Beware Of the ‘Free’ Trial…

I am nickel and diming myself to death, although it really should be called ‘dollaring myself to death’.

This is what happens: I sign up for a product for a 3 month ‘free’ trial period. All is well and good for those 3 months. I then go to cancel my membership, but the company has less than one operator manning the phones, so you can never talk to anyone to actually cancel. Next thing I know, my trial membership period is over, and my credit card is automatically charged.

Here is a great example of how I got burned. I joined a service called ‘Instant Cast’, which was free for a month. I really just needed to get one little piece of information when I signed up for the free trial, so I figured canceling within a month would be no problem. So, I got my info and then tried to cancel my membership online. However, there was minimal contact information anywhere on the website, so I moved on to something else. I still had 29 days to cancel, so there was plenty of time! Unfortunately, the whole thing slipped my mind…

A month later, the Instant Cast charge appeared on my credit card, and I was sick to my stomach. Technically, the company did nothing wrong or illegal, they just didn’t provide an easy method to cancel a membership. Of course, I am sure providing limited contact info is part of their tactic to keep money flowing in. I tried calling the phone number provided, and I was on hold for 10 minutes and had to hang up to pick up my kids. So, I sent an email to the only address that was displayed on the entire website to cancel my membership, but I never heard back. Needless to say, my credit card was charged AGAIN the following month. My email must have gone straight to a garbage can somewhere. I am guessing it wasn’t alone…

I was furious by that point. I was determined to be done with this company, so I called back again. I was on hold for 20 minutes, and was finally able to cancel the darn membership. I also got them to back out the charge for the previous month. I accepted the charge for the first month because technically, it was my own fault.

My newest project is to cancel an antivirus software package I signed up for as a free trial when I bought my laptop. Of course, this requires a phone call, which I hate. I don’t want to be sold to, I just want to quit the darn service. I am resigned to get this done before it hits my credit card though!

The moral of the story: Be careful when signing up for any ‘free’ trial. Sometimes the inconvenience of discontinuing causes you to spend more money than you ever intended. Or, maybe it is just me.

Have you ever let a free trial go too long?