Melvin Durai
I recently discovered a charge of about $60 (Rs 4,500) on our credit card from Apple’s app store and asked every family member if they had bought something from there. My wife and kids all said, “No,” and my dog, Lulu, scratched herself, as if to say, “I have better things to do than go online.”
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Worried that a scam artist was charging our credit card, I investigated further and found that someone had purchased an annual subscription for PicsArt Gold, a photo and video editing app. As soon as my 17-year-old daughter heard the name “PicsArt Gold,” she remembered her recent purchase: “Sorry, it was me. I’ll pay for it with my money. I needed it for a school project and signed up for a 7-day free trial. But I forgot to cancel.”
“Forgot to cancel.” That magical phrase has made millions of dollars, crores of rupees, trillions of pesos, for entrepreneurs everywhere. Many companies are betting not on your love of their products but on your faulty memory. “Try us, try us, you will like us,” they chant publicly, while whispering among themselves, “And if you don’t, please forget to cancel.”
Fortunately, I was able to call Apple and get them to refund the subscription fee. They agreed to do this because my daughter is still a minor. If she had already turned 18 and been considered an adult, we would have likely been stuck with the fee. And if I had not noticed the charge on my credit card, we would have been charged again next year, thanks to another magical phrase that companies love: “automatic renewal.”
Free trials are quite common these days, a marketing tactic that entices consumers with the word “free,” before putting their memory on “trial.” Almost every movie-streaming company offers free trials, as do a host of other companies, including those offering gym memberships, dating apps, educational products, diet pills and even
underwear.
Sometimes you get two free trials at once: “Get a free one-month trial to our matchmaking site, and while you’re here, sign up for a free one-week trial hookup with the man/woman of your choice.”
Free trials are great when they come with no strings attached. But when you need to provide your credit card info for the free trial, you are setting yourself up for trouble. Remembering to cancel is like remembering your password, except that your web browser will not save you. It will not do any remembering for you. Nor will the company’s website display a message that says, “If you forgot to cancel, just enter your email address and we will send you a link, so you can reset your faulty memory.”
It’s important to read the fine print when you agree to a free trial. It might say something like this: “By clicking on the link, I agree to download a free 30-day trial of Dr Ramesh’s Astrological Forecast, guaranteed to bring me daily clarity. If I do not cancel my subscription within the free trial period, I agree to have Rs 5,000 charged to my credit card for an annual subscription. I also agree to give Dr Ramesh’s Astrological Forecast access to all my email contacts, so my family and friends can also be similarly duped.”
Not all companies that offer free trials are hoping to dupe you, of course. The streaming services, for example, are hoping that you will get hooked to them. You will get so addicted to their movies and TV shows that you will decide not to cancel. The free trial is like a doughnut that lures a bear into a trap. The trap is a lifetime of monthly fees, each one small enough to ensure that you can bear it.
