Also a common practice for free trials. Adobe does that if I'm not mistaken.
Love seeing companies worth tens or hundreds of billions acting like they couldn't spare a cent from underhanded shit like that. Scrooge McDuck type of behavior, except he also had some redeeming qualities.
With free trials, I can understand revoking the benefits once the subscription has been canceled. While I can understand the consumer's perspective of not wanting to be billed for future months (say if they forgot to cancel), free trials are intended to attract future customers. If a person signals that they are not going to be a future customer, why should the business offer the free service?
Sorry, but they set their signaling mechanisms so that that signal is worthless. How many people who don't cancel want to signal they are going to be a future customer, as opposed to it being an accident? How many people who do cancel do it to signal they don't want to be a customer, and not because they don't want to be automatically billed? I believe the answer for both is "not many".
I think the companies do it because it benefits them, and because they can.
Are they signaling that they're not going to be a future customer? Or are they just signaling that they want to take positive action if they make the decision to subscribe?
And what about signaling in the other direction? Canceling the trial immediately signals that they have no confidence in the product itself to sell you on it, that the company itself believes that if you use their product for another few days, you still won't want to give them any money for it. If the company has so little confidence in their own product then why would I pay for it?
Apple TV free trials due to new hardware (e.g. new iPhone) is like this too, I just set a reminder on my phone and cancel it one day before they’ll start billing me. The UI for cancelling is also painless.
Uber is ahead of you. You need to cancel two days prior, or something on that note (I don't remember the exact timing).
Somewhat tangential, but I am reminded of a quote about an adjacent problem with analogous flavor from the pen of the venerable G. K. Chesterton...
'It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money. A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, “Give me money.” Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. “Budge’s Boots are the Best” simply means “Give me money”; “Use Seraphic Soap” simply means “Give me money.” It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.'
A nice summary, he would get quite a shock from seeing how advertisement business ended up. I wonder what addendum would he have to the oft-repeated claims of "we're genuinely helping people meet their needs", too.
Reminds me of an anecdote from my middle class town:
Local bricks and mortar small business that closed down and the wife posted a completely tone deaf message on their business Facebook:
"It is a horrible shame that our long sought out dream had to die because the local "community" was not willing to support it."
I missed the part where "community" meant we are obligated to expend our own resources for your profit.
Doubly galling was the fact that there was generally "his n hers" G Wagons parked out front of their business. Doing better than 95% of the community and still pissed that the community wasn't giving them more.