The subscription that is going up
Meet a message about money leaving your account, find out for yourself what is genuinely being taken, and put a stop to it in writing — to an address you found rather than one you were handed.
This course has kept returning to one habit, and it is not caution. Before you agree to anything, find out what is true by a route that nobody else chose for you.
Here is a practice computer, one email about money, and a company that would much rather you took the road in the email. Nothing is fake and nobody is lying to you. There are no instructions this time, and no hurry at all — the hurry is rather the point.
Key points
- Find out what a company is actually taking, from the company’s own account pages rather than from an email about them.
- Recognize a countdown, a last-minute discount and a “sorry to see you go” page for what they are.
- End something in writing, so that you have a date and a record of it.
What to remember
- A countdown on a page is furniture. It resets when the page is loaded again, and the offer is nearly always still there in the morning. What a company is actually taking is written on its own account pages, reached by typing its name yourself — never in an email about them, and never on the page an email sends you to. Two more things worth carrying: stopping the money and ending the agreement are separate acts, and a continuing payment taken from your card can be stopped by telling your bank, who must do it and cannot send you back to the company first.
- Honestly — how was that?
Try this
Read down last month’s bank or card statement and put any name you do not recognize into a search on its own. Most people find at least one thing they had entirely forgotten they were paying for, and the average is nearer three.
Practice: The subscription that is going up. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.