PSA: It's Time to Check Your Subscriptions

It's been 6 weeks since I shut down Techinch Magazine, turning off the paid subscription in-app purchase and pulling the app from the App Store. That's everything a developer can do to remove their work from the App Store.

And yet, I just got an email from Apple letting me know that my monthly sales reports are in — and that a handful of people still paid for a Techinch Magazine subscription over the past several weeks.

That's terrible. People are paying real money for a subscription to a defunct magazine with no new content, one whose app has been pulled from the App Store and theoretically had in-app purchases turned off. But apparently, existing subscriptions will keep on running until you, the customer, go and turn them off. That is bad, and something Apple needs to fix, pronto.

In the mean time, it's a reminder that you need to go check your current subscriptions — to publications, apps, and services, in the App Store or elsewhere. Apple's outlined how to see your current subscriptions and change or unsubscribe from them in their support documents, so go check it, then look around for other subscriptions you've got — check your credit card statements to refresh your memory, if needed.

If you're still reading the publication or using the service, all's well. I still want to pay for Netflix, of course, and would gladly pay for MATTER if it still charged. But if there's anything you're not still using, go ahead and unsubscribe. It's nice to support stuff you like, but if you're not making use of the subscription, there's no reason to pay.

Any scrupulous producer selling subscriptions wouldn't want you to pay for a subscription you're not using. But it's sobering to think how many people must be paying for subscriptions they're no longer using, and how many business models are almost based on the assumption that people will sign up and keep paying long after they've forgotten about it.

Cleaning up your email subscriptions can make achieving inbox zero less of a chore, but cleaning up your paid subscriptions can bring an even bigger change. It'll help your budget, let you pay for the things you'll actually want to still read, and keep you from wondering where your money's going all the time. That's not such a bad little chore to start the year off on a better note.

And if you've paid for Techinch Magazine in the last month, please feel free to get in touch. I have no idea if Apple will refund you, but I'd do my best to refund you personally.

Thoughts? @reply me on Twitter.