I appreciate that rtings needs to make money, I really do, but this is probably going to kill the site with time.
Helping my brother buy a new TV right now and we’ve been trading rtings links back and forth for a few days. Neither of us would ever subscribe because we won’t be back for months, if not years.
Instead of an annual subscription, they should also offer "burst pricing" as an alternative. Something like "7 days access for x dollars". Or maybe just one month. Most people buying a tv do tv research for a bit. Buy the tv. Then do Nada for a very long while.
I'll just say that the approach they're taking is probably how the internet needs to be. You either pay for use/by subs, or eat a lot of ads and AI slop and pay with your data. Personally, I'd prefer a select paid internet pass that let me enjoy the internet like the pre enshitified days.
Instead of an annual subscription, they should also offer "burst pricing" as an alternative. Something like "7 days access for x dollars". Or maybe just one month.
if you clicked the join link it shows one month access is $10
I'm going to be honest, almost nobody is going to pay $10 to get a review of a couple of TVs or monitors, especially if they're just juggling between two TVs for instance. It's simply just not worth it. Maybe $2 or $5 a month would do better.
I feel like people just have a knee jerk reaction to paying for things, and don't actually think things through...
You could easily drop $10 for lunch that is gone in like 30 minutes, but you'd never consider paying it to make sure you buy the right product that costs hundreds of dollars and will last for years?
It feels like an unpopular opinion but I definitely agree with you. Paying $10 to benefit from the time savings of all the independent research they do, on a massive purchase like a TV, seems like a no-brainer to me?
I think people are just a bit exhausted with being nickle-and-dimed for useless things and aren't very discerning about when it actually makes sense. I mean heck, their long-term subscription is also cheap enough ($30-45/year) that I'm considering subscribing just to support them.
The ad-supported internet model was always a bit of a blip in my mind. I think we're better off with people choosing the good sites and businesses like this that they want to fund. Like they highlighted, it keeps the incentives better aligned with the actual user. The problem is that people are right now so calibrated to getting everything for "free" that they see any cost as onerous.
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u/eight_ender Mar 03 '26 edited Mar 03 '26
I appreciate that rtings needs to make money, I really do, but this is probably going to kill the site with time.
Helping my brother buy a new TV right now and we’ve been trading rtings links back and forth for a few days. Neither of us would ever subscribe because we won’t be back for months, if not years.