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Comment by joshe | Hacker News Reader

One practice that's helped me is to always cancel immediately, which translates to only paying for one month. Ie. for spotify, netflix pay for the subscription, immediately jump through the hoops to cancel.

Forgetfulness turns into money savings, and as a bonus I get to review whether I am getting much out of it. Especially for tv like disney/netflix/apple tv, I often run though everything interesting and don't have much else to watch with them.

Also psychologically there's resistance to a boring to do that involves loss. I will put off "go to netflix and figure out how to cancel." So do that work when you are excited to see the new show.

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This is how I use the ever-growing video streaming landscape. As soon as there are a few shows I want to watch on one particular platform, pay for a month of that, cancel immediately. Watch the shows during the month, maybe extend for another one if necessary. Then at some point later do the same with another service - Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV, all of 'em.

This works really well, especially the year subscriptions - buy, cancel, get the year's worth. If you're using it, you'll notice when it dies and can resubscribe.

This was a few year ago now, but I was caught out by Adobe because they only enabled the 'cancel' button a few weeks before the subscription was about to renew. I contacted support and they said all I could do was wait until the correct time.

Send them a letter and an email detailing that you are cancelling your account and kill the payment authorization. Problem solved.

This is so incredibly dark of a pattern that it makes me a bit mad tbh.

This is illegal in the EU.

I subscribe to the Humble Bundle, where you get 10 PC games per month for $12. The trick is they pick the games, and you may not want to pay that month. You can skip a month whenever you want, but you need to remember to do so. That's their business model, assuming people won't remember to skip.

I'm frickin' iron man when it comes to this. I set a reminder on my phone every single month and haven't missed a pause yet, now over three years.

Alternatively and potentially easier so that you don't need to jump through all of the hoops of finding where they hid the unsubscribe button and futzing around with the app:

use one of those credit card privacy generating services and cancel the card or set limits on the cards use after you create it. it offers super granular control over who has access to how much of your money, how often and for how long.

Be careful. I would think that you are still on the hook for the subscription cost until you cancel, even if you use a virtual card.

You pay the first month, but after that it just gets denied. Every subscription I've seen handles it. Don't use it for a service that charges after usage.

They might "handle it" by deciding that you aren't worth pursuing for the small charge, but that doesn't mean you aren't technically liable for it.

Maybe with Apple they disable your Apple account but otherwise no

Why would you think you don’t have to be on the hook for something you agreed to pay for and didn’t. If you don’t tell them you’re done, they assume you’re not? It seems pretty standard. You wouldn’t open a bar tab, pay $20 and at the $30 of drinks point tell the bartender you only wanted to buy for $20 (and get away with it).

I don’t think they’ll take you to collections but I wouldn’t be surprised if they bill you should you ever re-subscribe.

Whether or not they come after you for what you owe, you still owe it.

Capital One credit cards have the virtual card feature built-in. You can use the Eno extension to use them. It even allows for scheduled lock outs of the specific virtual cards. I use it for every subscription service I use.

Do you know by any chance - Is this feature available only in US, or for the Canadian customers too?

You can do this with privacy too. That’s free for 12 debit cards a month

I don't understand your answer, sorry...

just signed up!

Is there a way to use the feature without their browser extension?

Yes, the website (where you manage your card, check spending, etc) can create and manage all your virtual cards. In fact it gives you a lot more customization over the virtual cards than the browser extension. But the extension is more convenient, it automatically offers to generate a virtual card on shopping cart pages for you. But I use a combination of both.

This is how I manage subscriptions too. I give every subscription a unique virtual card and I set it to “expire” or deactivate after 24 hours. That way the cards stays active for the initial charge/verification, but then it will not work if the card gets charged at the end of the trial. If I decide to keep the subscription then I just log into the capital one site and reactivate the card (it’s just a simple little iOS style toggle switch) before the trial ends so that it continues.

I have this card, and never used the extension, because I don't want to use a one time use extension.

Now they have added some of the features, in app. You can generate exactly one virtual credit card in app, can lock it from future use, and can delete this card (& thus can get a new one). Can't set the spending limit, can't get more than one virtual card in app, can't limit it to one seller.

The only thing it is good for is, your actual credit card number will never be with seller.

I use it without extension, it’s just more effort. You can use either browser or mobile app to create them.

I've actually designed my sites so that people can choose whether the plan is autorenewing or not when they sign up, so as to avoid such chicanery.

That seems like a sane decision if you actually care about your customers. I'm glad at least some people are implementing sane choices when enabled to do so. The dark patterns have really taken over in the public facing Internet in the last decade.

Yea, they're platforms focused on becoming more emotionally healthy so I feel more comfortable when people can more clearly consent. While it may lead to less money up front, it may provide much less resentment and much more appreciation in the long term.

We'll see how it plays out in practice :-)

I do this too;

I really wish more apps would use the subscription model the 'Due' app uses, not sure if this subscription model has a name... [1]

"When you purchase Due, you unlock every feature today, including any new features that will be introduced in the next one year [.....] The Upgrade Pass is an optional subscription that unlocks features permanently, even after the subscription lapses. Any feature unlocked remains available to you forever."

[1] https://dueapp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360053244591-Wh...

Agreed. I do this too. Instantly cancel every subscription religiously.

I wonder if there could be a service/different way to pay such that you pay for a month, it cancels at the end of the month, it renews as soon as you want to use the service again. I guess this is closer to paying pro-rata/per usage.

I am doing the same. If I just need it for a month, I will always cancel it immediately after subscribing.

With this, I don't need to set a reminder to cancel it or having to pay for another month if I forget to do so.

Also works with an annual cancellation of my credit card.

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