Isn’t this a perfect example of the side-effect of the introduction of KPIs?
Once you introduce KPIs, your observed cohort will adapt and optimize on these KPIs alone and on nothing else, as there is no incentive for them to do so.
And all this where the needed regulation is so simple: „one can cancel any subscription the same way it was started“.
Started by clicking on a website? There must be an unsubscribe button.
Sold at my doorstep? Next time your sales people try to sell me something, I can cancel with them. But I could also just go to any office/branch/shop and tell whoever works there that I hereby unsubscribe.
I'll one up you on that: every ecommerce company that ships to your door should also allow you to return the product via simple courier pick-up, with no more clicks required than the purchase.
The trouble arises later on. Say five years down the road, or more. You've enjoyed this service but time to cut back. You forgot how you signed up. The website's different. The company was sold three times and changed domains. Worse, you're dead or incapacitated, and a loved one is trying to do this on your behalf.
What needs to happen is a clear path working backwards from the bank charges to unsub. They're supposed to cram in enough info in the transaction line, but how many times is it a third-party with an all-zero phone number?
Even worse are "discreet" or sensitive services such as porn, that are necessarily circumspect about the transaction details.
That's why I really appreciate middlemen like PayPal. They've got a fantastic dashboard for recurring payments that puts control back in our hands (usually) and lets you simply override the vendor's autopay arrangement.
I am with you that it would be even better if any financial transaction rooted in a subscription should come with a revokation token + url to unsubscribe.
But this sounds like even harder to get, so I’ll settle for the more simple version described above in the meantime.
Here's a fundamental dialectic tension that makes unsubscribing arduous:
Companies are literally banking on long-term subscriptions for their bottom line. If a customer has made a commitment to a gym or a service for 12 months, or 3 years, or perpetuity, then that company is also putting the customer's future payments into their budget projections. Now they DEPEND ON YOU for solvency!
So you can see that a company has a right to send you to retention or make overtures before you outright stop paying them. And you see why so many things have gone to AutoPay where the company extracts cash from your account, rather than waiting on you to write them a check, and doing the dance of late notices, late fees, collection agencies. They simply can't be a creditor to deadbeat customers anymore.
So it behooves us to think long-and-hard before that free trial, or committing to a subscription we probably won't use or want soon. To think about the future difficulty of canceling rather than the cool perks we get today. To think about passing this info on to our loved ones or PoA who'll need to deal with it at some point.
Because it's not merely about the consumer. It's about businesses being able to plan for their own future, and being able to pay their own employees, and keep their lights on. They depend on those subscriptions from us, because they represent loyalty and commitment.
> They depend on those subscriptions from us, because they represent loyalty and commitment.
A subscription that only continues to exist because the unsubscribe process is harder than it needs to be can never represent loyality and commitment, as both require an act of free will.
The act of free will was when you signed up in the first place and consented to being charged until cancellation, yeah? The acts of free will are when you continue using and enjoying their services for N months/years.
An initial commitment and consent leads to interdependence and cooperation. Loyalty and trust must be earned, but provided that they are earned, they shouldn't be flouted in a capricious act. Why are you canceling? You found a cheaper price? A more attractive deal? Service was bad or not worth your money? Most everyone would agree that many commitments entail responsibilities as well. Do you accept responsibility, and liability, as a customer?
If a company sends you to retention or comes up with special offers to keep you as a customer, that is not necessarily malicious behavior: they're demonstrating that they value your business, especially your money and future payments, and they're showing you what it's worth to keep that loyalty and commitment, and that's their act of free will, yes?
The company would say that the retention process is still subject to free will, but they've got policies, you signed on to those policies, so let's follow the policies. Your free-will act is to decline those come-ons; it's your free will to refuse to run the gauntlet, but hey, caveat emptor?
Can I one-click unsubscribe from my landlady? One-click close a bank or brokerage account? One-click renounce citizenship? Will California legislate 1-click Divorce Equality? Why not?
It is not a "totally different topic" IMHO, but a spectrum of loyalty and commitment.
I don't know the magnitude of the expatriate phenomenon for US citizens. But it would seem that, if a country (e.g. Sudan, Cuba, Vietnam) encounters an atmosphere for people to flee and leave and renounce their citizenship, as refugees, asylum seekers, or immigrant workers, then that nation is losing their #1 most valuable resource. Does not your country depend on its citizens for wealth, peace, labor, and a future? By analogy, only by weak analogy, does a company depend upon subscribers for the same sorts of things.
I'm just saying that if the bonds of marriage no longer mean much at all, and we're all tenants renting our homes, rather than lifelong spouses or landowners, then the value of loyalty and commitment is already diminished, so who cares if I cancel my Cable TV?
> Sold at my doorstep? Next time your sales people try to sell me something, I can cancel with them. But I could also just go to any office/branch/shop and tell whoever works there that I hereby unsubscribe.
Um, why though? If you bought it at the doorstep, you'll need to wait for 12 months before we come to your doorstep, whats this about "branches and shops"? You said "the same way" didn't you? ;)
Sure, but it seems like the anti-AI sentiment is that it is all completely worthless. The point is, there will be a lot of failures, but not some complete industry collapse where we enter another AI winter, so stop investing. There will be some winners.
Would you say the same about a drone operator in ukraine, attacking russian troops on ukraine territory? I feel like there is still a distinction here. Between "traditional" warfare and those "anti-terror" operations.
FPV and scout drone operators in Ukraine are very much at personal risk, they operate within several km of the front line. This is in range of mortars, artillery, snipers, autocannon, tanks, etc.
I'm talking about long range UAV drone strikes. Short range consumer-grade drones strikes aren't something I have experience with. To me, the idea feels similar to the that of IEDs, mortars, claymore mines, etc which also suck, but not the same thing. Landmines are up there though.
The CEO of Royal Caribbean has stated that the new large ships such as Icon are cash flow positive at 35% occupancy vs 50% occupancy for previous generations. The larger ships also have additional revenue generating experiences onboard so it is likely the average revenue per passenger is higher than the current industry average.
You've got to factor in deprecation. If the vessel cost $2b and lasts 20 years you need to repay $200m a year to repay the amount over 20 years.
However I suspect 8% would be far higher that the rate they'd get.
You'd also have to include maintenence costs, and also the reduction in revenue as it gets older (people will presumably not pay as much to travel on an older ship than a newer one), or the refurb costs you'll need to offset.
On the other hand inflation has to be factored in. At 2% that debt will reduce 30% over the period.
I feel like it’s just easier to use the existing cruise companies’ public financials. It looks like 10% to 15% are the real world profit margins, but with quite a bit of volatility.
How long does this supposed fraud take to show up? Carnival and Caribbean have been doing business for decades, and Norwegian has been public since 2011.
Surely, it would have impacted the bottom line by now at at least one of those 3 businesses.
I don't understand the point you are trying to make. If the estimates are incorrect, then they will show up after decades of operating as a business, being realized via the sale price of the ships or repair costs or whatever. The profit margins reported in the 10-Ks seem like an an accurate estimate of what a big cruise company can expect to earn, based on the current best management practices and technology.
Taking a boat to go on vacation seems like a stronger industry than you're making it out to be. These are huge companies with highly scrutinized finances and obvious capital expenses.
Also, you want your scam to not be too sophisticated as that would make your live harder. A less sophisticated scam will auto-filter those with critical thinking skills upfront, so you don't even have to try to convince them. Which gives you more time to focus on those you can convince.
> Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Our analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible the scammer gets the most promising marks to self-select, and tilts the true to false positive ratio in his favor.
yes, but doesn't apply here. there's nothing complicating anything. they either pay or they don't. but if you have to engage in communication to make the scam work then you'd want to weed out the smart people.
I don’t think it’s about accountability, after all democracy has more or less the same accountability mechanisms as a publicly traded company.
Given the massive public interest, there is probably at least an order of magnitude more oversight of public offices than there is for private companies.
In the end it’s the same challenge that every team, department, company has to solve: how to have people that care about their job?
Here my impression is that that’s often not the case, leading to the effects you described.
Given the often severely reduced pay in public jobs, compared with industry, I don’t find that overly surprising, you get what you pay for.
I have all speakers on Ethernet to start with. But I also had to put them into the same vlan as my phone, as I could not come up with a firewall config to span multiple vlans. It’s tricky.
Once you introduce KPIs, your observed cohort will adapt and optimize on these KPIs alone and on nothing else, as there is no incentive for them to do so.
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