The subscription audit: what you pay for every month and no longer use

Why subscriptions slip past

A subscription is designed to be forgotten. You sign up once, the amount is small, and it comes off your account on the same day every month. No single line on your statement looks worth worrying about.

The problem is the total. Streaming, music, cloud storage, a gym, an app you tried once, a magazine, a delivery membership: each is R50 to R400 a month, and together they become one of the larger lines in a household budget.

What R950 a month really costs

Take a household with six subscriptions:

• R99 - video streaming
• R149 - a second streaming service, signed up for one series
• R199 - a fitness app last opened in winter
• R65 - music
• R349 - a gym, used twice a week
• R89 - cloud storage for phone photos

That is R950 a month, or R11 400 a year. The second streaming service and the fitness app are not being used: R348 a month, R4 176 a year, R20 880 over five years - before any price increases, which most subscriptions apply at least once a year.

The audit, in four steps

• Pull three months of statements - bank account and every credit card. Annual subscriptions hide, so scan twelve months for anything billed once a year.
• List every repeating amount with the date it goes off and the date you last used it.
• Sort into keep, downgrade and cancel. A cheaper tier or a shared family plan is often enough.
• Put a date in your calendar to repeat it in six months. New sign-ups and free trials that rolled over appear quickly.

Your rights when you cancel

Many subscriptions are month-to-month and can be stopped from your account settings. Gyms and some services use a fixed-term contract instead. For those, section 14 of the Consumer Protection Act applies when you contract as an individual:

• You may cancel at any time on 20 business days' notice in writing, or at the end of the term.
• The supplier may charge a reasonable cancellation penalty, but it may not be used to stop you leaving.
• The supplier must remind you 40 to 80 business days before the term ends, with any material changes if the agreement continues.
• If you do nothing, the agreement continues month to month on the same terms, which you can then end on notice.

How a "reasonable" penalty is worked out depends on the contract and on the regulations under the Act. Check your own agreement, and the National Consumer Commission's guidance, before you rely on a figure.

Stopping a debit order that will not stop

• Cancel with the supplier first, in writing, and keep the confirmation.
• If the debit keeps coming, ask your bank to stop it and to dispute any debit taken after your cancellation took effect.
• For card subscriptions, ask your bank about blocking the merchant or replacing the card if a cancelled service keeps charging.

Sources

• Fixed-term agreements, 20 business days' notice, reasonable cancellation penalty, 40-80 business day expiry notice and month-to-month continuation: Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008, section 14 - Consumer Protection Act on SAFLII; National Consumer Commission.
• Subscription amounts: an illustrative example, not quoted prices. Totals are our own arithmetic (monthly x 12; five years without increases).

← Back to all posts