For many users it's just not true. I run a subscription weather forecast service for pilots, with a free trial period. A significant number of users reset their device every week to avoid paying 10 euros a month. These are aircraft owners.
Just because you own an aircraft, doesn't mean you have a budget to pay random EUR 10/month subscriptions.
People save money to buy expensive stuff. Or take out loans. One cannot assume that everyone doesn't care about spending < X dollars, where X is = 1% of the most expensive asset they own (see e.g. $3000 gaming PC vs. $30 software, elsewhere in the thread).
Everyone's poorer than you think, and sometimes the richest seeming people are under a mountain of debt.
> own an aircraft, doesn't mean you have a budget to pay random EUR 10/month subscriptions.
Still, if you can't afford a €10/mo subscription necessary to operate the airplane safely, when hanger fees are well in excess of that, then perhaps you can't actually afford to own an airplane? Airplanes aren't cheap to own, nevermind the aircraft itself.
Put it another way. I like driving BMWs, but, y'know what, I hate having to pay insurance, and I can't afford to pay that after
the monthly BMW lease payment, so I just don't pay it, cause fuck that noise.
I don't think most people's response to someone saying that would be "eh, sounds fine, BMWs are expensive". "So don't drive a BMW." seems like more likely reaction to me.
The reason people will tell you that is because paying for car insurance is rarely something you can just opt not to do, at least not without consequences. The consequence for not paying for a $10/month service is having to perform a minimally inconvenient chore once a week.
Indeed. Where I live, civil liability insurance is mandatory and if you own a car, you have to pay it, even if you don't intend to actively drive. It's not an optional cost.
Yeah, for a fucking airplane. In most of the world, that's way up there with yachts as a rich people toy rather than a everyday necessity. The real question though is, upon having discovered this, why allow them to keep doing that?
"I didn't get rich by writing a lot of checks." The same habits that let a nouveau riche amass enough fortune to afford a plane make them penny pinch after they no longer need to.
There will always be some amount of people who are too cheap to pay.
However, that doesn't mean that if you plug all the holes that they will pay. No. They'll just not use your service.
In the long run it's better to keep these types of people around because they at least advertise your service. But getting any money out of them is a pipe dream.
People often frame piracy as "oh 5% pirated instead of paying!" Well... the "instead of" part is doing the heavy lifting there. The options arent pirate or pay. They're pirate, pay, or not use.
In the short term, maybe. I don't think that's the case in the long run. They normalise the behaviour for others, even telling them about how to get around paying. I see strong clustering of the behaviour.