
DoNotPay's new service auto-cancels free trials - Reedx
https://www.wired.com/story/free-trial-card/
======
lawnchair_larry
This seems to do a lot more than canceling trials, and I really like the idea.

Unfortunately, you can't even get into the app without providing your phone
number and then entering your banking information.

Nope, not happening.

It's not that I don't trust the kid making this app. I mean, I _shouldn 't_
trust him, but that's not even the issue. He is using a personal developer
account, doesn't seem to have a proper company, is involving third parties for
app functionality (including the banking info).

Even with the best of intentions, he's likely to get hacked or bought out, or
his third party SDKs are, and there's no way to protect yourself from that.

You would have to be seriously foolish to type your bank username and password
into this thing.

Maybe someone can make a virtual bank app, so you can sign up for virtual
credit card apps...

~~~
Sylamore
privacy.com allows you to do this, you can generate virtual credit cards that
are one use only, one source only, with spending limits, etc. The only gripe I
have is that it's linked to your checking account and not your actual credit
card.

~~~
timwis
Love privacy.com, but I can't seem to use it outside the US :(

~~~
r00fus
This is likely due to anti-money-laundering / know-your-client (AML-KYC) US
regulations (similar in many other countries).

~~~
timwis
Can you elaborate? I'm no longer US based, so it's not about me travelling.

------
koolba
> The Free Trial Card is a virtual credit card you can use to sign up for free
> trials of any service anonymously, instead of using your real credit card.
> When the free trial period ends, the card automatically declines to be
> charged, thus ending your free trial. You don’t have to remember to cancel
> anything.

That’s not how it works. Just because they can’t bill your card does not mean
you’re not on the hook. Anybody that’s forgotten about a gym membership on a
expired card knows this first hand. Only reason they won’t go after you is
that the LTV and PR isn’t worth it. If it is, they will.

> As he sees it, companies that require you to put in a credit card in order
> to sign up for a free trial are engaging in deceptive practices.

There’s nothing deceptive about it if the price is disclosed. Far from it. On
the sell side it also has the advantage of filtering out people who cannot or
would not pay for the service early on.

~~~
Waterluvian
I believe in Quebec it's illegal to automatically turn a free trial into a
subscription via credit card. I'd love to see that law proliferate elsewhere.

~~~
paulgb
How do companies typically implement this? Do they not offer free trials to
Quebec residents, or charge for the trial, or offer a free trial that
automatically ends?

~~~
testvox
They just don't call it a "free one month trial". Instead they say "sign up
and get an extra month free". Which is basically what the "free trial" is if
you fail to cancel it.

~~~
Waterluvian
Which I think is more than a moot point. It's more honest, and it opens up a
category for companies who genuinely want to offer a "one month free trial"
that doesn't require a credit card and auto subscription.

------
ikeboy
>When DoNotPay’s system got that ping, an algorithm the team spent six months
building looked at the code request to see if the purchase was for a free
trial. Determining that it was, the system approved my transaction. When I
tried to use it to buy a $48 pair of Thinx period-proof underwear on that
company’s website, it was declined. You can't use this card to make real
purchases.

if (chargeamount>0){ decline()}

~~~
rahimnathwani
I've seen a charge amount of 0.01 for a free trial. I'm pretty sure it was
just a pre-auth, i.e. they didn't follow up and actually complete the charge.

~~~
iancarroll
This is presumably an actually hard problem despite the comments. A pre-auth
allows the acquiring merchant to capture that authorization and charge you.
Sometimes these can be for $1 or more, depending on how aggressive the service
is. Pre-authorizations are subtracted from your available credit/balance.

If the card approves the pre-auth, they are (presumably, AFAIK) on the hook
for that $1 if the merchant captures the pre-auth. If many (unpaying?) users
start charging you $1...

~~~
londons_explore
I'd guess they allow small pre-auths (up to $3 say), and then keep a blacklist
of merchants who actually capture the charge.

Merchants on the blacklist have all charges denied.

Any 'free trial' who actually captures a dollar from their clients will cause
lots of chargebacks from their customers, so would go out of business
quickly... (A chargeback costs a business ~$15 in fees)

------
buckminster
If you sign up for a recurring payment with a company then the company can
pursue you for the payment even if the credit card company declines it. This
doesn't usually happen though because it's not worth the expense.

In this scheme it is DoNotPay accepting the liability (and declining the
payment). It might then become economic for a big free trial operator to sue
DoNotPay for all the declined payments.

But I'm not a lawyer. Good luck to them anyway.

~~~
duskwuff
This is particularly true of gyms, for some reason. In many cases, gym
membership agreements have terms requiring the customer to cancel in person,
too.

~~~
m463
A gym I joined years ago required a certified letter sent to their
headquarters.

I think it's a public service to tell young people how gyms work. Basically
it's high pressure sales ("this discount membership offer only good for
today!") plus hard to cancel memberships.

Gyms work on a model of human nature + oversubscription.

Human nature means that a huge % of people join the gym, go two weeks, and
_never_ return. Then it's hard to cancel, so the same people that don't bother
coming in, don't bother figuring out the membership cancellation gauntlet.

~~~
d4rti
My gym is not like this at all. It's owned and run by a real person.

They charge a day fee or a monthly fee or you can pay for 3, 6 or 12 months.

I've never given then any credit card or bank details as I pay cash, but I
believe they do offer direct debit.

~~~
londons_explore
All the big chains use these high pressure techniques. That's why your gym is
still a small business and they have hundreds of locations...

~~~
Robadob
In the UK, 'TheGymGroup' literally tells you to cancel membership by ending
your direct debit. They're not all that predatory.

------
jimbobimbo
This is the service that lets you create a virtual credit card with a specific
limit. It doesn't "auto-cancel" \- the service that attempts to charge, simply
can't make the charge beyond the limit.

Check if your bank offers this kind of service. Mine does, and it's very
convenient!

~~~
remus
According to the article it can actually cancel the service for you

> If you want, the app will also send an actual legal notice of cancelation to
> the service.

------
dvcrn
> It's available now through the app DoNotPay, created by 22-year-old
> wunderkind coder and entrepreneur Joshua Browder.

Hmm this needs explanation. Why's he a wunderkind? What did he do? I googled
him and found his wikipedia explaining that he created DoNotPay. Is that
enough to justify a wikipedia entry or is it because of the forbes 30 under 30
thing? Can I create a wikipedia page about myself for the apps I created?

~~~
zenexer
You can, and it probably won’t get deleted immediately. However, if even a
novice Wikipedia editor comes long and finds is suspect, there will likely be
a deletion request. The process for deletion varies; depending on the path
taken, you might have a chance to argue against it, or it might just be
deleted.

------
jv22222
I've noticed that when I use Privacy.com on a some SaaS sites, the site
already declines the signup saying something like "we don't accept temporary
cards".

I can't remember which right now, but I know I've seen the error message a few
times.

~~~
zrail
Privacy.com issues you a card that is coded as a prepaid debit card. Most
payment providers expose this to merchants, which means that if they choose to
decline prepaid debit cards for other reasons you'll get caught in the mix.

~~~
dvtrn
What's the reasoning behind rejecting prepaid debit cards, if there are
sufficient funds available?

~~~
s09dfhks
Maybe the cards are being loaded with illicitly acquired funds

~~~
dvtrn
That's a valid risk, but then why single out prepaid cards for this given the
rampancy of credit card fraud and theft?

Edit:

An interesting answer elsewhere in the thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20465459](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20465459)

------
rexer
One of my credit cards (Citi) allows creating virtual credit card numbers.
I've been hesitant to use them in this way, though, because I'm concerned it
could affect my credit.

Does anyone know if legally you're on the hook for the paying the service
provider? As technically they did provide the service, and you're "refusing"
to pay for it. Presumably, if so, they could send the bill to collections and
put a black mark on your credit.

~~~
waylandsmithers
If it's the cable company- definitely. They will eventually send your bill to
a debt collector.

I think XYZ Startup won't do that because they would rather let it go for now
in hopes that you'll become a paying customer again.

------
tempsy
I'm a fan of [https://privacy.com/](https://privacy.com/) and use it for most
subscriptions and any site I don't intend to buy from more than once -
basically unlimited virtual debit cards you can set a limit for and make
recurring or single use (i.e. burner).

For subscriptions I don't intend to use past the free trial, I just enter a
low limit (e.g. $1) and set as a burner card.

~~~
StavrosK
I'm a huge fan of it as well, but I use it for a slightly separate purpose: It
makes fraud impossible by tying each card to one merchant. If someone steals
the card, it's completely useless to them (unless they use it with the stolen
merchant, which thieves don't usually do).

~~~
bradknowles
Sadly, Privacy.com makes their transaction information opaque. All the charges
show up in your account as being from Privacy.com, and you can no longer see
what charge is for what product or service or merchant, etc....

They need to give people a way to make that information easily exportable, so
that I can combine this with other information from my credit cards, debit
cards, and all other financial transactions.

~~~
techsupporter
I see them. Two possibilities?

One, your bank doesn't show the full ACH details. This is what it looks like
for me at my credit union: ACH Debit PINBOARD - PRIVACYCOM - 7/12/2019 - $25

Two, maybe you enabled the "private payments" setting on your account, which
omits the merchant data?

------
bxio
Sweet service. When will they start charging a subscription to cancel your
other subscriptions?

~~~
wolco
It costs 3 dollars per month.

~~~
wetpaws
Can you auto-cancel this subscription?

~~~
Dylan16807
There's no free trial, so auto-cancelling would mean you cancel on day zero.
So...yes? Closing the signup form is equivalent to an auto-cancel for this
service, so do that.

------
crispinb
I'm by no means an outstandingly organised person (ask my ex-partner), yet I
find it pitifully easy to pop a date in my calendar reminding me to cancel a
trial, and then do it.

Is there really money to be made building services to automate things that
don't remotely need automating? Maybe I should jump on it.

~~~
rdtwo
It’s a real pain with some services, Zipcar and XM radio require you to cancel
over the phone and it could take a while

~~~
londons_explore
Call all the companies at once on a big conference call.

Then you can say "Hi Bob from Zipcar, Fred from XM radio, and Kate from
FitGym, I'd like to cancel all your services."

If one puts you on hold, you talk over the hold music to speak to the other
ones on the call.

Gets the job done much quicker typically.

~~~
gourou
What if an automated voice asks you to spell out your username/ID?

~~~
londons_explore
You just tell the other people on the line to be quiet for a moment while you
spell it out.

Same for "press 1 for ..." type menus.

Sometimes the automated system says embarrassing things like "The balance of
your account is..."

------
adrr
The guy won't provide the bank issuing the card but if you have the first
digits of the card number you can just go to any BIN lookup website and find
the issuing bank. Its not something you can keep a secret since it used to
route the transaction on the card network.

------
arkades
So what’s the business model here?

Last time I tried something similar (unroll.me), I paid in privacy.

~~~
Nightshaxx
It's says in the article. 3$ per/mo

------
waylandsmithers
So if services like this become popular enough, will services start allowing
customers to do a free trial without entering their credit card number?

~~~
s09dfhks
No because there's still the vast majority that doesn't know services like
this exist and will still cough up their actual card number to watch
Netflix/HBO/whatever because "it's convenient"

------
TimTheTinker
I had never heard of DoNotPay. Sounds like a really helpful and useful service
-- there's a lot of things it does (check out the app).

I lived below the poverty line in college (didn't have loan/grant money;
instead I worked 2 days/wk to pay for tuition, rent, gas, and food). The kinds
of services they offer would have been so helpful to me back then.

------
lensi
Here is what I do, which doesn't require an app: Cancel it right away. All
services I have done this with still give you the full trial period.

------
jmull
I actually don't want to automatically cancel free trials. I wouldn't sign up
for one if there wasn't a reasonable chance I'd be interested in keeping the
service.

Anyway, I find this easy and effective (free too, if you already own a phone):

When I sign up, I tell my phone to remind me to review on such-and-such a date
(or "in 29 days" or whatever).

------
Bendingo
> It's available now through the app DoNotPay, created by 22-year-old
> wunderkind coder and entrepreneur Joshua Browder.

This "wunderkind coder and entrepreneur" is son of Bill Browder, wanted in
Russia for tax fraud [0].

I realise that most HN readers (and the entire western mainstream media) are
sympathetic to Browder senior, no doubt due to his personal war with Putin.

Indeed it's difficult to find any detailed criticism of Browder, however if
you are interested, here are a few [1], [2].

The docco "The Magnitsky Act. Behind the Scenes" is especially interesting.
During it's creation, the film-maker Andrey Nekrasov went from being anti-
Putin and believing Browder, to being threatened with libel suits by Browder.

[0] [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-browder/russia-
ask...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-browder/russia-asks-
interpol-to-arrest-kremlin-critic-bill-browder-again-letter-idUSKCN1RL0PY)

[1]
[https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/?s=browder](https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/?s=browder)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnitsky_Act_%E2%80%93_Be...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magnitsky_Act_%E2%80%93_Behind_the_Scenes)

------
ars
You can just get a
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_payment_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_payment_number)
and do this yourself without the fee.

~~~
adrr
Or you could just use a prepaid debit card that is drained.

~~~
ars
It's not just about blocking transactions, with ShopSafe you can set a dollar
limit per merchant, you can also do monthly recurring transactions of a
particular amount, and stop them when you want, by closing the number.

So you can actually pay for a while, then block them.

You can set custom expiration dates, which is nice if you have a future
transaction, but want to make sure they don't bill after that.

Even better each merchant gets a different CC number, so you have a much lower
chance of your number being stolen.

I'll typically make a 1 year card with a high limit for each online merchant.
If it's a one off, I'll make a 1 month card with a dollar limit of exactly the
transaction amount.

------
wolco
"they were in Canada, a place where HBO inexplicably doesn’t exist"

It does exist. For a long time under hbo Canada now under the crave brand.

------
homero
PSD2 (Payment Services Directive 2) is the new regulation in the EU that
requires rebilling consent.

------
DevKoala
How do you pay DoNotPay? What is their business model?

------
dfps
Is this a positive service?

It sounds like adblock. Sounds great until you consider youre defunding things
you want to exist (for free)...

------
rolltiide
Isnt this what the pre-authorization is to prevent?

Basically ensures it CAN charge the card but then doesnt

~~~
spiznnx
No.

Pre-authorization times out after 5 days. The merchant does pre-authoriziation
first for a small amount (like one dollar) just to make sure the payment is
actually valid, which disappears after 5 days with no capture. It's just a
card validation method, it doesn't reserve any funds (besides the single
dollar). Consumers would be rightly upset if starting a free trial with no
obligation immediately reduced their available funds by a significant amount.
This is unrelated to the later charge when the trial ends, which is usually
more than 5 days later, and will be a distinct charge for the full amount.

There isn't anything unethical about automatically declining purchases. It's
not any different, cost-wise, from manually cancelling the trial. The merchant
could however continue to provide the service, claiming that you never really
cancelled it, then consider you indebted for the declined charges, but that
wouldn't go over very well.

~~~
londons_explore
Some companies pre-auth for a significant amount (eg. 3 months service), and
then cancel the pre-auth immediately.

They do that on the basis that if you don't have funds to cover 3 months
service, they probably don't want you as a customer. Any service with upfront
costs (eg. Sending out hardware) is likely to do this.

------
barli
I'm putting a reminder into my iPhone and cancel manually

