As time was running up, I was reminded to renew the membership.
If I didn't, the membership would get cancelled.
If I did, the membership would turn on auto-renewal.
So they auto-renew memberships once you've paid twice.
This ensures that people who get auto-renewed but forgot about it at least liked renewing once.
Auto-renewal of subscriptions supposed to be a feature for veterans of a service, and not something to cheat people out of their money after they never get a good return of investment the first time.
Just to give Kagi some credit here: They have a friendly reminder every month that my subscription is about to renew. Every month I'm given the chance to cancel, and every month I'm reminded of what a decent service that is. It surely does mean they'll lose some customers. But it also means that those who stay, stay forever.