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by eddieroger 1739 days ago
You don't get to be the biggest by not charging people. They probably make more off accidental billing than the people who contest those accidents, so it's worthwhile. That's why Columbia House was so hard to cancel back in the day - it wasn't the $0.01 CD where they made the money, but on the monthly fees that were way more than the cost of one CD.
2 comments
7sidedmarble 1739 days ago
I don't think it has anything to do with wanting to collect money from accidents. That's not very reliable revenue anyways. That's just an unfortunate side effect for us plebs.

The real reason is that if you give companies a budget feature, they will inevitably, you know, use it. They'll set a budget that seems 'reasonable', and then freak out when everything turns off when it's exceeded, and then go raise it a little bit, and repeat the cycle.

Compare that to now where every place I've ever worked basically seems to forget that cloud hosting costs even exist, based on how much most companies balk at paying for simple SaaS tools for developers but will happily let the hosting costs grow to astronomical amounts. They're happy to do it cause they just see a line item and accept it. If you give them budgets, that won't happen any more.

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eddieroger 1739 days ago
>I don't think it has anything to do with wanting to collect money from accidents. That's not very reliable revenue anyways.

It's worked well enough for the entire fitness industry forever. No reason it can't work here as well, and at scale I'm sure it's pretty profitable. You're right, too, that we'd use it, but I think this is a situation where we can both be right.

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reaperducer 1739 days ago
That's not very reliable revenue anyways.

At the scale of Joe's Chicken Shack, accidental revenue is not reliable. But at the scale of a Google or an Amazon, while it will fluctuate month to month, a certain minimum revenue stream should be statistically predictable.

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imglorp 1739 days ago
It was the same deal for vinyl before that! Not a bad deal if you bought your minimum and cancelled.
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reaperducer 1739 days ago
And books before the vinyl.

Fortunately, I never got sucked into the 8-track club.

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