New app automatically cancels free trial credit card subscriptions

Many services that require paid monthly subscriptions offer free trial periods for new users to demo the full experience. They are a clever way to get people hooked into habitually using the service, so the buying decision becomes one of maintaining the benefit they are enjoying rather than investing in something new they are unsure of.

Of course, companies can expect these free-trial periods to be taken advantage of by people who have no intention of paying when the trial is up. To combat people making multiple new emails to endlessly abuse a free trial offer, these services often require you to sign up with credit card information that it promises it will only bill if you fail to cancel your membership prior to the end of the trial date.

This makes it easy for people to forget they signed up and discover they’ve been charged with no recourse (they were warned after all). Now, a new app launching in the UK will automatically cancel these required credit card subscriptions at the last minute, allowing people to maximise their enjoyment of the trial period without fear of being charged automatically.

The app is called Free Trial Surfing and, unsurprisingly, it reports that most people use the app to manage free trials to porn sites and Netflix.