How to Track and Cancel Recurring Payments You Don’t Need or Use

A lot of times I paid for online services I no longer wanted and couldn’t get a refund after payment. Services like Amazon Prime Video, hosting accounts, domains, forgot to cancel a free trial I had for who knows what.

If you don’t want to pay for recurring services, memberships or other online things you don’t use or forgot you are subscribed to, usually with yearly renewals follow these simple steps.

1. Email

Use a single email to sign up for services, this way you get all the receipts in a single place, you can create a folder and filters in your email and filter the invoices or subscriptions there. Cancel what you don’t use often, most of the time you can renew at the same price or better.

2. Paypal

Recurring subscriptions in Paypal show as preapprove payments. You can have a look every now and then if there is something you no longer want to pay, use this link that shows you how to cancel or read bellow.

Instructions from Paypal’s website:

1. Click Settings (the gear icon) on the top right corner of the page.
2. Click Payments.
3. Click Manage pre-approved payments under “Pre-approved payments.”
4. Select the merchant whose agreement you want to cancel, and click Cancel.
5. Click Cancel Profile to confirm your request.

If you don’t have a PayPal account, you should contact the merchant directly to cancel the agreement. If you can’t contact the merchant, you should contact PayPal Customer Service by phone. Click Call customer support for our Customer Service phone number.

A subscription can be cancelled up until the day before the next scheduled payment in order for you not to be charged. Please note that after cancelling a payment, subscription or automatic billing agreement, you are still required to pay the merchant for the goods or services you received.

3. Card

Use only one card for payments, it’s easier to trace where are you spending your money,  (try to use a debit card if possible) with a credit card in case of online fraud you are protected. And with that card every year renew it by declaring it lost at the bank.

Why do that?

• Because the bank will renew it with a new card and not an updated card with just a new expiration date and cvc. There are merchants (like Amazon) where you don’t need to update the card when a new one is issued when the old one expires. They are connected to the banks and directly to your account and they are able to update their systems automatically and charge your account continuously.
• Another reason is if that if one of the shops you paid are hacked and the card numbers are leaked you will not lose money due to credit card fraud.

Hope these tips help and save you some headaches and money.