Top ten ways to cancel a subscription

By: Hana Hoffman, Peak Associate

Everything follows a subscription model nowadays. Check your credit card statement; you’re probably paying for something you forgot to cancel after the free trial! I suspect this is what these greedy companies want; us unknowingly giving them money every month. But this stops here! Here’s how to cancel subscriptions no matter how sneaky the fine print is (looking at you, Miss Fenty).

1. Empty out your bank account so there’s nothing to take. Withdraw all your money and destroy their hopes of getting income every time someone subscribes and enters their debit card information. Can’t scam me, hehe.
2. Reverse the system. Think of this tip as transforming a fan into a vacuum cleaner. All you have to do is hack into their website, do some code maneuvering, then publish your changes. After that, when you subscribe with your card information, it should send YOU the monthly payment instead of taking it from you.
3. Make a deal with the owner. Contact the organization directly and come up with a formal agreement. Tell them you’ll only sign up for the free trial if they agree to give you their car if your card isn’t automatically unsubscribed by the end of the free trial. Seriously, marketers will do absolutely anything to get people to subscribe.
4. Become your own lawyer. Go to law school so you can represent yourself in court. Tell the judge your story of how emotionally damaging it was to have been lied to, thinking you would spend $0 when really you were receiving nightmare emails titled “Payment Successful.” The only thing that can repay your stress while trying to cancel this subscription is $2,000,000, an all-inclusive vacation to Bora Bora, and a $5,000 Starbucks gift card for all the coffees you bought during your years at law school. 
5. Use someone else’s credit card because you come first. Sign up with a random credit card number. When the actual owner of that numbered card realizes their card is subscribed, they will do the work and cancel the subscription for you. So you can just sit back, relax, and enjoy the free trial.
6. Become their employee. Quickly apply to work at the company offering the subscription so that once you get hired, they’ll automatically cancel your subscription and let you have it for free. Choose your subscriptions wisely because three subscriptions mean three jobs. But hey! No pain, no gain!
7. Crash the site as fast as an airplane! Overwhelm the website by randomly spam-clicking every button until it just can’t take it anymore. Make the website stop working, forcing them to shut down their subscription until their online service gets fixed. This is going real badass mode.
8. Cause a big “natural” disaster that wipes out all internet data so all subscriptions in the world become nonexistent. Some scientifically proven and well-tested ways to do this: Plug in 100 fans all in one place at full blast and start a tornado, write a note to some nearby aliens asking them to destroy the internet, or put the letter in a balloon filled with helium and send it away to outer space.
9. Work on self-improvement. Write a thousand-word essay to yourself explaining why you should make better decisions from now on. This means you shouldn’t subscribe to a free trial if you know you’ll forget to cancel the subscription before it charges your card. At least you’ll get a learning lesson out of accidentally falling into this trap.
10. Bribe the company. Request a full refund for the processed order you didn’t want after your free trial expired. Bribe them with Melona bars. I’m sure they can’t resist.

BONUS: Pretend to be a celebrity. Come on, will they really not offer a famous person complimentary membership? Dress up as a celebrity you look similar to, wear sunglasses, get a fake ID made, and reach out to the company to negotiate. They’ll probably even offer to pay you to be in their advertisements.