Hiatus Survey: 62% of Consumers Waste Money on Unwanted Subscriptions Because They Don't Cancel Automatic Renewals

WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - Mar 21, 2016) -  Subscriptions and memberships are usually offered at low upfront costs but can quickly turn into spigots of wasted money. According to a new survey of over 100 consumers by Hiatus, a fintech startup that recently launched a personal subscription manager, almost 62% have paid for unwanted subscriptions or memberships because they failed to cancel an auto-renewal feature. Even more disconcerting, over half of the survey respondents didn't know how many subscriptions they currently have.

 "Consumers have rushed to embrace subscriptions like Netflix and Blue Apron because they're great services that can make life easier," said David Callis, co-founder of Hiatus. "Unfortunately though, hard-earned money is being wasted on unwanted subscriptions because they've been too difficult to monitor and cancel. $500 billion worth of subscriptions are being consumed each year; people are realizing a lot of this is waste and want a simple way to align their demand with service delivery."

Key findings from the survey include:

• More than 70% of the surveyed consumers say they continue paying for unwanted subscriptions because they simply forget to cancel the service before it's renewed.
  
  
• 29% say they didn't know the service was set for auto-renewal.
  
  
• Almost 19% of the respondents say it takes too much effort to cancel the service.
   
• Only nine percent say they didn't cancel because they thought they would eventually need the subscription or membership again.
  
  
• Almost half of the survey respondents don't know how many of their subscriptions, memberships or free trials are still active and more than three-quarters of the respondents say managing memberships is inconvenient.
  
  
• Not surprisingly, more than 66% say the inconvenience of managing free trials and subscriptions has stopped them from signing up for new ones.

 "You could be wasting hundreds of dollars per year by not keeping track of your subscriptions," said Callis. "One woman recently told us that when she checked her memberships, she found she'd spent almost $1,200 on subscriptions she didn't use or even remember she had."

About the survey: the Hiatus survey was conducted online in March 2016. The 117 participants were a cross section of millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers with an average of 3 or more subscriptions.

About Hiatus

Hiatus is the developer of a free iOS app that instantly finds and cancels unwanted subscriptions. Hiatus uses bank level security and is powered by a big-data analytics platform that also allows users to track and manage ongoing subscriptions or discover and purchase new subscriptions. For information, visit www.hiatusapp.com