When a convenience subscription becomes a chore
By @edent
· money shopping · 1 comment · 550 words · read ~204 times.
Convenience subscriptions are huge business these days. A monthly delivery of X, to save you time, money, and effort!
The problem is - subscription living rapidly becomes a chore.
I cancelled a convenience subscription today - and I'd like to explain why.
Smol offers dishwasher tablets and laundry pods by post. Their schtick is:
- Cheaper than the supermarket - and more environmentally friendly!
- Fire and forget! A subscription at a rhythm which works for you.
- Convenient! Fits through the letterbox in an easy to use package.
The first issue is - is this really a problem? How often have you run out of pods? Surely by the time you're reaching the end of a box you can see and add it to your regular shopping list? Like most convenience subscriptions, this is a minor problem. Therefore any bumps along the Smol journey are going to send you back to the supermarket.
Secondly, how much of your life runs like clockwork? Sometimes I do a lot of washing up. Some weeks all I eat is microwave pizza. I don't need exactly 24 pods every 2 weeks. So I had to spend time managing my subscription - adding and cancelling orders depending on my lifestyle.
At which point, the subscription becomes as much as a chore as a weekly grocery shop!
Finally, the physical convenience of the package is as important as the practical convenience of the subscription.
Recently, Smol changed their packaging from frustration-free to child safe. It is probably a good thing to stop kids from eating Tide Pods - but for those of us with dexterity issues, it becomes a real problem.
When a one handed person is done with 'child safe' packaging. 😅 #Smol pic.x.com/mov3spai4j
Am I the only dummy struggling with child-safe packaging? I love #Smol products but I can't get to them! Why can't people keep products away from kids on a top shelf or something? I obviously have mobility issues or small hands cause it ain't poss to open that box without ripping pic.x.com/e5fpgt58ev
If you have to have a video to show how to open your packaging, I think it is safe to say you've failed as a product designer.
Oh, and the price doesn't seem much cheaper than a supermarket brand.
So now I'm paying the same price for a regular delivery of an irregularly used product which is markedly more difficult to use than the alternative?
In my experience, most convenience subscriptions are a chore.
When a convenience subscription becomes a chore
Colin Cameron says:
We tried getting milk delivered last year. Twice a week we’d get glass pint bottles dropped off overnight. Seemed like a great idea at the time, but:
1 it was more than double the price of supermarket milk 2 our milk usage varied so much I was adjusting the delivery every other week 3 because the delivery came around midnight, the milk was sitting out for over 7 hours until we got up - not ideal in the summer
These things seem like a good idea in theory but never work properly in practice.