In the new digital consumer world, buying something once is no longer an option. Most apps and service providers have embraced the greedy ‘subscription’ model. And if that weren’t enough they have taken their game to the next level of ‘auto renewals’ of subscriptions.

The audacity of these companies is at the level where they choose on your behalf and leave you no choice.

Your card details are forcibly stored on their servers (despite the multiple incidents of data theft). And that makes it easy for them to renew the subscriptions, without giving the customer a chance to think.

The standard line “you can cancel anytime” is nothing but a smoke screen. People often think that they will cancel it before the renewal kicks in but more often than not forget it. The companies know and prey upon this human fallibility

If this can’t be termed as daylight theft, at the very least it should be termed unethical. A big percentage of users don’t actually use the services that they pay for beyond a month or two. But this auto-charging subscription fee is an even bigger loss for those. And some subscribers don’t even realize it until late.

In this day and age there are multiple apps that one uses and subscribes to. And over a period of time it’s difficult to keep track of all the services and subscriptions. As mentioned before half of the time people are not even using the services beyond the initial few weeks but they get charged periodically.

Earlier the customer had to renew the subscription manually at which time he can assess its usage and benefits and then decide whether to renew it or not. This auto-renewal is boxing the people and choosing on their behalf.

Some companies are sending hushed emails that they are going to charge the renewal fees, too close to the renewal so that if a person is busy and doesn’t check his emails for a few days his account is already charged. Some are unscrupulous so as not to even send reminder emails.

Notifications or not, it makes no sense for the companies to auto-charge for subscriptions. At the very least they should offer a choice to people to choose not to auto renew the subscriptions.

If the insurance companies can offer the choice for manual renewal why do these unimportant apps can’t provide the same choice to their customer?