Cancel a free trial before it costs you

You’re bound to have seen them, the offer of a free trial for services like Amazon Prime, Netflix and Graze boxes. As we all love a freebie, it can be hard to resist the temptation of typing in your name, address and bank account details to reap the rewards of this. But it’s that last piece of information that can trip you up – as at the end of this free trial, your membership can be automatically renewed for a fee.

At thinkmoney we regularly hear from customers who have found money going out of their account that they weren’t expecting – because they’ve forgotten to cancel at the end of a free trial.

Be aware of auto-renewal

Although you’ll be able to use these services like any other paying member for the month (indulging in discounted meals, free delivery, as well as the subscription to TV and music services), you won’t want to start paying for this every month if you never intended to.

Some subscription services like Amazon Prime will automatically renew your membership at the end of your free trial. As you’ve already given them your account details, they can simply take this money out of your account. So make a note of the date that your subscription is due to end (you should be able to find this somewhere on the site that you’re using) and make sure that you end your free trial before the closing date. Don’t expect the company to remind you of this as they don’t have to – they’ll just start charging you.

Cancelling your membership should be pretty straightforward - here’s an example of what you’d have to do to cancel a Netflix subscription. Simply head to ‘Your Account’ tab and you should see the following screen:

Once you click this, you’ll head to another screen where you’ll be asked to ‘Complete cancellation’ press this and you’re done. You should receive an email from Netflix notifying you of the closing of your account.

Each subscription service will have their own system when it comes to cancelling, so look on the site to see what they say (head to their FAQs section). Companies that deliver food goods, like Graze, may need you to cancel your subscription before they send out your next parcel, so look at the cut-off times for cancelling an order. Others should just let you cancel immediately or at the end of your free trial.

What if I miss the deadline?

If you were planning to cancel your free trial but never actually got round to it, then all isn’t lost. Unless you’ve actually used the service, for example logged onto Netflix and watched a couple of episodes or taken advantage of Amazon Prime’s free delivery service, then you should be able to cancel your membership through the site – you could even receive some sort of refund for the services that you never used.

If you have used these services since the end of your free trial, then you may have to wait until the end of the month to cancel this. You should be able to use the services until your account is closed, so watch all of the Netflix programs while you can!