How to spot it
- A trial that is free but still wants a card. If nothing is being charged, nothing needs a card, and the card is there for day thirty.
- The end date is never stated as a date. It is thirty days, or a month, counted from a moment you will not remember.
- The price after the trial is set in smaller type than the word free, and often on a different screen.
- You are told you can cancel any time, which is true and is not the same as being told you will be reminded.
- The confirmation email says welcome and does not say what will be charged, or when.
Why it works on you
The trial is genuinely useful, which is what makes it work. You are not being tricked into signing up; you are being trusted to remember a date thirty days away while the company that set it has a calendar and you do not. By the time the charge lands the trial is over, the thing is part of your week, and cancelling now feels like losing something rather than declining it.
What to do
- Set your own reminder for two days before it ends, at the moment you sign up. This is the whole defence and it takes ten seconds.
- Write the actual date down. Thirty days from today is a date, and the trader knows it even if the page will not say it.
- Use a card you can see. A virtual or single merchant card makes the charge visible instead of routine.
- Cancel immediately if you can. A trial that runs to its end after cancelling is the normal case, and it removes the deadline entirely.
Where the law stands
In the United States the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act requires a trader to disclose all material terms clearly before taking billing information, to obtain informed consent to the charge, and to provide a simple way to stop it. The FTC's updated Negative Option Rule would have added an explicit separate consent step, but the Eighth Circuit vacated it on 8 July 2025 on procedural grounds, days before it took effect, so it is not in force; ROSCA, Section 5 of the FTC Act and state automatic renewal laws such as California's still are. In the European Union the Consumer Rights Directive requires that an order carrying an obligation to pay is labelled as such before the consumer commits.
This is a description of published regulation, not legal advice, and rules in this area have changed more than once. The sources below are the primary ones.