Signing up took ninety seconds. Cancelling took four attempts across three weeks and eventually a telephone call during business hours.
This asymmetry is deliberate, well documented and increasingly regulated.
The specific techniques
Recognisable once named.
Requiring cancellation through a different channel from signup — telephone or written notice for a service joined online.
Burying the cancellation option several levels into account settings, frequently under a heading that does not mention cancellation.
Interstitial screens presenting retention offers, requiring multiple confirmations, each phrased so that the obvious button continues the subscription.
Confirmshaming, where declining is phrased to make it feel like a mistake.
Requiring cancellation a period in advance of renewal, which is disclosed in terms and rarely noticed.
And restricted hours for telephone cancellation, which is a straightforward barrier.
Why it persists
The commercial logic is unambiguous.
Every additional step loses a proportion of people attempting to cancel, and each retained subscriber has substantial lifetime value.
The practices are testable and are tested, which means the friction is optimised rather than accidental.
Reputational cost is limited, since somebody who has cancelled has already left and the complaint reaches few people.
The regulatory response
Which has been developing across jurisdictions.
Rules requiring cancellation to be as easy as signup have been introduced in several places, sometimes described as click to cancel provisions.
Requirements for clear disclosure of automatic renewal, advance notice before renewal, and express consent for negative option arrangements have also been introduced.
Enforcement actions have been taken against a number of large services over cancellation practices, with substantial penalties in some cases.
Implementation and scope vary, and the direction is consistent.
What actually works when cancelling
From experience and from what consumer organisations advise.
Cancel through the same channel you joined, and check whether an online option exists before assuming a call is required.
Record everything — screenshots, reference numbers, the date and time, the name of anybody spoken to.
Request written confirmation, and treat the cancellation as incomplete until it arrives.
Decline retention offers explicitly rather than ending the interaction, since an unresolved call sometimes leaves the subscription active.
And check the following statement, since cancellations do fail to process.
The payment-side options
Which are a backstop rather than a first resort.
Card networks provide mechanisms for disputing charges after a cancellation was requested and ignored, and this requires evidence of the request.
Some banks and cards allow blocking recurring payments to a specific merchant, which stops the charge and does not end the contract.
Cancelling a card to end a subscription generally does not work, since networks provide updated details to merchants automatically for recurring transactions.
And blocking payment without cancelling can leave a debt and a collections process, which is worse than the subscription.
Prevention
Which is considerably easier than cure.
Setting a calendar reminder before any trial converts to paid, several days ahead, which is the single most effective habit.
Using virtual card numbers with limits where the bank supports them, which caps exposure.
Reviewing recurring charges quarterly, which nearly always reveals something forgotten.
And noting at signup how cancellation works, before committing, since the terms disclose it and reading them takes a minute.
The audit worth doing
Going through a year of statements and listing every recurring charge.
Most people doing this find several they had forgotten, and at least one they believed they had cancelled.
The total is generally larger than expected, and the exercise takes an hour and pays for itself immediately.
Free trials specifically
Where most unwanted subscriptions originate.
A trial requiring payment details converts automatically unless cancelled, which is the entire design.
Several jurisdictions now require express consent before converting a trial to a paid subscription, and enforcement varies.
The reliable defences are a calendar reminder set at signup, cancelling immediately after starting the trial where the service allows continued access to the end of the period, and virtual card numbers with limits.
That middle option is available more often than people realise and removes the problem entirely.
Bundled and third-party subscriptions
The category hardest to track.
Subscriptions purchased through an application store are billed by the platform rather than the provider, and cancellation goes through the platform's subscription settings rather than the service.
People frequently cancel within the service, find they are still charged, and conclude they have been ignored.
Checking the platform's subscription list is the first step for anything bought on a phone or tablet.
Similarly, subscriptions bundled with a mobile contract or a bank account are managed by that provider, which is another place unwanted charges accumulate unnoticed.
Keeping a record
The habit that makes any later dispute straightforward.
A simple list of every recurring charge, the amount, the renewal date and how to cancel it, held somewhere you will actually look.
Built once from a year of statements and updated at signup thereafter.
It takes an hour to construct and it converts an annual surprise into a quarterly decision, which is the whole of the remedy.