- Peloton is introducing a $95 “used equipment activation fee” for bikes purchased from outside its official channels in the US and Canada, aiming to boost revenue and maintain onboarding quality for new subscribers.
- The fee has sparked criticism as it reduces the cost savings typically associated with buying secondhand equipment and diverges from practices in other industries, potentially discouraging used market purchases.
- Peloton’s hardware sales continue to decline, but subscription revenue has seen slight growth; the company still faces financial struggles despite cost-cutting measures and layoffs.
The tech world has become and endless conveyor belt of stupid greedy miseries.
No subscription-based company products should be in public schools. That would stop with inculcating model acceptance.
No federal agency should be using any subscription product, including any cloud products. Public data should not be capable of being held hostage or monetised.
Both are a waste of public funds and set a bad example.
We can put marketing teams in the fields and mines doing honest toil.
The marketers yearn for the mine
Simpler. It’s easy to create artificial maintenance costs there as needed. That, of course, wouldn’t work well without oligopoly.
Government officials are interested in buying such products due to kickbacks, which means that everybody else directly or indirectly needs them for interoperability. Thus oligopoly persists.
It’s as if only radical solutions would work, be it radical authoritarian or radical libertarian.
That reminds me of the bricked polish trains, not only did they create artificial maintenance cost, they also tried to ensure that only they (and not their competitors) would be able to do that maintenance (unflipping the kill-switch)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrlrbfGZo2k
In that particular case it was plain sabotage, I’ve read that article. They also denied knowledge of that kill-switch.
I meant cases where both the vendor and the buyer know how these are formed, but due to kickbacks are fine with it.
It’s the McDonald’s ice cream machine fiasco all over again.
Thing is cloud stuff does cost money to run. In the end even electricity is a subscription.
So they shouldn’t lease buildings, or subscribe to water and power? Should they also not use document archival and storage services that have existed for decades?
Water and power still need to be reconfigured, obvs we’re not there yet, but they don’t contain my personal info and can’t leak it.
I’m not against govt working with entities when needed, but it’s become a lazy solution to outsource functions and often the blame for failure as well, rather than build a responsible solution.
It’s gotten too cozy and intertwined.