A new survey by research company AMPD has found that three in five Australians pay for online subscription services that they have forgotten about.
This could mean losses of hundreds of dollars a year for some. The lockdowns and outdoor restrictions of 2020 saw an increase in sign-ups for services like streaming platforms, food delivery, fitness apps and language courses.
Pre-pandemic, the popularity of streaming services was steadily rising, with tech analysis firm Telsyte reporting that by June 2019, subscription video on demand services in Australia reached 12.3 million total subscriptions.
The same study found that 43% of people had more than one streaming video on-demand service.
During the worst of the pandemic, those numbers have only increased, particularly as the options for streaming platforms increased too. Disney+ entered the market in late 2019, and by April 1.8 million Australians had downloaded it.
By July 2020, Stan had increased its viewership to 4.42 million (a 19.7 percent increase from March) and Amazon Prime reached 2.17 million (a 45.5 percent increase).
Now that COVID-19 is largely under control in Australia, though, people have less need for this range of services. Tim Nicholas, co-founder of free contract renewal reminder app GetReminded told The New Daily that some people are paying up to $1000 for unused subscription services.
With popular streaming services often costing upwards of $10 a month, and health and fitness apps costing anywhere from $15-20 a month, forgotten subscriptions are a costly mistake for consumers.
