Consumers spent £7.9bn extra on subscriptions throughout the pandemic

Nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) of consumers are currently paying for a multitude of subscriptions and memberships, with over half (54 per cent) having bought into at least one new service since the pandemic started. This averages out as an extra £17.65 per person each month, or a collective spend of £7.9 billion across the population, since March 2020 according to new research by TopCashback.

The research says that despite best intentions though, 48 per cent of subscription owners said they have continued to pay for subscriptions or memberships in the past, despite not getting value for money. Scarily, the average time subscribers continue to pay for something they don’t use regularly enough is six months, totalling a wastage of around £105 per person, or £2.9 billion total, across the UK.

With little opportunity to leave our houses over the last year half of Brits (50 per cent) relied on subscriptions to access content and entertainment. However, as the UK begins to recover from the pandemic, almost a third (32 per cent) intend cancelling some or even all of their subscriptions.

For most subscribers who continue to pay regardless of how much or little they use the services (74 per cent), it’s forgetfulness or lack of effort to cancel that is causing money to be squandered – a quarter (25 per cent) said it was too much hassle. Ironically, over half of Brits (54 per cent) said cheaper prices would improve their perception of subscriptions and make them better value for money.

For those planning on cancelling at least one subscription (to coincide with lockdown ending fully), nearly three-quarters (73 per cent) said this was either due to costs being too high, a desire to save money, or plans to spend money on other things. What’s more, half (50 per cent) have seen price hikes in the past few months, and 80 per cent of subscribers said their providers had not offered to freeze their memberships during the pandemic either.

Adam Bullock, UK Director of TopCashback.co.uk said “With many months of lockdown or restrictions now behind us, it makes sense that Brits would now decide to cull a few subscriptions or memberships. Although these may have proven useful, entertaining, or convenient over the past year, it’s easy to forget or ignore the potentially large expense that racks up and gets taken out of our bank accounts each month.”

Most used subscriptions in 2021	Average monthly spend by those who have a subscription to a service
TV streaming subscription e.g. Netflix, NOW TV, Amazon Prime (52%)	£16.08
Music streaming service e.g. Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Music (18%)	£9.26
Food delivery subscription e.g. Hello Fresh, Gousto, Graze (14%)	£21.78
Product delivery service subscription e.g. Amazon Prime, ASOS Premier (11%)	£11.51
Fitness subscription e.g. gym membership (Virgin Active, Puregym, ClassPass) or online services (9%)	£26.75