I absolutely hate subscriptions, I can't wrap my head around why people got so comfortable with allowing companies to charge their credit cards whenever they want, how much they want and how long they want.. Yes it's convenient, but there are so many potential problems - what if you loose access to your account and basically won't be able to cancel the subscription? what if company will continue to charge you even after closing your account? what if they accidently charge you for who knows what? what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?
I've had enough bad experiences with subscriptions that I avoid them at all cost, just to give an example - I subscribed to a popular streaming service because I wanted to watch a movie that was only available on their platform. I immediately canceled my subscription so it would end with current billing month, but to my surprise when I checked my credit card history several months later I've noticed an additional charge that was around 10x what I paid for the one month of subscription! I emailed them and they answered me that "it was some kind of mistake" and refunded me, but it made me realize how dangerous subscriptions are.
Subscriptions should be able to be paid by invoices - you receive an invoice before next billing period and if you don't pay, account is locked, but of course that would give user too much control over their spendings and companies clearly don't want that.
Some counterexamples, subscriptions that I and others are happy to pay and which tend to provide a worse experience when funded any other way:
* Email provider.
* Online Newspapers.
* Heavily online collaborative SaaS.
* MMO games.
The common thread is that the alternative funding model can't usually be a one-time purchase because the product is delivered over indefinite time, which leaves some combination of ads and microtransactions as the remaining viable funding models. Given a choice between the three, subscriptions have reliably produced the best experience for me as a user.
Obviously, I'll heartily agree that subscriptions are overused and abused (I'm looking at you, car manufacturers), but I tend to take a more measured approach than avoiding all subscriptions of any kind. And I would absolutely hate to receive and manage invoices for these things.
Yes, I'm highly skeptical of subscriptions, but there are obviously cases where they make sense (and I work for a SaaS company so it'd be pretty hypocritical if I said the never do). I subscribe to a gym and actually go regularly as an example. I'm slightly on the fence about music - it's nice to be able to own the file in such a way that no one can ever take it away, but the convenience of Spotify is impossible to match and I sometimes subscribe.
I love the idea of owning my own music and I own some but Apple Music allowed me to discover so much albums I love that it makes it impossible to buy them all. For the price I paid over 10 years of subscriptions I might have bought them all but the subscription is what allowed me to discover them in the first place …
The way I handle any streaming video subscriptions is:
- Have a list of stuff I want to watch.
- Once the list has enough on it from any one streaming provider (Netflix, Apple TV+, HBO, etc), I activate my subscription on that service, pay for a month, and immediately cancel.
- Use the month of access I just bought to watch the stuff.
- Continue with whichever service "fills up" next at some point in the future.
This method results in me typically buying a month of access on the usual suspect services once per year or so, and I never pay when I'm not actively using the services.
If I don't use it for awhile, then I unsubscribe. If I find myself in a situation where I'll potentially be listening to a lot of music (recently it was a road trip), then I'll re-up it. If they send me a good deal and I notice it, then maybe I'll re-up then. Given the cost, it probably doesn't matter, but as I said I'm very skeptical of subscriptions.
Subscriptions should be able to be paid by invoices - you receive an invoice before next billing period and if you don't pay, account is locked
This is exactly what I do with my business (RadioReference/Broadcastify). If you have a premium subscription, you can pay with a credit card, but we do not auto-renew subscriptions. We'll simply send you an email 7 days before your subscription is about to expire, and if you want to renew it, you go ahead and submit a new payment.
I've been told by a number of PE firms and others that I'm missing out on significant revenue, and I KNOW that is probably the case, but I just cannot gather enough energy to climb that summit and commit my users to such dark patterns. Even in the face of clear and concise evidence that my revenue would probably increase >20%, I'm more afraid of the loss of customer goodwill, and chargebacks that would occur. I can simply look at my own rage when I see dark patterns that extract money from my pocket.
Sadly, it's one of those things were if your business is in a crowded space of players, the ones that do participate in the dark patterns will earn more money, which leads to more funding, which often leads to winning. So most companies don't have a choice but to foist dark patterns like auto-renewals on their customers.
I experience this recently. I had to go cancel my Tivo subscription when I ended my cable service and the website didn't have the button it was supposed to have to let me cancel it. Support was obtuse and unhelpful all around, simply replying with a link to the documentation saying to click the button that didn't exist.
Luckily, I'd been experimenting with privacy.com at the time I signed up, which lets you general card numbers for use with specific services and that's what I used for my Tivo subscription...so I was able to just go cancel that number.
Warning: sometimes if companies persistent at stealing your money I’ve heard that they can still manage to charge your card even if your privacy card is disabled. That’s what I’ve read somewhere, maybe even here on HN. But still, I also use privacy.
Canceling a credit card does not legally get you out of an obligation to pay. The only question is what is in the fine print of the subscription contract, if the company is willing to pursue it, and if the contract will hold up in court. Nothing about the credit card/payment info no longer being valid invalidates a contract in general - and in some cases you will be liable for their efforts to get payment if the card on file is no longer valid.
> I’ve heard that they can still manage to charge your card even if your privacy card is disabled.
Yup, privacy allowed a company to charge me fraudulently.
Their response was basically: "We have standards for disputes with our card networks and you have no evidence that you didn't purchase this, so we won't be allowing you to submit a dispute."
Yeah, I didn't have evidence that I didn't buy a random charge that I knew nothing about aside from the "retailer" and the dollar amount...
> what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?
Others have addressed your other points, but this one is where I roar. As a very frugal and paranoid guy, I watch my credit card activity like a hawk - like twice daily. There is no way in hell I'd simply "forget" that I'm paying for something. This idea evokes one of those "how do people live like this" reactions from me.
If there is a transaction against my credit card I don't recognize, an outgoing check i didn't write, a charge that doesn't match what was on the receipt, an interest deposit that doesn't match what it should be, and so on, I know within the day, not within a few months, and can take action.
And the best part is: It's not a lot of work. Get something like Quicken or one of its alternatives, which can connect to all of your bank accounts and credit card accounts at once, and simply hit refresh once a day while you're drinking your morning coffee. You'll find you're much more on top of things just by doing that simple thing.
>> Subscriptions should be able to be paid by invoices - you receive an invoice before next billing period and if you don't pay, account is locked,
>Why should the service provider hope for your compliance to pay for an already rendered service?
1. No one implied that they have to provide you a service first before you pay. OP said "invoice before next billing period". I.e. if you don't pay before the next period starts, you don't get access to the service. I don't see why this is that hard. This purely serves the provider offering the service which somehow wants to put you in some sort of contractual month to month contract as opposed to "pay before you get access" model.
2. You could turn it around: "Why should the payer hope for the service that's already been paid for?" There are contracts and norms for starters. The "subscription arrangement" makes it entirely the payer's problem to cancel the service, or to keep track of it's lack of usage (the Gym membership model). One can definitely argue that it's predatory, and certainly so if it's combined with how difficult it sometimes is to cancel subscriptions.
>"What do you mean by "basically"? You write a mail."
This is never that simple, your hypothetical "they're reasonable and respond to reasonable email requests" is not how it works in practice. Past a certain growth size of the provider, there isn't even an email address you can email that's actively monitored and actioned.
Well.. they're not. I've first hand experienced "what if they accidently charge you for who knows what" as I mentioned in my example and I recall many, many stories on HN regarding problems with subscriptions related to these "hypotheticals". Not to mention that the "what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?" is probably the most common, I doubt most people periodically check their credit cards history and given how many subscriptions an average person have, it's way too easy to forget you've subscribed to something - maybe in a heat of a moment or for "free trial" that required your CC and started charging you once the free trial expired.
Yes, in theory, you write an email. But in practice, most of the big companies do their best to hide any human-observed mailbox behind a quick and sloppy "customer support FAQ with a useless search bar" page.
You are misreading it. Not an email. A mail. The paper variant. And depending on the rules of your country you often want to do that as "registered mail". Again this changes jurisdiction by jurisdiction but where I am from registered mail is useful to show others that you tried to contact them. With regular mail they can just say "so bad, so sad, the dog must have eaten it". With registered mail there is (sometimes and again depending on your jurisdiction) as "assumption of receipt".
> hide any human-observed mailbox behind a quick and sloppy "customer support FAQ with a useless search bar" page.
These are companies. They have offices and staff. The business world runs on official correspondence. The governments and courts for sure don't send them messages via a chat box.
They don't want you to use those channels because it would be too costly for them. But if they truly dropped the ball as the OP's comment implies you can do that.
Plus you can always call you bank and say "hey there is this money taken from my account. I don't recognise it. Can you tell me what is this?" And they will give you how you can contact the counterparty to dispute the charge.
You write an email is so last century. These days it's:
"You hopelessly try to get any contact info out of the company's chatbot and fail. If there even is a chatbot. Then you post your problem on the web and submit it to HN and hope it makes the front page."
A virtual debit card service like privacy.com lets you create a card for each subscription, limit how much per month can be charged, and end the virtual card at any time.
By default the card will be vendor locked, meaning once a company makes a charge to the card then only that company will be able to do so.
That said, doesn’t solve the issue of everyone wanting subscriptions. A few $5-$20 here and there will quickly rival a utility bill.
Sure, you can use PayPal as well (which I do when I really need to pay for a subscription), but that's just a solution to a problem that shouldn't exist in the first place - I get it that some people like the convenience of automated reccuring payments and that's fine, but it shouldn't be the only available option to pay for services.
Anything delivered as a subscription that does not have correlating employee and infrastructure expenses for the business is just a trick to get you to overpay & support an otherwise unprofitable business idea.
I am thinking, particularly of these asset / resource libraries where you try to purchase one thing for a project and they say “hey subscribe for monthly access to all our assets”. That’s never a good value.
Invoices are too high friction, both for the user and the business.
You just need a central tool to manage your subscriptions without all the dark patterns, where you can be sure if you terminate the subscription you 100% won't be billed again.
Also, pay as you go business models are great, but more work for app developers, so there'd need to be a good tool to make that easier.
> You just need a central tool to manage your subscriptions without all the dark patterns, where you can be sure if you terminate the subscription you 100% won't be billed again.
This could be extremely easily solved with legislation. Just have a law that says you must be able to cancel a subscription exactly as easily as how you signed up for it.
Laws don't do much if they are not enforced. As is the case with this law. Regulations on anti-consumer behavior are very poorly enforced, and there's often in practice no penalty for violating them.
> and there's often in practice no penalty for violating them.
This is the crux of the matter. The laws are too weak. If the law said that that in addition to a refund there was a mandatory $100 compensatory payment due for every payment taken improperly (eg. every payment taken while unsubscription using the same method didn't work) then you'd have a few activist consumers waiting five years, recording the evidence and then demanding $6000. The problem would disappear overnight.
I wouldn't be so sure. E.g. EU mandated substantial compensations for delayed or cancelled flights. In practice the airlines typically just refuse to pay. You can contact an ombudsman that can sternly suggest that they pay, but not actually make them pay.
Of course you can take it to a court, wasting countless hours of time and risking tens of thousands in legal fees if you lose.
> wasting countless hours of time and risking tens of thousands in legal fees if you lose
That's a huge exaggeration. For example in the UK (not in the EU now I know, but roughly the same and I know the system better) you're looking at risking under £200. The loser will pay the fees. If you're certain that you're owed compensation under the law then there's little risk to take.
Doesn't California already have this? I've heard the trick is to VPN to California and magically the Cancel button exists on the website now. Never tried it though, I'm also mostly allergic to subscriptions.
Same comment, different conclusion. Being international, it will be difficult to enforce those laws when the business and client are in different countries. Even if different countries implement similar laws, they will invariably be just that: similar. Altruistic small businesses will have difficulty with compliance because it is an additional burden they must handle. Then there is malicious compliance. Too many businesses are willing to distort the intent of the law if they can find some sort of loophole.
How is it difficult for an altruistic small business to offer a prominent "end subscription" button? It's only hard to cancel most things because businesses purposely make it difficult.
When there are no laws regarding it, it is quite simple: you add the prominent end subscription button. When you are dealing with the laws of one jurisdiction, you (or your lawyer) review the law to ensure you meet the definition of prominent, are using the correct language, etc.. Multiple laws in multiple jurisdictions: not only is it more time consuming to ensure compliance, you better hope the laws don't conflict (otherwise the complexity of the solution is going to climb rapidly).
I see this same argument presented by grandparent trotted out when people argue against including tax and fees in the price in the States. Australia and NL manage this just fine, and somehow multinationals and small businesses manage to conduct business that follow these regulations in these countries while still dealing with a patchwork of country and region specific enforcement regulations. And the example I gave is more difficult than adding a cancel subscription button.
And? Every country can pass its own legislation, which may also (but is not required to) be in the form of a joint agreement to harmonise laws to make business requirements simpler.
It doesn't matter to any single subscriber if two different countries happen to be in sync or not.
In an idea world, something like a bank. The problem is that banks have services and structures designed to enrich the bankers, not be useful to their customers. This sort of stuff isn't worth their time, and the digital banking infrastructure is too much of a mess for apps built on top of it to really shine.
I have a really hard time matching your stated inevitability with the fact that my bank has had that exact kind of service since I have bank accounts (all of them, except Citibank that I tried once... so all of the local ones).
But, of course, they don't interact directly with the US banks.
I have a very simple approach to evaluating if a subscription is worth it: I multiply the price by 20 times the annual cost [1]. If it is monthly, that is 240 times. If that is too hard for quick mental arithmetic, 250 is pretty close (divide by 4, multiply by a thousand). $12/month? That is almost $3000. It may seem extreme, but it's not. That is the real cost to your wealth over time.
[1] Net present value [2] of all future payments with a 5% discount rate. 5% is not scientific or anything. This is just a rule of thumb.
Most egregious thing I’ve recently discovered is the partnerships with the card issuer so that if you cancel a card, the subscriptions can automatically follow you to the new CC number.
It is a standard feature that all card networks have provided for a very long time and is known as the «recurring payment» flag on the card charge that follows the card account number, not the card number (both may or may not be the same).
Originally invented as a convenience feature to free up card users from having to update payment details every time when the card expires, gets lost etc, it has also been abused with nefarious intentions by subscription providers as the only way to stop recurring charges is to contact the service provider which is disinclined from letting a customer go. Banks are bound by card payment networks terms and conditions to honour the recurring charge flag and are not empowered to remove it at the customer's behest.
For the most part, I definitely don't want a subscription since I want to keep the product indefinitely, don't want to deal with recurring fees, and don't want to see stuff that I am interested in disappear (whether it is the rotating licensing agreement for IP on streaming services, or a feature vanishing/moving to a new tier in a software update). Then there are issues with automatic billing, sometimes due to the mistakes you mentioned and sometimes due to hostile terms in the EULA. That being said, one has to be careful with credit card purchase even if they aren't recurring.
Yet there are also products that I don't want to purchase outright. Streaming services are appealing since they offer access to a large library. Few people would be able to afford purchasing everything they use. Even if they could afford it, they may not want to manage an accumulating pile of stuff that they will use only once or twice. While I am thinking of streaming services, I would imagine that the same would apply to software for some people.
Someone mentioned that your suggestion would offer too much friction. I don't really see that being the case. If you're subscription ends on the 15th of the month and you log in on the 20th, they can simple present one-click dialog box offering a renewal. If you don't want stored credit card information (either as a business or as a customer), it looks like the major browsers handle storing credit card information on the client's side. (Note: I don't know how reliable or secure this is since I don't use it, but I have seen the feature in multiple browsers.)
The subscription model offers significant convenience, particularly for services that provide ongoing updates and support. But it does have some cons! I was dealing with potential access issues.
> I can't wrap my head around why people got so comfortable with allowing companies to charge their credit cards whenever they want, how much they want and how long they want
You’re not alone. There is a race to the bottom on exploiting these deficiencies on careless/unknowing/impulsive customers. But there’s a growing number of opposite people like you and me who are avoiding subscribing because we anticipate the dark patterns, and that’s lost business. By the time the marketing departments will wake up to the reality that people avoid subscriptions even if they want the product, they’ll be faced with an insurmountable reputational barrier for entire cohorts of users they will be desperate to convert.
Tangentially, this is related to a beef I have with Apple. Their IAP system as middleman for purchases (but especially subscriptions) is worth a lot and cheap to maintain. I already trust them much more than a random SaaS (might even sign up for NYT if I’m confident I can cancel with a click later). In other words, they’re providing huge value, BUT they refuse to compete on fair terms. Their obsession with the 30% tax have pushed the market to do business outside of their App Store (which reduces their market share and fragments the UX), and even created massive badwill to the point of upsetting toothful regulators. They could have avoided all the tantrums and fighting, made a shitton of money in the long run, increased their market share, if only they hadn’t been stuck in the last decade first-mover monopolistic mindset.
EDIT: The more I think about, the more I realize how good Apple's (and maybe Google/Android to a lesser extend) position is. They're sitting on low-fraud rate one-click payment access with biometric verification, with a verified customer region, prefilled info, etc. They're a merchant's dream, and yet they're scaring everyone away with their short-sighted greediness and erratic rules of engagement. On the open market, an MOR (Merchant of Record) like Paddle lies at around $1 + 4%. Apple could easily add another 5% on top and people would pay for it, happily. But no, they insist on clinging to the past.
> On the open market, an MOR (Merchant of Record) like Paddle lies at around $1 + 4%. Apple could easily add another 5% on top and people would pay for it, happily.
Apple charges almost every developer 15%, not 30%. The only developers who pay 30% are the ones earning more than a million dollars per year through the App Store, for things that aren’t long-lived subscriptions.
15% isn’t quite as low as you’re suggesting, but Apple are a lot closer to that than to 30% for almost all developers.
Apple are the ones responsible for a lot of this subscription nonsense. They went around (had meetings with top devs) and convinced developers that they should switch to a subscription model. That's about when the narrative of the starving software dev came out as well.
Subscriptions existed before Apple and trying to put the genie back in the bottle is an entirely separate discussion. The point is about how subscriptions could be better for everyone.
> what if you loose access to your account and basically won't be able to cancel the subscription?
write an email or a letter. if they don't react, see below
> what if company will continue to charge you even after closing your account? what if they accidently charge you for who knows what?
file a chargeback request
> what if you simply forget you even had a subscription?
well yes, if you can't manage your finances properly to the extent that you miss a regular payment, then maybe you shouldn't use a subscription. or credit cards in general.
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I personally never had any issue around any subscription that I pay for. I would totally understand if you asked for the option to pay by invoice, but personally, I hate paying bills manually, so I'm glad that there are subscriptions for most recurring services.
I too always hated paying bills manually but finally stopped and went to automatic online payments after my mortgage payment twice arrived late — incurring a late fee of $55 each time — even though I'd mailed my checks two weeks in advance of the due dates.
Charlottesville, Virginia, where I live, has been plagued by undelivered/late mail for many years, to the extent U.S. Senator John Warner personally intervened on several occasions to try to fix it — without success.
After I switched my mortgage payment to automatic withdrawal from my bank account I was so pleased at how frictionless it was that I changed ALL my monthly check payments — Comcast Internet+XfinityTV/AT&T/electricity/water/trash pickup — to automatic credit card payments.
So much better now, plus I no longer need to buy stamps on a regular basis.
Yes, I didn't clarify that I would want an option to pay for subscriptions by invoice, not to get rid of automated recurring payments. Let's be honest - the only reason companies won't do that is because it's not in their interest, similar to the right to repair.
Well I have several bank accounts (in the same bank, for convenience). The one attached to the debit card I use for subscriptions has usually very little money in it. Enough so I can forget a month or two about the payments but unless I explicitly transfer money in it, they don't have what to charge.
In the end I still have too many subscriptions that I lost track of but worst case, I just nuke the account and I'm free of leeches.
A debit card linked to an account with insufficient funds in it is not a sustainable solution with many banks as many of them will honour the transaction (usually within a small limit, e.g. ⩽ $50-100 but can be more), AND will apply the overdraft fee, plus the interest on the overdraft until it is paid off. Banks love shady charges, and it is a source of substantial revenue for them.
You are simply lucky if your bank bounces a transaction instead of slapping you with the overdraft fee.
It has nothing to do with the country, and it has everything to do with: 1) the transaction type, and 2) personal wealth.
Transaction types. There are two: a) customer present, b) customer not present. Instant electronic funds transfers fall into (a) and are almost always declined, with the caveat. The caveat: you are overseas, the payment terminal has captured the card details, dispatched them the local/nearest payment processing centre, then something has fallen apart and the acquiring bank (i.e. your bank) could not be contacted. It is a rare situation nowadays, but it can happen nevertheless, and the transaction may be honoured. Most merchants don't bother with it, though, and they will simply produce a «payment declined» receipt instead. But if not, such a payment can send a card account into overdraft irrespective of whether your local bank advertises it or not.
Customer not present. This has i) online transactions (e.g. purchases over the internet) and ii) completely offline transactions. The handling of the customer-not-present-online-internet transactions is done solely at the discretion of your bank. Typically, a random purchase will be declined, but a recurring payment may be honoured. Completely offline transactions are very rare nowadays, but they still can take place, e.g. on a flight when the plane has lost the internet connection – the flight attendant will promptly return, produce a mechanical contraption and take a slip of your debit card, provided the card details are embossed on it. If they take a slip, the payment networks do mandate such a payment to be honoured, and a cheque account that is linked to such a debit card will go into overdraft. It is non-negotiable, independent of the country and is mandated by the payment netowrks.
Personal wealth. Your bank continuously monitors the in-flow of money into accounts you hold with them as well as the expenditure and the class of merchants you spend your money with. Depending on which one occurs first, e.g. you reach a certain income threshold (undisclosed and defined internally – by your bank), you may get the overdraft automagically allowed on the account your debit card is linked to. There are no specific rules as to when it is going to happen and what is the selection criteria for such a thing to happen – it is solely at the bank's discretion.
All this stuff is somewhat obscure, yet it is real and is entirely independent of country borders and the local legislation.
At least where I live, I have to specifically request enabling of overdraft (of course they would love me to do so), but I ain't doing that. So with a debit card, I'm safe.
Banks lure you with credit cards and overdraft on debit cards (which in turn turns it into credit). If you can resist that you're in a much more robust position than otherwise.
I know the term. But in the days of instant electronic transactions it's useless except as a way for the bank to get some undeserved fees. And where I am it's never on by default.
It should really be federally mandated that card issuers maintain a webpage with all your recurring subscriptions and give you one-click access to cancel.
Your contract, and hence obligation to pay, is with the service provide not your bank. Requiring banks to integrate with any company’s subscription terms seems unduly burdensome and impractical.
Having a list of allowed recurring payments for your card is not an impossible requirement. Ability to cancel approval on your side would not be too complicated for the bank and would be very useful even without integration with other side to really cancel the subscription.
That sounds like tortious interference. Or maybe they'd get away with it since technically they're only providing the means for the customer to violate their contract at the click of a button. But anyways, cancelling your payment without cancelling your subscription doesn't actually save you any money unless the service provider chooses to immediately cancel your account in response.
Nonsense. You also have a card holder agreement with the credit card issuer and as you know they can already decide to stop conducting business with a certain merchant. So they absolutely have power in the setup and they extract healthy fees from each transaction.
This is very possible and fits the spirit of recent regulation towards “making it as easy to cancel as it is to sign up”
A number of those issues are present even without subscriptions. For example, let's say you take it back to 2003, and buy Photoshop outright instead of subscribe. $700 piece of software, but when your computer dies and you need it on a new system, can't find the license key?
> A number of those issues are present even without subscriptions. For example, let's say you take it back to 2003, and buy Photoshop outright instead of subscribe. $700 piece of software, but when your computer dies and you need it on a new system, can't find the license key?
This is the same with losing anything of value. It's called a valuable lesson.
Possibly just a nitpick, but back when Photoshop had permanent licenses did the terms (and the software itself) allow customers to make functional copies (with the one license key, I mean) and store the copies elsewhere?
For me, the lesson is: use free as in freedom software over proprietary software whenever practical.
I was writing a contrasting view re:invoicing that ended up convincing me that you were entirely correct. If you lead with that last paragraph it would probably be sufficient to secure my vote for whichever office you were running for.
> I can't wrap my head around why people got so comfortable with allowing companies to charge their credit cards whenever they want, how much they want and how long they want.. Yes it's convenient
Periodically I review my bank statements and account settings to ensure I'm only being charged for services I actively use and want. Coz I had similar problem. Yet the subscription model offers convenience still.
>can't wrap my head around why people got so comfortable with allowing companies to charge their credit cards whenever they want, how much they want and how long they want..
The guy who apparently got Adobe to switch to subscriptions was on the Hacker News cofounder matching, claiming that as one of his big accomplishments. I almost wanted to try and match with him just to impart the magnitude of the pain that decision had caused in the user community, and how it ultimately has opened the door for photoshop competitors even if it has juiced short term profits. Definitely a short sighted business move that is going to eventually end Adobe's market dominance.
As far as I know, Jetbrains, HashiCorp, SublimeText etc. has not yet gone bankrupt.
When a product(or service) generate real value, people will happily hand over their money. The only people having issues with giving away something free are mostly generating negative value overall in my experience, hence they need dark patterns.
What? What you replied to had nothing to do with ‘not paying,’ or ‘getting things for free,’ it only discussed their dislike for the subscription model.
I've had enough bad experiences with subscriptions that I avoid them at all cost, just to give an example - I subscribed to a popular streaming service because I wanted to watch a movie that was only available on their platform. I immediately canceled my subscription so it would end with current billing month, but to my surprise when I checked my credit card history several months later I've noticed an additional charge that was around 10x what I paid for the one month of subscription! I emailed them and they answered me that "it was some kind of mistake" and refunded me, but it made me realize how dangerous subscriptions are.
Subscriptions should be able to be paid by invoices - you receive an invoice before next billing period and if you don't pay, account is locked, but of course that would give user too much control over their spendings and companies clearly don't want that.