Fear of Commitment?

Everywhere I turn these days it seems like companies are desperate to sign me up to a subscription to something, anything. I mean, I understand why, the companies want a steady income and I get that but I myself do not exactly have a steady income so it’s a bit tricky to get me to commit to anything when I don’t know what my financial status will be like in 24 months. I’m learning to take risks at the moment as part of my therapy but I am not going to sign up to something that I may regret in a few months.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not exactly afraid of commitment – I’m married, I have had the same mobile phone number for about 10 years on the same network (Pay As You Go admittedly but I have idly toyed with the idea of starting a contract with them from time to time), I steadfastly refuse to have a touchscreen phone as I have the least conductive fingers in the world it seems and I loyally stick by my big buttoned phone. My husband and I have been with the same broadband provider for years. All of these things should show that I’m not afraid of committing to the essential services but i really can’t seem to escape offers to sign up for credit cards, subscriptions to satellite TV, music services etc.

There is a small element of fear for me when it comes to subscriptions, I once decided to join a gym and just went along to check it out and see if I wanted to sign up. The gym itself was fantastic, the customer service was amazing and the facilities were not lacking but I ended up signing up for a gym membership that cost a hefty amount per month without really thinking it through. I’m sure a lot of people have found themselves in this position. Unlike the typical ‘go a few times then give up’ I was a paragon of gym virtue – I tried out pretty much every class (summary was that accidentally attending Body Blitz when only in my first week of getting fit was possibly a mistake and that Pilates was hard and made me feel like I needed a cigarette when trying to relax and with Yoga I kept getting my breathing ‘wrong’ causing a few dizziness incidents in the class), I used the machines, I swam in the pool, I even went to the beauty salon and hair salon. Oddly the only things I didn’t do were use the tanning booths (I burn easily with my pale skin) and go to the smoothie bar (this just seemed far too virtuous and I feared that if I were to get a drink from there that I would be lost forever to a world of fitness). When I went to check out the gym at first I was shown around and then, probably the same as everyone else, I felt like i might as well wear a sign around my neck that said ‘I don’t care about my health’ if I didn’t sign up. The politeness inside of me welled up and I blindly signed up, this was no fault of the staff, I just felt good knowing I was doing something to improve my fitness – without considering my financial health. I won’t go into how much it cost but I signed up to the membership that gave me the most freedom and with much power comes much financial responsibility it appears and the contract was so watertight that you could only cancel it after exactly 12 months and if you failed to cancel it 30 days before that day in 12 months time, it rolled over for another 12 months and you were pretty much stuck with it. Anyway, after a few months I was made redundant from work, but that was ok as you could minimise the membership by paying only a few pounds a month but the 12 month contract would be extended and you couldn’t use the gym again until you started paying for full membership again. It was ok as I got a new job fairly quickly. I decided to cancel it after 12 months but I missed the deadline by a day and so it rolled over. Now, my OCD became really bad and I started having panic attacks when going outside so I couldn’t go to the gym anyway so I was paying the few pounds a month to sustain the contract but eventually, through a set of complicated procedures I managed to end the contract and the gym was very good about it recognising my plight. I don’t know what other people’s experiences are with gym memberships but I decided there and then that I will never sign up to anything at all if I can really help it.

Last year I had to help my father sort out a mobile contract that he had inadvertently agreed to, despite not wanting the product at all. It took three days and a series of letters, emails and Facebook messages before it was finally sorted. I think that the general rule is – even when faced with something new and shiny, if you think you may struggle with the payments it’s probably best to go away and think about it before signing up.

Even mobile phone contracts can be a hassle to cancel, even when you go through the right procedures. Despite cancelling a phone contract using the correct measures advised by the company, I still found myself owing them £75 for which it was no fault of mine. I eventually sorted the problem but it was not at all easy to solve and involved a fair bit of anxiety. I understand that the companies want you to sign up to the subscription to ensure that they get the money every month but locking yourself into a contract for 24 months or more in the current economic climate is so hard.

My credit score is probably regrettably low so when I get a phonecall, email asking if I want to sign up for something I generally try to politely say that I don’t want whatever product I’m being encouraged to purchase but if they start being pushy i tell them that I have a poor credit score and the sad thing is that this doesn’t always deter them! At this current point in my life I have no credit cards, no mobile phone contract, no loans and I am sort of intent on keeping it that way if I can help it. I’ve been financially foolish in the past and these days I consider long and hard whether i want something so bad that I have to have it there and then. I save up for things, I’m beyond disgustingly organised when it comes to saving for Christmas. I had filed my tax return for the previous year on about the 4th April and had the tax readily available to pay them. I don’t mess around with money at all these days, if i don’t have the money I don’t get the item. To be honest this is something that I have learned from my husband as frankly I was terrible at money management before I met him.

It’s almost like there is a central computer somewhere which has a note of our address and the fact that I don’t have any subscriptions and the various companies are trying to be the first to get me to sign up to them. Despite being pretty much reclusive at the moment I still get around 4-5 phonecalls a day. If I don’t recognise the number, I don’t answer the phone, it’s as simple as that. I don’t answer the door and I politely let sales assistants know that I don’t want a store card - mainly by half-jokingly claiming that ‘I spend too much as it is!’.

It’s all about switching as well these days – switching gas, electricity, broadband provider etc. I’m regularly being told to keep up to date with which prices are best and to switch to save money. To do so I think would be quite a task. It’s quite a competitive place out there for the old utility companies eh? They think they have a good relationship with you but little do they realise that you are being romanced behind the scenes, other companies flirting coyly with you and telling you that their prices and services are better. It actually starts to get a bit claustrophobic knowing that everyone wants you, your business, your money. And yet strangely we feel like we are the ones who are not in control, with prices going up we feel helpless to stop the rise when really we are in an enviable position most of the time. Then again, we both need each other and I really don’t fancy trying to eat my dinner by candlelight because I’ve managed to annoy all of the energy providers. If you switch from one company to another then go back, is there someone in customer services laughing and saying ‘I knew you’d come back’ with a sense of smug satisfaction ‘You tried their wares but you knew they couldn’t compare to us. Come back to us, come back’. What a weird job that would be, what would it be called, ‘Chief Gloater’ or something? Do they see it like that or do they just shrug, say ‘meh’ and reconnect you?

Some subscriptions are definitely good value and if you have the finances to cover them then it’s all good. I think that I’m just a little jaded with my experience of trying to get out of subscriptions even after the allotted time is up. I tend to bristle at the mere mention of anything with payments per month. I respect the fact that some contracts can be jolly good value – paying a small sum once a month to get an expensive smart phone without shelling out a fortune upfront and you get lots of minutes and texts free is definitely appealing. Cinema passes too, are often terrifically good value if you go to the cinema more than once a month. I’m not anti-subscription, I just don’t see why I have to be interrupted by emails, phonecalls, texts etc telling me that I should sign up to this that and the other every day when I don’t exactly have the finances to cover them.

I once got a phonecall from an insistent salesperson who was determined to make me sign up for a mobile phone contract and he asked me which phone I had at that time. I told him and he proceeded to offer me an older model of the phone. As I was working with mobile phones at the time I pointed out that it wasn’t a good deal as I already had a phone that was more up to date than what he was offering as well as the fact that the phone wasn’t exactly a top model anyway but he still tried to get me to sign up!

Even last night I was watching a consumer advice programme where a lady had signed up for what she thought was a trial of a face cream for £3 and it ended up costing £500 as there’s a possibility that she didn’t read some small print and she kept getting sent the face cream on a contract basis.

I think that the point I am trying to make is, always read the small print. A friend of mine said recently ‘well, no one really reads contracts do they?’ and my reply was ‘Yes, yes they do or they end up in a sticky situation’. Most of us have done it, signed up for something without thinking it through and it’s definitely something that I will never do again. So it’s not really fear of commitment, just a healthy fear of overstretching my financial limits.

Do I know what my financial status will be in 24 months time? Nope, probably best stop gazing at those shiny new gadgets then :)