In Genbeta and in Engadget we have talked a lot about lack of honesty in subscriptions, that field that already offers us fatigue. As our colleague Javier Lacort said, “When you cancel a subscription is when you really know the company that charged you”.
For our part, we have highlighted good practices such as those of Google, which clearly warns you before you have to pay, and even tells you that you will “unless you cancel, giving you the possibility”. The opposite example in that case is Apple, which does not let you cancel and keep the trial periodTherefore, if you want to enjoy it, you have to cancel the last day, “with the risk that this entails.”
In this article we wanted to talk about that risk, that of being charged the month following the trial period, It is not so with certain companies, as we can request a refund in different ways.
Whether it’s more or less difficult, asking for a refund usually goes well
The first thing to mention before continuing is that, obviously, if we want to request a refund because a trial period has run out and we have been charged, it will have to be with a service that we are no longer using. That is, we cannot use a month of Spotify that we have paid for and ask the company to refund the amount, because “we forgot to cancel.”
Given so much subscription, the best practice would be for them to notify us by email or notifications one day before charging us, in case we have forgotten to cancel a trial period or do not want to renew
Platforms have ways of checking user activity, and you can look bad. The example of Spotify is good because it has made many promotions of 0.99 euros for three months, and the fourth many users will have seen how they were charged 9.99 euros. However, from our personal experience, communicating the problem to the company through the different channels also works out well.
Recently, we have had two successful cases in this regard. The first one was with ExpressVPN. The subscription time that had been thought was one month, but the second arrived and it had not been canceled.
Thus, we got in touch through the chat they include on the web, we explained that the subscription had not been used for a long time, and that it could clearly be seen, since the application was no longer installed anywhere. At the time, the person who attended us canceled the account and proceeded to return the money for the month that had been paid without using.
Another satisfactory case in recent months has to do with Apple Music. There what has happened to us has been typical. Apple offers a three-month free trial, which we use to test the Dolby Atmos sound and lossless audio recently released by the service, but again we forgot to cancel it in time before the way they do not cancel the renewal before the end of the promotional period.
At Apple there are several ways to claim. This image is the status that the company shows after accepting a refund when ordering from the active subscriptions website.
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You can also talk through the contact chat and even call. As one commenter reminded us in a previous article, The same happens if you miss the trial period with companies like Amazon, Soundcloud or Codecademy