(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- One day, two people I knew separately started raving to me about their Stitch Fix clothing subscriptions. “Everything matches,” one said. “I don’t have to coordinate my outfits,” said the other. Then, during a jog one morning, I noticed that three of my neighbors’ recycling bins were overflowing onto the street with cardboard from meal kits. There seemed to be one for each day of the week. There’d been a disturbance in the zeitgeist. A quick search on the internet confirmed the revolution: Beauty influencers were all suddenly rating makeup baskets. A website called Cratejoy promised a monthly box for all hobbies and passions. And Amazon Prime was advertising the Carnivore Club Gift Box, featuring its Jerky & Meat Sticks Sampler—for $55 a month. A new era of subscriptions had dawned.
There was a previous era of subscriptions, more humdrum, more quotidian, that I hadn’t quite awakened from. These involved my own recurring deliveries: the lowliest personal hygiene consumable—toilet paper—and the highest form of home entertainment—cinema—from the same place: Amazon Prime. How much better could life be if I let the robots shop for me?
As a reporter, I’d been hearing a lot of Generation Z-age founders boast that their algorithms know consumers better than they know themselves. Their direct-to-consumer websites, which sell online without involving a retailer, claim to be able to refill shampoo containers just before they run out or tailor outfits to an individual’s personal style. Could these algorithms actually change my life? Would they save countless hours—and preserve a whole lot of mental space—as I pursued my career and raised two young children? Why couldn’t I let some tireless equation arbitrage my milk and soap needs, discriminating among competing retailers?
Still, I had my qualms. Automation hasn’t always been a boon for humanity. In 1936, Charlie Chaplin dramatized industrialization’s menace, with gigantic factory cogs that sucked him up and turned him into a robotic part of an immense assembly line. In 1952, Lucille Ball did it again—but her I Love Lucy candy factory scene didn’t show automation eating us alive; it was stuffing us silly. Today, high-frequency trading can aggravate flash crashes; step-counters interrupt our bucolic strolls; and Facebook has taken over our interpersonal interactions. Look where that got us: the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and a U.S. president embroiled in endless controversies about legitimacy. What would I get if the robots found out what size and style of underwear I wear?
Still, the promise of time saved was more than tempting: The average American spends around 1.7 hours a day shopping online—at work. And I was tired of running out of milk because an email interrupted my online checkout. Or spending months trying to buy a black wool skirt because there were too many to choose from. So in July of 2019, in an attempt to see where mechanization is taking us, I tried to live life by subscription alone.
To ensure I left no part of my family’s life unsubscribed, I went through what the seminal American psychologist Abraham Maslow called the hierarchy of needs—a pyramid that rose from physiological requirements through safety, love, and self-esteem to the peak of self-actualization. I signed up for 15 subscriptions in about four hours. The bulk of the time was spent parsing options in the “self-esteem” layer, where dozens of makeup offerings are aimed at women. I also searched for things I might actually enjoy, such as regular tickets to events I like, or shoes to fit my kids’ quickly growing feet. That was fruitless. Nike EasyKicks seemed to have an offer—except there’s a waitlist.
It started nicely enough. A box labeled “Go Love Yourself!” appeared on my porch. It had the sweet smell of lavender. I opened it to find a large spot of grease on the cardboard; the smell emanated from that blotch. Not quite what I imagined would be the aura of mindfulness. But there was a handwritten note in it—just for me! “Tiffany, your suffering helps no one. You deserve to rest and recover.” Among the contents of the box were an eponymous magazine, a eucalyptus sugar scrub, a book on burnout, a workbook on burnout, an “after moon, vagina friendly bath bomb,” and a snack labeled as “bone broth benefits with a latte like experience.” Plus, I got a 30-minute session with a life coach.
Before I could figure out these keys to the greatest love of all (myself, as the song goes), BloomsyBox arrived with its evocations of paradise. It’s a “farm to vase” flower subscription. I stuffed the bright blossoms in a pot and inhaled. It’s working, I thought: A subscription is helping me to stop and smell the roses!
The aromatherapy came not a moment too soon, because a mammoth box I could hardly lift soon appeared. It was full of pasta, rice, brown sugar, matcha powder, dish soap, sunscreen—the bare essentials of a pantry that I reckoned Amazon Prime’s “subscribe & save” service would help me economize on. As I started trying to fit 12 boxes of De Cecco rigatoni into my kitchen closet, I found myself wishing I’d bought spaghetti instead. (It comes in a smaller box.) But I reminded myself of the great deal on rigatoni: only 17¢ an ounce. Then I remembered to check. I pulled out my phone and searched: Amazon Fresh sells De Cecco spaghetti for 12¢ an ounce. Too late.
As the summer went on, boxes started to pile up on my front step, then in my living room. Would I even have time to open them? I tried to be practical and took on the Nordstrom Trunk Club: “workwear essentials” for a $25 stylist’s fee, credited toward any purchase. Its policy gave you only five days to return items, a club rule that was much stricter than Nordstrom’s website. The box included instructions: “1. TRY ON THE CLOTHES. 2. TELL US WHAT YOU THINK. 3. MAKE YOUR SELECTIONS.” Nothing the stylist suggested was on sale, despite the numerous markdowns advertised on the site. Color me unimpressed. (When I asked at the time about products on sale, I was told they were available only at the brick-and-mortar Nordstrom store at the moment.) Still, I was excited to see what a stylist could do for me. A long, black, silk skirt and boxy, white top arrived. It was a frumpy, wrinkly mess, recalling a phrase I heard leveled at the 1990s grunge look: “a nun in heat.”
I took another shot at a new look: Frank And Oak’s “Style Plan” from a Montreal-based company. But the items were nothing like what I’d chosen from among the stylist’s suggestions. Was this all a trick to get me to pay for shipping while providing consumer feedback to help clothing manufacturers better target me? Or did the stylist truly have a special vision for me? I tried on the olive T-shirt, bell-shaped, faded jean skirt, and floral-printed bomber jacket. When I looked in the mirror, however, I was almost at a loss for words. The stylist had visions of me as a hippie in a convent.
A Frank And Oak spokeswoman says it seemed my payment didn’t process at first, triggering an auto-shipment that wasn’t based on my selections; she added that the style recommendations become “smarter over time with the learnings we gather from customer feedback.”
When Green Chef’s organic meal kits arrived, I formed the prescribed bean patties with trepidation. If there’s one thing my children hate, it’s beans. And they came with raw kale and quinoa. But the kids shouted, “10 out of 10!” Relief. The next night, they even ate a dish with raw cabbage. It all seemed to be going great. But midweek, as I was taking out the trash, my visiting father, who’d never in his life expressed an opinion on the environment, gasped at the heap of plastic and cardboard I was offloading. “I think there’s a story here,” he told me. Actually, Mother Jones already published it—an exposé on waste created by meal kits.
There was a subscription opportunity to make it up to the planet, though: washing dishes with Cascade pods from a container that’s part of a project from Loop, which picks up your old packaging and refills it for you with fresh products from major brands such as Clorox and Häagen-Dazs. Well, it’s in a trial phase, so the jury’s still out as to whether it will save the Earth.
For the kids, I got Kiwi Crate, a subscription for children age 5-8 that allows them to work on science and art projects. The kids constructed an arcade box, a claw crane arm, and pompom characters with googly eyes. For my husband, I subscribed to Sneakertub at $49.99 a month. It was the only thing I could find that appealed to him. He’s not interested in fancy grooming products or beef jerky. But the box opened to reveal a pair of gray and cream Adidas BostonSuperxR1s, which did not impress the sneakerhead I married. “Why should my purchase solve their inventory problem?” he said. And now they’ve got his personal data and shoe size.
When I logged in to Sneakertub to cancel, I saw that I’d already been charged for two deliveries. I attempted to stop the subscription, and the robots asked me why. But don’t they already know? Among the drop-down menu of answers was the option: “You billed me twice before I received anything.” Sneakertub didn’t respond to a request for comment.
I soon realized that the corollary to the subscription life is the cancellation game. PetitVour, a $15-per-month box of vegan and “cruelty-free” beauty, said I had no account. I had to create one to unsubscribe. Ouch. Kidbox, a $48-a-month service from Walmart that sends four to five items of kids clothes per delivery, said likewise. At Ipsy, I had to follow a five-step cancellation guide for a makeup bag through an endless chain of pop-up windows. Still, just when I thought I was done, I was told in fine print that my cancellation wouldn’t be effective until I checked my email and clicked a link. What did I expect, given that when I subscribed, Ipsy asked for my credit card number before telling me I could either join a waitlist or skip it by posting about the service on Facebook? Indeed, the Better Business Bureau has logged 222 complaints about the company in the past three years.
An Ipsy spokeswoman says the company has a BBB rating of A+ and that its five-step cancellation system is to “help members choose different options that work best for them” because they sometimes want to pause rather than end their subscriptions.
At Quip, which sells sleek electric toothbrushes, the robots also tried to keep me from quitting. A message warned I’d get no more refills. “Cancel anyway?” they asked. “Yes,” I clicked. But then another screen popped up: “Are you sure you want to proceed?” The options are “cancel” or “accept.” Now I was confused: If I hit cancel, would it cancel the subscription or cancel my cancellation? I hit “accept” and hoped for the best. The next screen told me I no longer had any active subscriptions. Success!
But it wasn’t over. The first box from Sun Basket interrupted my celebration. Its sole meunière with zucchini and tomato caper relish was a pain to cook. A bit light, with only a slab of zucchini for carbs, but the kids loved it. Then, after dinner, I caught my husband eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. And another. And another.
“We didn’t subscribe to those!” I yelled.
“Why are there 96 eggs in the fridge?!” he retorted.
That was my automation Waterloo. Unlike Lucille Ball, who managed to stuff bonbons in her hat and mouth before her assembly line supervisor walked in, I didn’t have time to whip up a few hard-boiled egg sandwiches, make a quiche, and organize a neighborhood egg toss. I started to explain how my use of Amazon Fresh’s “refill cart with past order” function—the closest thing it has to a subscription—had gone wrong. Then I realized: Now that Sun Basket was here, it must be time to cancel next week’s delivery. I raced to my laptop. Too late. The cutoff time had passed at midnight.
Now I’m unsubscribing from the things I’d most looked forward to, including such unopened delights as Vinebox ($72 per quarter to “discover 9 game-changing wines”); Art Snacks (a box of four to five art supplies for $24 a month); and Knickey (“undies on autopilot” or $33 per box for three pairs of organic cotton underwear four times a year; they get picked up and recycled). Of course, like the mythical Pandora, who released all evils into the world but left hope inside the box, I’d shut off my subscriptions without signing up for one of the trendiest: cannabis-derived CBD oil products. Promising relaxing lotions, bonbons, and calm without the psychoactive effects of THC, services like Hemp Crate Co. and LiveHempily.com just might have helped me cope with the anxiety of living life on subscription.
To contact the author of this story: Tiffany Kary in New York at tkary@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Howard Chua-Eoan at hchuaeoan@bloomberg.net
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
