4 ms·

Of “Free” trials and credit cards

• sumitgt 11y ago
  I always believed asking for Credit Cards and verifying it before giving away a free trial was a way to ensure that same person does not repeatedly use the free trial with different email accounts. I guess, there can only be a limited number of Credit Cards a person can get access to. But I can create any number of gmail accounts I want.
  • jlgaddis 11y ago
    You can, yeah, but that's a lot of work to do over and over again to save a few bucks. To me, requiring a credit card for a "free trial" is a company's way of saying that I probably won't like your product enough to keep using it after the trial period so you're gonna try to get whatever you can out of me however you can. I've signed up, used an app/site for a few hours or a day, then completely forgot about it until I saw the charge on my credit card statement. Other times, I didn't realize up front that "simply cancel before the 30 day trial is up" really meant "jump through a bunch of hoops we've put in place to make it as hard for you to cancel as possible" (to the point where it was much easier to just dispute the charge).
  • dshrenik 11y ago
    That's a good point. But almost all services that ask for credit card info before starting the trial automatically charge your card as soon as the trial period ends. That's the problem I have with this model.