Yeah, but a subscription here, a subscription there, another subscription here, another subscription there, begins to add up. Nickle & dimeing. -- No thanks!
Yeah - the key problem is subscription fees do not really reflect the usefulness of the product e.g. I pay £18 pa for Macrium Reflect VX (with 50% discount), c. £72 pa for Office 365 6 user licence, Amazon Prime etc. as these are mission critical for me.
The online UK newspapers want between £24 to £48 pa to access premium news which you can find elsewhere on web for free. No thanks!
Lots of minor utilities are wanting £15 or more pa.
In the end, most of these tools rarely do much and never get updated or properly supported and hence are not truly value for money.
You could easily end up paying over £50 per month for what is basically froth.
I always ask myself "Is this feature useful enough to be subscribing to?"
In the case of tool to manage desktop icons, I personally say no. You can group icons on desktop folders for free if you want some segregation for one extra click.
Another thing is bank account security - I am prepared to let companies like Paramount (Macrium Reflect) have access to my banking details for subscription payment.
For many if the smaller utilities of unknown pedigree, no way will I give access to my bank details. If they do not accept PayPal payment (where you can easily cancel) then I usually do not touch them with a bargepole.
I also have a pay and go debit card not related to my bank account. I just top up periodically, rarely keeping more than £100 on account limiting my loss in event of fraud.
A friend of mine does similar but opened a second bank account with his own bank but only keeps limited cash in it, and makes sure no overdraft, so bank bounces any payments if it would go overdrawn. As he pointed out, the main UK banks have quite strict fraud protection. A pay and go debit card may not have such protection depending on their registered address.
In the end, I urge common sense when it comes to subscription payment. The more you give vendors details of your bank accounts, the more you risk hackers getting details of your accounts.
