Americans Are Less Likely To Cancel Amazon Prime, Netflix Than Cut Spending On Food (cnbc.com) 157
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: Even as Americans cut back in the face of rising prices and recessionary fears, fewer want to give up their streaming subscriptions, especially when it comes to TV, movies and music services, such as Amazon Prime, Netflix and Spotify. Roughly two-thirds of consumers said they will have to decrease their spending due to inflation; however, only about a quarter plan to cancel such subscriptions in the months ahead, according to a recent report by the National Research Group. Most people said they were more likely to cut back on dining out, groceries and clothing.
Consumers are least likely to cancel Amazon Prime, TV and movie streaming services and home security systems, the report found, even over food and gasoline. Just over half, or 51%, also said subscriptions now make up a "significant" portion of their monthly spending. On average, U.S. consumers estimate they spend $135 a month and 17.8% of their monthly budget on subscriptions, the National Research Group found. The report polled more than 2,500 adults in August.
Consumers are least likely to cancel Amazon Prime, TV and movie streaming services and home security systems, the report found, even over food and gasoline. Just over half, or 51%, also said subscriptions now make up a "significant" portion of their monthly spending. On average, U.S. consumers estimate they spend $135 a month and 17.8% of their monthly budget on subscriptions, the National Research Group found. The report polled more than 2,500 adults in August.
Either that, or.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Could it be, that the only ones that still use streaming services are also the ones that can afford them? Because by now, I'd say anyone who has to cut back spending on essentials like food already cut the less crucial expenses.
Could we have a look at the numbers of cancellations in the last, say, 3 months?
Re:Either that, or.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A fair point about lack of control over the data as summarized.
However, keep in mind that skipping a family outing to a restaurant would be counting as gas and food and going out to eat they see a large bill for more than their streaming services.
So cutting back on gas and restaurant would have both an actually larger budget benefit *and* a more prominent one (an autopay monthly subscription may barely enter your consiousness, versus having to explicitly look at your meal bill as you pay it)
Re:Either that, or.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A fair point about lack of control over the data as summarized.
However, keep in mind that skipping a family outing to a restaurant would be counting as gas and food and going out to eat they see a large bill for more than their streaming services.
So cutting back on gas and restaurant would have both an actually larger budget benefit *and* a more prominent one (an autopay monthly subscription may barely enter your consiousness, versus having to explicitly look at your meal bill as you pay it)
Fast food for my family of 4 (2 adults, 2 young kids) now costs $50+; sit down can cost $70-100 (excluding tip). Compare that to monthly streaming subscriptions. Food at the grocery store is still high, but lower than eating out.
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That has been my experience too, that while groceries are more expensive, it's nowhere near as steep an increase as restaurants have done. The usual advice of eating in being cheaper is way more true now than it has been.
I'm not even sure it was always true.... (Score:3)
As a divorced guy in his early 50's, I've always had the struggle of trying to buy good, healthy fresh food at the grocery store when I get time to make a trip. But then I wind up throwing out a good percentage of it. EG. Bought a package of sliced mushrooms last week to use in tossed salads. After day 2 opening the plastic wrap around them, they started to feel slimy (first signs of them spoiling). Threw away at least 1/2 of the container. Same goes for milk, because I need it on hand for cereal and coo
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What are you and your kids eating that costs so much for fast food? My wife and I don't spend $15 for a fast food meal, last I looked...
Of course, the question could probably be better framed as "where do you live that fast food costs so much?"
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Most fast food burger meals cost $7 - $10. Using coupons can help reduce that cost. On those extremely rare occasions I do eat from a fast food joint, my coupon is $5 for the meal.
Of course, the question could probably be better framed as "where do you live that fast food costs so much?
Never heard of cities, have you? A standard fast food meal in cities is
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Here I noticed that my saturday only burger-combo at a drive thru went up from about $8 to about $15 here in San Jose, _during_ pandemic lockdown. That was before inflation. I haven't bothered to see what it's like now. And that is in a downscale neighborhood too. Go to an inland rural area the prices aren't that much better.
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What are you and your kids eating that costs so much for fast food? My wife and I don't spend $15 for a fast food meal, last I looked...
From Firefly [wikipedia.org]:
Mal: [tossing her a bar with the Alliance stamp] It's pure, Patience. Genuine "A" grade foodstuffs -- protein, vitamins, immunization supplements. One of those will feed a family for a month. Longer if they don't like their kids too well.
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Looking online, I see a grilled chicken club meal at a fast food for $10.85, a bacon cheeseburger combo at $10.69. This is without tax, 'upsizing' or adding some cookie or ice cream thing to it, which would commonly happen, especially with a family.
You can be more frugal to order the cheaper items, but for comparable food prepared from grocery supplies, it's going to be much much less, even more so than usual.
Value meal = $9 (Score:2)
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Fast food for my family of 4 (2 adults, 2 young kids) now costs $50+; sit down can cost $70-100 (excluding tip). Compare that to monthly streaming subscriptions. Food at the grocery store is still high, but lower than eating out.
This.
When i was a kid (in the 80s), going out to eat was expensive and we rarely did it. Maybe once every couple of months, it was a pretty big deal to even go to the local diner.
Fast forward to the late 1990s through ~2017 or 2018 or so, and eating out got more and more common. A night or 2 or 3 a week. The price of eating out was comparable to eating at home, when you factor in leftovers for lunches.
Starting around 2018, i started noticing that burgers were costing $15, and other meals that used to be ~$1
Re:Either that, or.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Cost of a 1/4 pounder sandwich at my local McDonald's: $6
Cost of 1/2 pound sirloin steak at my local butcher's: $6.50
Cost of that same steak if I buy a roast and cut it into steaks myself: $4.72
Restaurants generate profit by adding value to ingredients. One of the most profitable business models is to charge a large premium for convenience. The premium we pay for convenience is huge. It's pretty easy to cut a steak from a roast, you just slice the raw roast and there you have it. If you're willing to do that you could be eating a pretty good steak for less money than a mediocre sandwich. Or for about a buck more you could be having a nice ribeye.
I'm not saying McDonald's is a ripoff; charging for convenience is a legitimate business model. That's why the butcher charges me a 40% markup just for running is knife over the roast a few times. But the aim of big businesses is to get you in the habit of *mindlessly* consuming their product. That's true of both streaming services and fast food chains. For the same money or less you could be having a better experience.
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To put that in perspective, around 40% of Americans' food spending is at restaurants.
Re:Either that, or.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know why this result is a surprise to anyone.
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This was my thought exactly. You can lower your expenses on food, but you can either choose to have entertainment or not have entertainment - there's no 'lower tier' to drop down to other than cutting it off entirely.
Re:Either that, or.... (Score:4)
It depends on food - I am blessed to not really need to 'cut' anything plenty would still be flowing toward savings if I did not react at all but I have cut back to keep the grocery bill in line anyway.
At least for my families shopping cart the quickest way to cut $30 off the tab was to leave the soda, beer, packaged cookies, and chips on the shelf. Exactly none of that stuff was 'good for us anyway' and the higher cost of groceries provided if anything a good excuse. I don't think we have made any changes to what lands on the table at meal times. I strongly suspect we were not that only family with a good deal of expensive junk food in the grocery cart that we were rather conflicted about even really 'wanting' and represented a lot of unneeded calories.
I would really like see what sectors of the grocery business these cuts are happening. I am sure there is switching to inferior goods by the less well off but would be very interested to see if categories like 'snacks' are seeing a bigger pull back.
Re:Either that, or.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because by now, I'd say anyone who has to cut back spending on essentials like food already cut the less crucial expenses.
"Food" does not always imply essentials. We have cut back spending on food in our house without cutting Netflix. For us that means it's probably the first time in a year that we don't have North Atlantic smoked salmon in the fridge. We also started bulk purchasing cheaper food, switched to home brands for things like canned tomatoes, use run of the mill chocolate bars instead of expensive Lindt, I don't have any expensive tapas either.
All in all I think we're spending about $100 less on food this month than the same time last year. At no time did we cut anything essential.
Re: Either that, or.... (Score:3)
Yeah, "cutting food" doesn't mean eating like a staving student. Many people have been spending on luxury food over the pandemic because they could. (If you save $100 by not going out for dinner on a Friday, you can spend that $100 buying high end steaks, or salmon, etc). But, when a spending crunch comes it's easy to drop that off the list too. (Especially if you kept that on the list and started going out for dinner too since the pandemic subsided.
I recently cut back on alcohol, not specifically to not dr
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Was that show "Supernatural"?
/Cue "Carry on wayward son"
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Could it be, that the only ones that still use streaming services are also the ones that can afford them? Because by now, I'd say anyone who has to cut back spending on essentials like food already cut the less crucial expenses.
Could we have a look at the numbers of cancellations in the last, say, 3 months?
I pay for my streaming services in an annual lump sum. Since I paid before food prices got super crazy, I'll continue to use them through my current contract. I'l re-evaluate when it's time to renew the contract. To be fair, I use Amazon Prime just as much for the free shipping as for streaming.
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Single data point. We cut Netflix last month. It wasn't because of inflation. It was because we'd watched everything we wanted to they had for now.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
That's a very cheap "restaurant". 30-40% (Score:2)
> Cutting Netflix: Saves $15 a month.
> Cutting once-a-week restaurant visits for a family of 4: Saves $160 per month.
That's at $10 / person - a VERY cheap restaurant. With a drink, Taco Bell can cost almost that much. And that's ONCE a week.
The average American spends about $200/month per person, or 30%-40% of their food budget, on restaurants.
So you significantly understate your point.
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Possibly because streaming services are CHEAP. I don't get why people moan about Netflix going up to $15 a month when they used to pay $150 a month for their all-included cable service in the past. And why is $15 a month such a big deal compared to the electricity bill, the grocery bill, etc. Now if someone is bad off enough to consider going hungry, then it's time to cancel the ISP too (vastly more expensive than Netflix). But they're talking about cutting ack on grocery spending here, which can mean g
not the same individuals (Score:3)
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The survey does not control for the possibility that these are 2 disjoint sectors of society.
I can't tell from context whether you're using "disjoint" as a verb or an adjective; either way, it doesn't make much sense to me when the subject is groups of human beings. I'm going to assume you meant it to mean "dissimilar"; correct me if I'm wrong.
How would you go about controlling "for the possibility that these are 2 disjoint sectors of society", and how would it make the survey (link below) more useful? 90% of respondents perceive that groceries and fuel have become more expensive; 85% see restauran
Too much food (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd be willing to say most Americans are spending too much on food to start with. Consuming too much, yes, but also throwing away half of what they buy, eating out at expensive restaurants, buying overpriced stuff at the grocery store, etc.
Buying less food might just mean they're cutting waste.
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Not only cutting waste, but it's also a question of what you eat. "Food" can be anything from a loaf of bread to a jar of caviar. We have cut back in our house as well and easily are saving over $100. At no point are we eating less or have we cut out anything essential.
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We're spending too much on food because of corporate greed. Record profits reported during the pandemic.
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-... [phys.org]
https://www.forbes.com/sites/e... [forbes.com]
https://www.ers.usda.gov/covid... [usda.gov]
Re: Too much food (Score:2)
It's not that, you can eat cheap every day for a month but splurge on ONE dinner for two and blow past your Netflix subscription several times over in one evening. You could go have lunch with coworkers a single time and spend $15 on just yourself.
You can't just say greed. Food is entertainment, accept it. There's basic needs, true, then there's the reality of what most of us actually buy and consume well over and above that. Streaming services are good value vs food when you look at $/minute spent, and
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It's hard not to throw away food (Score:2)
I can't eat 8 hamburger buns before they go bad unless I freeze them, and buns don't really freeze. Fruit & Vegetables don't keep all that long either. Especially if they're being sold for a decent price. You can buy less, but then you're making 3+ trips to the grocery store a week, hard to do when urban sprawl means it's a 15 minute drive in traffic one way and you're in line 10+ minutes because of u
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Buns will freeze for a month or two. They get a little dry but it's nothing that buttering and browning them on a skillet won't solve.
Lots of fruits and vegetables have to be parboiled to be frozen or the enzymes destroy it even while frozen.
The easiest thing to do though is to make those bigger batches of food and immediately freeze half rather than throwing it away days later. Something like spaghetti sauce can freeze and keep for months as long as you don't combine it with pasta until eating it. Also
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Here in the Northern Great Plains the morning temperatures are already dipping below the freezing point.
My buns will be freezing for more than a couple months to say the least!
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I can't eat 8 hamburger buns before they go bad unless I freeze them, and buns don't really freeze. Fruit & Vegetables don't keep all that long either. Especially if they're being sold for a decent price. You can buy less, but then you're making 3+ trips to the grocery store a week....
The problem is in how you're storing your food. Bread can be frozen easily with very little loss in quality. Most sorts of fruits and vegetables can be stored for more than 3 days without going bad.
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Try the refrigerator, they still get a little stiff but they keep a couple weeks. Toast them lightly before using and they're ok.
Amazing job on that hyperlink (Score:5, Funny)
chttps:wwwcnbccom20221006consumers-prioritize-netflix-amazon-prime-over-groceries-and-gashtml
Really????
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They couldn't get the comma in the right place in the title either: who's heard of "Prime Netflix"?
What with long-running issue of being the only site on the internet that can't handle UTF-8 bug (yet serves up UTF-8), I think they're taking the piss out of us.
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Netflix is about 90% mediocre shows that are best watched while doing something else. There are a few gems hidden in there.
Personally I'd cancel Netlfix because I have Prime for the free shipping, but nobody can legitimately answer that for you.
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Shovel-ware? I do not think that word means what you think it means. I assume you mean that the content on Prime Video is not to your liking, which of course is a matter of taste and will vary from one individual to another. And there's also the possibility that you're just entertaining yourself by replying to your own AC post.
But anyway, since 95% of the survey respondents say they're either mostly or completely satisfied with Amazon Prime, I can only conclude that you don't know what you're talking about.
It's the utlity of it all (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not as unusual as the headline would make you believe.
I only have Netflix and Amazon Prime. In Canada, that works out to about $25/month.
I got a lot of utility out of that and I'd have to be pushed pretty far to cancel those.
Food. I have a lot of frivolous food spending that I could easily cut back on and not miss. A trip to the grocery store is not just rice and beans here. It's a little package of muffins that I don't really care about. I could cut that easily. It's pure filtered milk whatever that is that I could easily downgrade. It's the pack of drumstick ice creams that I won't miss...
I think it's perfectly reasonable to have an average person cut back on groceries than the subscription services. I mean, unless you're talking about life essential foods here... then it's silly.
To put it simply. If I wanted to save $25/month, I'd take it out of my grocery budget than my Netflix or Amazon. I get a lot of utility out of the subscription and I have a lot of frivolous grocery spending that I could cut out that has very little value to my life.
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Well it's not like your average American (Score:4, Funny)
Re: Well it's not like your average American (Score:3)
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There's also a question of what you're eating. Choice cuts instead of Prime cuts can save huge amounts (far more than a Netflix subscription) without any reduction in consumption of food.
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Personally, I'd reduce my meat consumption before Netflix. It is a big cost, we eat too much of it anyway. This may be a good thing.
Ground beef is $4 / lb for the cheap stuff at Costco. Chicken prices haven't recovered from having to cull flocks due to the bird flu. Eggs are $5 for 2 dozen at Costco (free-range, not the organic). How do I cheaply provide protein for my growing children? Fruits and vegetables are also about 25-30 percent higher than last year.
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Black beans are an amazing source of both protein and fiber, although they're not a complete protein, so you'll need other foods for a complete diet. They're easy to cook, especially if you have a pressure cooker (an Instant Pot or similar suffices). Combine them with rice, especially brown or other whole-grain rice, for a cheap, filling and nutritious meal. Substitute pinto beans if you like those better than black beans.
Re: Well it's not like your average American (Score:2)
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OOOH...not me.
I'm about to start an experiment with the Carnivore Diet.
Public estimates (Score:2)
I'm concerned about the estimates - if the public is estimating that $135/month is 17.8% of their budget... they are doing something wrong. That's only like $9k a year budget!
I wonder if the survey accounts for the fact that many people buy name brands - so perhaps they are switching to store brands which are often as little as 50% the cost of name brand. So if those folks aren't already buying the generic stuff, they can still get the same amount on food without having to spend more and cut into entertai
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It could mean 'elective' budget, after taking out more fixed expenses.
If I were to speculate on what cutting back on food would look like, I'd guess opting for food at home rather than eating out. Eating food from restaurants in the best of times is comparitively expensive, but this year it's been particularly more expensive. Eating grocery food for a meal instead of restauraunt food as a family *once* covers a month of a couple of streaming services.
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The survey report says 17.8% is the average among those who have streaming subscriptions; that $135 figure is nowhere to be found. If you want to find fault with someone, I'd start with the author of that CNBC article, and then with the Slashdot editor who didn't bother looking at the survey report (I know, what a shock).
Even so, 17.8% seems awfully high. I hope they're talking about the percentage of discretionary spending, and not the entire monthly budget.
right (Score:3)
"people are less willing to eliminate the $15 a month they spend on netflix vs make far easier cuts in the orders of magnitude higher food bills they have" isn't a man-bites-dog story. hell, it isn't even a dog-licks-balls story.
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The title's shit with its Prime Netflix.
I don't, really see what the, problem is with the, title.
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"cut back on dining out" (Score:2)
It's certainly nice if you can cut back on luxury behaviour, unlike a significant part of the country that doesn't really have anything left to cut.
How else can I watch Thursday Night Football? (Score:2)
Choosing between "Bread" and "Circuses" (Score:3)
This doesn't bode well for the future, does it?
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Choosing between "Bread" and "Circuses"
You weren't around for the 1970's / early 80's, and if you were, you've forgotten or were filthy rich. Back then, we did have to choose between Bread and Circuses. Or Food vs. Meds.
Dine out at a modest place like Denny's or a Howard Johson, or fuel the car.
Get the T-Bone for dinner, or buy your kid their notebooks and pencils and such. Make do with spaghetti for dinner again.
Inflation, stagflation and a recession made it for a this-or-that decision tree for most families I knew. My own included. To get
Re:Choosing between "Bread" and "Circuses" (Score:4, Insightful)
No...we were solidly middle to mid-lower middle class and we didn't have to choose between anything.
We didn't spend a lot of money, we mostly ate at home, lived within our means and saved for a few nice things here and there...but it certainly wasn't a time of burden.
But far from rich/wealthy.
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I most certainly do remember those days, and it seems to me like you're itching for a Christian theocracy.
Fuck those of us who aren't straight, White, and Christian, is that what you're saying?
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I most certainly do remember those days, and it seems to me like you're itching for a Christian theocracy.
Fuck those of us who aren't straight, White, and Christian, is that what you're saying?
Dunno what gave you that idea. That I have causes I like to support, and others that I don't because I think they're harmful to those they're purportedly trying to help? Is that it? That's it, isn't it.
But start pushing it in my face all the time 24x7 that you're "different" and you will get pushback. And that isn't being racist or any other kind of -ist. That's just being tired of noise.
It's like constant ads for a given product -- after a while, one tunes it out. And after a longer while, one stops
Re:Choosing between "Bread" and "Circuses" (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet, all that happened in the 70's was.. the Reagan Revolution, a tectonic shift in politics. It wasn't the Fall of America.
The really funny thing about this is that it was Carter who ended stagflation, not Reagan, by appointing Paul Volcker as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Volcker's aggressive inflation-fighting caused two recessions, the first of which probably cost Carter his re-election, but that brought inflation under control. In hindsight, Carter did exactly the right thing, and Reagan had little -- if anything -- to do with it.
As economist Noah Smith points out in this article [substack.com], most of the Carter/Reagan narrative that we know is actually wrong. Carter ended stagflation, did most of the deregulation of that era and didn't engage in massive deficit spending. Reagan did create massive federal deficits and probably didn't actually have anything to do with the ending of the Cold War and the fall of the USSR.
In the version of history where Carter won re-election, the result likely would have been exactly the same, except that the wealthy wouldn't have gotten big tax cuts and the federal deficit wouldn't have exploded. Not then, anyway.
I'm a conservative-leaning libertarian, and I'd really like to be able to point to the Republicans as the party of good fiscal policy, but history of the last 50 years does not support that claim. Instead, while it's somewhat true that Democrats are the tax-and-spend party, Republicans are the borrow-and-spend party. Neither party ever does anything to significantly decrease the size of the federal government, and it grows consistently whichever is in power.
And then there's the fact that lately the Republican party has been taken over by anti-conservative populists and delusional conspiracy theorists, but that's a separate issue. Note that the Democrats have also been largely taken over by their own extremists, who insist on seeing everything through a race and gender lens. On balance I think that's less bad than the subversion of the GOP, though it's still quite bad.
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This doesn't bode well for the future, does it?
Only if you don't understand the present.
You have to take into account the fact that food spending has increased dramatically over the last few decades, driven mostly by Americans eating out a lot more. A lot of our "food" budget is actually entertainment, not just sustenance... and in terms of entertainment value per dollar, streaming media services offer a lot more than restaurants do. My wife and I eat probably eight meals per month in restaurants, each time spending about $50, vs the $5-10 it would c
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Very few people in this study will be cutting back bare essentials like bread to savour the "circuses". The study specifically mentions both "groceries" and "going out". It doesn't say that the person is starving. Cutting back on groceries could mean buying Choice steak instead of Prime.
This is only because they think (Score:3)
That said there are multiple studies showing that the mental energy needed to keep up with that kind of savings is genuinely exhausting. It's part of the high cost of being poor
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That said there are multiple studies showing that the mental energy needed to keep up with that kind of savings is genuinely exhausting. It's part of the high cost of being poor
Maybe I'm not following what you're saying here. Are you really saying that paying attention to pricing when shopping is exhausting?
At the level needed for those savings yes (Score:2)
In short, you're not just shopping anymore. It basically puts you in a constant state of stress. [brookings.edu] That kind of stress wears on people in well known and well documented ways.
Human beings aren't meant for constant stress like that. We're used to short bursts of stress followed by lon
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To do that you're not just picking the cheapest pasta sauce off the shelf, you're clipping coupons, planning meals around sales, etc, etc.
You're basically talking about how Ive been shopping since I moved out of my parents house. Both when I barely had a penny to my name and now when I'm living at a financially comfortable level. Still to this day I clip coupons, plan meals around sales, etc. It's just an easy (and I emphasize easy) way to save money that I picked up watching my dad when I was a kid and we were comfortably in the middle class back then as well.
I don't think the stress you're talking about comes from the source you're attribut
It's because (Score:4, Insightful)
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Fixed link [cnbc.com].
Netflix has 3 pricing plans. [netflix.com]
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But then, I'd also put my mountain bike on a higher rung than my television.
Duh! (Score:2)
If you get 25 parcels per month from Amazon, you don't save anything by canceling it.
On the contrary.
$135? (Score:2)
Netflix is ~$20
Prime is ~$10
Disney+ is ~$10
YouTube is ~$10
so assuming you have all of those services you'd be at ~$50, I don't personally subscribe to Spotify, but that couldn't possible be $85 / month, and I can't think of any other streaming service that would be more then ~$20, so how many do you need?
Re: $135? (Score:2)
Yeah, that's gotta include the cable bill or Internet or something.
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Makes sense (Score:2)
Food of similar quality can be purchased for $5 or for $30. There's barely a difference in quality. Only convenience. The same can't be said for streaming. You can't get a fair Stranger Things experience without Netflix at any cost.
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Also, someone who is so close to the edge that $20 is the difference between eating and starving is probably already homeless, or at the very least has already cancelled their broadband, so Netflix is long gone.
Well, think of the value proposition (Score:2)
Let's say your streaming service $10/month. $10 feeds a family of four for (probably) less than a day. If they're eating good food and not primarily rice and pasta, $10 is gone by noon.
So during your down time, what do you do that costs less than streaming? Let's say that same family of four consumes 2 hours per day per person. 30 x 2 x 4 = 240 hours into $10, or 4 cents per hour. Damn near free.
So that particular trade-off is probably worth it for everybody except those living the most hard scrabble lives.
we're pretty clear... (Score:2)
...what the 'opiate of the masses' is now, aren't we?
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Has been since the 50s. Now it's streaming though instead of cable. At least there are less ads (for now).
Subscriptions are an addiction (Score:2)
It's more nuanced than you think. The subscription business model has become an unhealthy addiction. Oh, it's just $7.99 a month or $9.99 a month or $29.99 a month or whatever. What most people don't realize is that they are renting more and more of their lives not just for entertainment services. It's gotten so bad that there are services out there that will shut off your addiction to subscriptions... for a fee. People don't notice that they're leaking money via subscription services every month becau
No need to cut anything (Score:2)
Just go to serieshd.watch and watch anything you want from all the streaming services for free.
Amazon Prime includes more than TV (Score:2)
In particular, free shipping of Amazon products, food in particular.
That counterintuitively, saves the consumer money on Gas ;-)
Well, duh (Score:2)
1. Food costs WAY more than either Netflix or Amazon Prime. I spend more money on food than I probably should, I'll grant you...but it's probably about $100/week. If I cut that by even 10%, it's a greater savings than getting rid of Netflix.
2. I keep Amazon Prime around for basically one reason: free 2-day shipping. Sure, they add in a VoD service as well, but if they took out the VoD service I'd still subscribe to Prime. On the flip side, if they split out the VoD service and tried billing me separately fo
Next Marketing Strategy. (Score:2)
It's where the cuts hurt least (Score:2)
The reason behind this behavior's probably that Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and such are the primary entertainment for the family. They're also pretty much binary: you either pay for the subscription or not, there's minimal wiggle room to adjust how much you pay for it. The food budget on the other hand probably has wiggle room in it, places where you can cut back without giving up food entirely or even really making more than a small difference in meals. If your choice is between cutting a part of the budg
Some has to say it... (Score:2)
Do you guys not have phones?
Make sense (Score:2)
Makes sense. People can do without food, but Amazon Prime is essential.
Free trials. auto cancel and renew (Score:2)
https://donotpay.com/learn/fre... [donotpay.com]
Get free Netflix etc trials without paying.
When the trial expires get another right away.
The service anonymizes you so Netflix etc. don't know you are immediately reupping.
Uses an anonymous temporary credit card loaded with jut the amount needed, so the trial is cancelled automatically with no further action needed.
Numbers in the article make no sense (Score:2)
More than half of people underestimate their monthly subscription bills by at least $100
“It’s the rare person who doesn’t have at least one sneaky charge they’ve forgotten about,” Kathryn Hauer, a certified financial planner with Wilson David Investment Advisors in Aiken, South Carolina, recently told CNBC.
Underestimate monthly subscriptions by at least $100? Really? I'm going to just forget about $100 in automatic charges every month? Maybe $10 or $15, not $100.
Crudités prices are through the roof (Score:2)
In hard times, people have to cut back on crudités and other basics. Let's hope we can get someone new in charge that will have the right priorities and bring hors d'oeuvre prices down to where the common man can afford them again. Otherwise, we are no better than animals.
Horse durvies (Score:2)
Mmm...very delicious!
Would you rather be bored or fat? (Score:2)
Amazon Prime has value (Score:2)
What's the generic/store brand? (Score:2)
I can buy generic or store brand goods and cut my spending on food without any significant change to my diet.
If there's something legal that's of comparable to the brand name (i.e. Prime, Netflix, Disney+, etc.) please let me know. I'd gladly pay for less for the same content in a different package.
Now cue the idiots who will suggest piracy even though I specifically said "something legal."