
Knowing I’m Being Tricked Is Barely Enough - luu
https://acesounderglass.com/2019/02/24/knowing-im-being-tricked-is-barely-enough/
======
gambiting
The cheapest way to get audible is to subscribe on a per monthly basis, then
immediately go and cancel - as part of the cancellation process it offers you
50% for the first three months instead. Just go and do that instead, then
continue doing it every time the plan is about to go full price. I've been
doing this for years and consistently getting it for £3.99/credit.

~~~
d-sc
This assumes brain time is free. Most of us are too busy navigate all of the
deals. Sure, just this one thing for audible is easy. But then you have to
remember that other thing for Hulu ..and weird trick for Spotify ...and the
spring promo for the grocery store.. Pretty soon we get lost.

~~~
gambiting
But surely....everyone already does this in real life anyways? How is this
different? I could go and do my weekly shop in Sainsburys...or drive 100m away
and buy everything I need in Lidl for half the price. When buying a car I
could say I am too busy to negotiate and take whatever is being offered, or I
could do a little shop around and get a better price. Same with accepting
salaries, when buying a house, when selecting phone contracts or utilities.
You'd need to be super rich to just accept prices as they are and not worry
about it - and if you are, then great, but for me it's like throwing money out
of the window if you don't do this.

I mean, I don't know how else do you expect this to work? That all companies
and individuals should be obliged to give us the lowest price they will ever
accept, just because?

~~~
0xffff2
I buy a car once every 10 years or so, so it's not much overhead to research
and negotiate that sale when you amortize it over the life of the car. For
most other things, I pretty much pay the price I'm presented if I think it's
acceptable.

I do my grocery shopping at one grocery store. I know I'm paying a bit more
for some items (and much more for a few), but it's worth it to me because it
means I don't have to make extra trips to Target and Trader Joe's, plus I
don't have to remember what the prices are at all three stores so that I buy
the right items at the right store. The vast majority of my spending falls
into this category.

In fact, car and salary are the only two things I can think of that I actually
negotiate at all. Even my house I didn't really negotiate. I made an offer
slightly below asking and accepted the sellers counter in the middle.

As a non-FAANG software engineer in the bay area, I definitely don't consider
myself super rich. (NB: I didn't buy a house in the bay area, but where I plan
to eventually retire. For now it's just a vacation home. I'll never make
enough to afford a house in the bay.)

~~~
brownbat
> plus I don't have to remember what the prices are at all three [grocery]
> stores

I take your point that only the big things are worth sweating, but I feel like
local comparison shopping is the sort of thing technology should make easy,
and it still seems really hard. User uploaded systems, like GasBuddy, probably
wouldn't work on so many items, unless uploading the price data could be
automated somehow.

If we could kill paper receipts and instead get per-item sales data pumped to
our feed of choice (Mint? Email?), then it'd be much easier to build a system
on top of that that would run weekly local price comparisons. If you really
wanted only one trip, maybe it could compare your total shopping list.

I know a lot of stores offer emailed receipts as an option now, it'd be a
little more seamless if your payment system communicated your receipt
preferences automatically, and if Mint or something like it was ready to catch
that data.

------
rdiddly
It's not your dishonesty per se that con men look for, it's your greed,
specifically active greed. I find passive greed works better. Not buying stuff
at all provides an infinity percent discount. And as a bonus, there's nothing
to figure out, and only one thing to remember: keep your wallet closed.

------
crankylinuxuser
Because this directly applies to audible and their DRM bullshit:

The following one-liner converts their audiofile format to a equivalent mp4.
Consider this a public service, and a way to make content you legally
purchased yours.

ffmpeg -activation_bytes 1CEB00DA -i test.aax -vn -c:a copy output.mp4

~~~
jimktrains2
Reminds me of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number)

------
Animats
_" 'Audible subscriber' was a nice identity to have"_

If your identity is tied up with your affinity cards, you have a problem.

There's a whole industry out there trying to convince you that what brand you
buy is important, beyond what value you get from the product itself. This is a
promoted delusion. The classic paper is "Brands as symbolic resources for the
construction of identity", out of Oxford.

------
gerbilly
I don't like being dragged into the minutiae of pricing plans like this.

It's makes me feel like a rodent in a maze responding to some twisted
experiment.

And whenever I overhear people discuss the tricks they've come up with to save
2$/year on their transit pass or cable bill or whatever, I have to walk away.

I find those kinds of discussions tedious to the point that it makes me angry.

~~~
maxxxxx
I think the real issue is that there is a trend that existing customers are
being treated in a hostile manner. It used to be that long term customers are
being treated well but these days long term customers are being exploited and
new customers get the perks.

I think we have a deep need to be rewarded for loyalty.

~~~
habosa
I think if there is anything that is truly American, its the expectation that
customers and companies are always trying to trick each other. So much of
American business culture is built around this assumed adversarial
relationship.

~~~
maxxxxx
I have been in the US since 2000 and I think it has gotten worse. Most people
still believe that loyalty gets rewarded but that’s not the case anymore in
business and also not anymore as employees.

------
conanbatt
Subscription and ownership are not compatible models.

It's an unfortunate consequence of how copyright exherts their influence: they
do not want to end up like musicians on Spotify.

------
cpeterso
I'm an Audible subscriber and I listen to a lot of audio books. A nice
supplement to Audible is "Libby", a free mobile app that lets you check out
audio books for free using your library card. I read reviews on Audible and
then check whether the book is available on Libby before purchasing on
Audible.

[https://meet.libbyapp.com/](https://meet.libbyapp.com/)

------
cm2012
McDonalds gives away coupons with serious discounts. People who value their
money more than time seek out the coupons. People who don't want to spend time
fiddling with coupons just pay straight up. Audible is doing the same thing
here.

~~~
chipperyman573
McDonalds _gave away_ coupons with serious discounts until January 1 2019, at
which point the app stopped offering any decent deals and only let you view
one coupon an hour

~~~
scotty79
They were doing that some time ago. Then they went back to offering large
number of deals every day. I'm not sure if it's a seasonal thing or do they
really want to transitiom to such a small number of deals.

------
egonschiele
I'm seeing a lot of anti-Audible comments here. I'm not particularly pro-
Amazon, but I've been an Audible subscriber since 2016, and my take is, if you
don't like Audible, go elsewhere! There are so many other options, including
Apple.

This isn't even the shittiest thing Audible does! It will delete audiobooks
from your library and not even tell you.

Despite all that I'm a loyal audible member. I'm on the 24 credits/yr plan,
and that's the best deal for audiobooks I have seen. Audible customer service
is awesome, and it is easy to return any book you don't like. I don't love the
credit model either, but you're basically choosing between expensive books on
apple or cheap + deal w the credits on audible. To take an extreme example, I
recently listened to The Path to Power which cost me $9 on audible[1]. It
would have been $34.99 on itunes[2].

It seems like HN wants the best of both worlds, i.e. $9 per audiobook and no
dealing with credits. But that's just not an option.

[1] [https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Path-to-Power-
Audiobook/B00GS...](https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Path-to-Power-
Audiobook/B00GS3VI0Y?qid=1552263391&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&pf_rd_r=7J42B3HQE0FAX1G8QTGG&)

[2] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/the-path-to-power-
the-...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/the-path-to-power-the-years-of-
lyndon-johnson-unabridged/id773104242)

~~~
xfitm3
Can you elaborate on "It will delete audiobooks from your library and not even
tell you."? How can this be detected?

~~~
egonschiele
Unsure. Here's one previous discussion on reddit, there have been more
[https://www.reddit.com/r/audible/comments/8usqxk/anyone_have...](https://www.reddit.com/r/audible/comments/8usqxk/anyone_have_a_list_of_the_books_audible_has/)

------
remote_phone
It’s taking advantage of the “sunk cost” fallacy. People tend to believe that
since they’ve already spent $X that they might as well continue.

This is why so many retail investors will double down on a losing stock
position. Any day trader will tell you that this is a complete fallacy. Even
if you don’t sell your shares that are losing money, you still have taken the
loss, the only one who hasn’t admitted it is yourself.

Better to cut the cord and leave instead of trying to dump more money in and
“right” an losing situation.

------
msvan
splice.com also has this slightly scummy business model, where you lose your
credits if you cancel your subscription. I suppose it works though, since the
model keeps being used everywhere.

