A “free trial” or heavily discounted first month is one of the most common ways companies get you through the door — and, for a significant number of consumers, one of the most common ways to end up paying for something you meant to cancel months ago. Subscription traps aren’t always outright criminal fraud, but the tactics involved sit close enough to deception that US and UK regulators have taken direct action against major companies over them. Here’s how they work and how to avoid getting caught.
How subscription traps work
The pattern is consistent across most subscription traps: an appealing free trial or discounted offer requires you to enter payment card details upfront, ostensibly for shipping, identity verification, or simply “to keep on file.” Buried in the fine print, often written in dense legal language most people skim past, is the disclosure that a full-price subscription begins automatically once the trial period ends. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken enforcement action over exactly this kind of practice: in one case, the agency alleged that people who signed up for what they believed was a monthly Adobe subscription discovered it was actually a yearly commitment billed monthly, with a substantial early-cancellation fee buried in the terms.
Cancellation is often where the real friction shows up. Some companies make sign-up a single click but require phoning a call centre during limited hours, navigating multiple “are you sure?” retention screens designed to talk you out of cancelling, or even require cancellation by post. The FTC separately took action against a major gym chain, alleging it made cancelling a membership deliberately difficult, forcing customers through hoops that made it “nearly impossible to quit.”
A pre-checked box is a common trap
One of the more common and easy-to-miss tactics is a pre-ticked checkbox during online checkout, silently adding a subscription or add-on service to your order unless you notice and manually deselect it. Reading the full checkout screen before confirming a purchase, rather than clicking through quickly, is one of the simplest ways to avoid this particular trap.
A recent regulatory shift in your favour
There’s genuinely good news here: in late 2024 the FTC finalised its “click-to-cancel” rule, which legally requires subscription providers to make cancelling at least as easy as signing up. This directly targets the multi-step, call-only cancellation processes that have trapped so many consumers, and gives regulators clearer grounds to act against companies that don’t comply. It’s a meaningful shift, though enforcement takes time, and plenty of existing subscriptions were sold under the old, harder-to-escape terms.
Protecting yourself from the start
A few habits make subscription traps much easier to avoid. Before entering payment details for any “free” trial, search specifically for the cancellation process — if it requires a phone call during business hours only, or several confirmation steps, treat that as a signal worth factoring into your decision upfront rather than discovering it later. Set a calendar reminder a few days before any trial period ends, since “I forgot to cancel” is exactly the outcome these systems are designed to produce. Check your bank or card statements periodically for subscriptions you don’t recognise or no longer use — small recurring charges are easy to overlook for months. And read the full checkout page before confirming any online purchase, specifically checking for pre-selected add-ons or subscriptions.
Trials that ask for card details before you’ve used anything
It’s worth being specifically cautious of any “free” trial that requires full payment card details before you’ve so much as logged in or used the product once. A genuinely free trial, in the strictest sense, shouldn’t need payment information at all until you actively choose to continue — when it does, that’s less about verifying you’re a real customer and more about setting up the automatic charge that follows once the trial period lapses, which is precisely the mechanism these traps rely on.
What to do if you’re already stuck in one
If a company makes cancellation genuinely difficult or continues billing you after a clear cancellation attempt, you generally have stronger rights than the company is implying. Card providers can often dispute or “chargeback” recurring charges you didn’t knowingly authorise or couldn’t reasonably cancel, so contacting your bank or card issuer directly is a legitimate route if a company is being obstructive. Reporting the company to the relevant consumer protection body (the FTC in the US, or Citizens Advice and Trading Standards in the UK) also helps build the evidence base regulators use to act against repeat offenders.
The bottom line
Subscription traps rely on friction — an easy sign-up and a deliberately harder cancellation, often with the real terms tucked into fine print most people don’t read closely. Check the cancellation process before you subscribe to anything free or discounted, set a reminder before any trial ends, and don’t assume a difficult cancellation process means you have no options: your bank and consumer protection regulators both have real tools to help.