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Comment by unreal37 | Hacker News Reader

The purpose is not to "make money on people forgetting to cancel."

The fact of the matter is that many more people buy when a free trial is offered. If your competitor offers a free trial, and you don't, they get more sales than you.

It's "risk reversal". Similar to a "30 day money back guarantee". People are attracted to the idea of there being no risk to trying this and not liking it.

In some industries, you simply HAVE to offer it.

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There is a really simple workaround -

     if (person_abandoned_trial) {
        dont_pretend_they_consented_to_lifetime_billing()
     }

I think a better one is to just never auto-charge after the trial, and lock down your service asking them to start a plan for the main service after the trial.

In that case, offer a limited billing period in line with the trial time period (30 days in your example) and ask the customer for an extension at the end of the billing cycle. If your theory of "risk reversal" is true, they will extend the subscription. It's a win-win, consumers register for "risk reversal" and business get the chance to demonstrate their services.

Thats fine, but what about automatically rolling over to a paid subscription? That's not a trial, that's a first-30-days-free offer.

You can still de-risk the proposition by offering a money back guarantee. Or indeed a free trial where the user gets prompted to confirm they want to subscribe when they try to login in after the free period is up - not a massive issue when the service is actually worth paying for to them. Or indeed a free trial where there's no automation at all and company negotiates a contract with the salesperson after the free period is up.

The only people affected by losing no-confirmation autobilling are those who make non-trivial portions of their revenue on people forgetting to cancel. And the industries and businesses that HAVE to rely on that deserve to fail, frankly.

> If your competitor offers a free trial, and you don't, they get more sales than you.

Luckily, this would affect both me and my competitor. :-)

Dubious ethical business practice is not somehow magically excused by the presence of competition. This attitude makes my blood boil.

Are free trials unethical? I’m not convinced.

Only unethical if you obscure the fact that people are signing up for a recurring bill and/or hope they forget to cancel despite not using the service.

I've not seen it obscured. Its difficult to read a person's mind to know I'd they forgot to cancel or actively remembered they had a subscription.

Yes but you designed in such a way that the users intent is obscured and assume the intent that benefits you.

If you just don’t auto-bill and ask them for confirmation after the trail then you know for sure.

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