VOL. I · NO. 8565THURSDAY, AUGUST 13, 2026
The Daily Buffoon
TARIFFS ✒ EDITORIAL ABSURDITY: 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡

Subscription traps: I got an £89 refund – how to cancel and avoid unwanted charges

Filed 1w ago · Via BBC · The Buffoon Desk
THIS STORY IS SCORED
Bass Walker
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Three people describe getting trapped in subscription payments after free trials quietly converted into charges. Sophie Branscombe, 23, was charged £89.99 by a photo editor app after a free trial ended with no reminder; she couldn't get a refund from the company but got one via Apple's 'report a problem' feature. Hussein Zaaiter, 21, says a software trial charged him repeatedly, £16 then £32, attempting seven charges total, before he froze his card and turned to his bank.

Rosalinda Kwafo-Akoto, 22, signed up for a one-week TV trial, tried to cancel before it converted to £9.99 a month, couldn't find the subscription in her account, and was later charged anyway. She spent an hour and a half on hold with customer service before getting it canceled and refunded. The piece runs alongside coverage of a crackdown on subscription traps announced by the government.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
None of this required an investigation to uncover, just three people describing the same maze everyone already knows by heart. The companies involved apparently make cancellation difficult enough that 'set a reminder on your phone' counts as actionable consumer advice. If a crackdown is coming, the bar it needs to clear is not high.
Source: Read the original at BBC → Scored: Bass Walker · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0
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