237648
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/79509107-0dc0-42e6-a4f4-911e30b2aba2