Watch on YouTube
Premieres 8 November 2026 at 6pm UK time
Who's Tricking You? · Episode 8
Why does a free trial need your card details?
If a free trial is really free, why does it want your card details?
The power of the default, the organ-donor study that shows it, the roughly £600 million a year the UK government says we spend on subscriptions rolled over from trials, and the new rules due in 2027.
Watch on YouTube Follow on TikTok
Share this story
What the fox said
If a free trial is really free, why does it want your card details?
Because the trial isn't what they're selling. Your forgetting is.
You sign up for nothing. You hand over your card. And a clock starts ticking.
When the trial ends, you needn't do a thing. Doing nothing means you pay.
Psychologists call it the power of the default. What happens if we do nothing, we mostly let happen.
In one famous study, far fewer people were signed up as organ donors in countries where you opt in, than where you opt out.
Same choice. The difference was which box came already ticked.
The British government estimated we spend about six hundred million pounds a year on subscriptions rolled over from trials.
Part of around one point six billion pounds a year on unwanted subscriptions.
New UK rules, due in 2027, are meant to bring reminders before a trial becomes a bill, and an easy way out.
Until then, set a reminder the day you sign up.
Anything that asks for your card isn't entirely free. It's a bet that you'll forget. Keep your nose to the wind.
Sources
- Countries where people are organ donors unless they opt out have far higher consent rates (Austria about 99.98%) than neighbours where people must opt in (Germany about 12%) (Johnson & Goldstein, 'Do Defaults Save Lives?', Science, 2003).
- UK consumers spend about £1.6 billion a year on subscriptions they don't want, of which about £602 million a year comes from subscriptions that rolled over from free or reduced-price trials (UK government subscription traps impact assessment, 2023; gov.uk, November 2024).
- New subscription rules under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, including reminders before a trial ends and an easy way to cancel, are due to take effect in 2027, reported as January 2027 (gov.uk consultation outcome, April 2026; Lewis Silkin, September 2026).
Spotted a mistake? Tell us in the YouTube comments and we'll correct it.