You might think that going to the same place over and over would make a company want to thank you for being a frequent customer. While there are certainly some companies that do this, the majority of them not only don’t reward you, but instead use your loyalty against you in order to charge higher prices.

A recent article by Emily Stewart for Business Insider revealed all of the ways that companies are using your loyalty to charge you extra.

For example, while you might be saving airline miles for that big trip, airlines are now offering fewer reward seats — all while repeatedly devaluing miles. Trying to save money on your car insurance? Good luck; pretty much every company in the business increases their prices for existing customers year-over-year, even if you have a clean driving record. And as far as your cable/internet package is concerned, most providers know that you’re not going to have the energy (or even be able) to swap, so once your introductory period is over, they’re more than happy to jack up the price.

How can you solve this?

The sad part is, you can’t — unless you’re willing to swap out every one of your services as soon as your contract ends. In some cases, you can call and threaten to cancel before your contract expires in hopes that they’ll let you keep the introductory rate. However, most of the time, you’re kinda just done for (unless you want to take up a part-time job in “personal subscription contract management”).