Such as?
In addition to these we also send email and notification reminders before the free trial ends and refund everybody who requests one.
I don't know of any services that do this though. So I assume they are all dishonest.
From my understanding, the profitability of gyms is actually dependent upon some sizable percentage of people paying for a membership and not using it. If that cohort didn't exist, membership fees would have to be much higher.
Software subscriptions are different though, as the variable costs are negligible: the cost associated with providing service to each new user is next to nothing.
Personally, I'd be way more likely to sign up for a paid subscription if I knew they would automatically stop charging me if/when I stop using the service.
Depends on the service. Many boast about their large or unlimited storage for user's data, but this part of their marketing relies on the assumption that almost nobody will actually use a noticeable amount of the offer.
It's similar to the dishonest, but sadly normalized practice of ISPs, where the bandwidth offered would be impossible to provide if a significant number of customers tried to use it at once.
And of course every cloud provider works this way, but that's not a "subscription model" anymore.
even with a monthly subscription, it's really easy to completely forget about a service and move on from it entirely without cancelling it
I mean: someone signs up - regardless of whether you want to call it a subscription - and every month on renewal, they get a notice to confirm renewal (or have to re-enter payment, though I suspect that's probably _too_ much friction).
Is that a great way to retain revenue? Probably not. But it's way better for press than what I saw when I opened this thread and was immediately turned off. It's definitely the kind of consumer-first model that I'd love to see more of, certainly from a company/app whose target is helping people...