The worst offenders cancel the trial period as soon as you take away payment.
Looking at you, Pluralsight.
Looking at you, Pluralsight.
If I like the service and want to continue to use it after the trial period, I simply re-added my billing information.
Cancelling the trial if I remove my billing information during it is unfair because it is just another mechanism to make consumers forget about the service and being billed by a service they don't even use.
Yeah, I may be genuinely interested enough in a new service to create an account and even put my CC information to have access to the trial [1]. However it does not mean that I will like the service and want to continue to use it.
The best way to avoid having a surprise in my CC at the end of the month is to simply subscribe to the trial and afterwards cancel any automatic billing. If I don't do it when I am creating my account, I will forget it later. Yet I will continue to test the service until the end of my trial.
Now if you simply stop my trial is unfair. Why would you want to keep my billing info until the end of trial is beyond any good reason except to maybe try to make me forget about the whole thing and gain some money on people that forget to unsubscribe for services they don't use.
[1]: Multiple times they ask CC information to know if it is a genuine prospect (a.k.a. someone that can really pay for the service later, instead of a bot or something). So it is ok to ask for CC information for trial periods, it is not ok to cancel my trial just because I removed my CC information.
Because any friction in the sign-up process reduces conversion rates, often dramatically in cases like this. Importantly, that applies to customers who would otherwise decide to continue just the same as to those who want to cancel but forgot to do so.
Remember, the only reason a business is offering you a free trial of anything is normally to increase the chances that you'll decide to stay with them and pay them money. If you don't like that arrangement, no-one is forcing you to sign up for the free trial!
Obviously it's scummy behaviour if a business signs you up for something in the small print and then makes it unreasonably difficult to exercise your right to cancel. I don't see anyone disputing that.
But if someone has knowingly signed up for a trial, if it was clearly stated up-front that if they don't cancel before the end of the trial period then they'll start paying to continue using the service, and if a reasonable means to cancel was provided, I just don't see the problem here.
I'd say if it is really for verification I can perfectly understand why a customer removes it after verification if they are still not sure if they are going to stay with the service or not.
Being smart about this can save you a few bucks a year (and/or some hassle).
Personally I just don't test products that require cc for free trials. Saves me even more hassle.
Removing a payment method doesn't equal saying that you never want to use the service again. It can be a protective measure against automatic signup to a paid service.