The scourge of subscription creep
A full 66 per cent of Canadians admit to having paid for a subscription they’d forgotten they had.
Online subscriptions are convenient, but those small payments add up. A regular review can help keep spending in check.
It’s called subscription creep — the gradual accumulation of recurring monthly fees for services you forget to use or cancel — and it’s costing many Canadians hundreds of dollars every year.
According to a 2024 survey on recurring subscriptions in Canada, done by Hardbacon, a personal finance application, the average Canadian has eight recurring subscriptions — twice the number they think they have.
The survey also revealed that more than 70 per cent of Canadians admit they intended to unsubscribe to a service after taking advantage of a free trial period or a promotional price, but forgot to do so in time. And no less than 66 per cent of Canadians admit to having paid for a subscription they had forgotten they had.
Jessica Moorhouse, a certified financial counsellor and author of the national bestseller Everything but Money: The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom, isn’t surprised by the survey’s results. She’s been tracking subscription creep for years and has noticed what most would consider an alarming trend.
“I think the big issue is we don’t even really notice how much we’re spending,” she told Sage in a recent interview, noting how our ever-increasing high-speed lifestyle and convenience-oriented society is driving a decline in attention spans. “We tap and barely register the amount that’s on the check-out screen.
“We’re not even conscious of it because we didn’t have to dig into our wallet, we don’t have to look for bills or calculate change. There’s no thinking involved,” she says.
To ensure you’re not laying out hundreds of extra dollars on services and things you don’t need, Moorhouse recommended a personal financial audit to make sure you know what you’re paying for and when you pay it.
According to the Hardbacon survey, 47 per cent of Canadians use credit cards to pay for these subscriptions while 27 per cent use debit cards and 11 per cent use PayPal. Still others use prepaid cards.
Moorhouse recommends reviewing credit card and account statements every month, paying particular attention to charges from merchants that are not instantly recognizable.
“Not all subscriptions are monthly,” Moorhouse said. “Some are annual or quarterly and wouldn’t appear on every month’s statement.
“If you’re not checking every month, you risk missing it,” she said.
According to the Better Business Bureau (BBB), subscription creep and predatory subscription traps are major focus areas for consumer protection in Canada.
The BBB and the Competition Bureau Canada warn consumers about how difficult some companies make it to opt out, recording tens of thousands of complaints regarding hidden auto-renewals and complex cancellation processes.
The most common subscription traps that have been identified by the BBB are deceptive “free trials,” the cancellation maze and fake renewal scams.
Deceptive “free” trials are those in which companies offer a free sample or trial, but require a credit card to complete the transaction. Hidden in the fine print is a clause that automatically rolls you into an expensive monthly subscription if you don’t cancel within a few days. The cancellation maze is seen when businesses intentionally force you to call a specific phone number, wait on hold or go through multiple digital confirmation screens just to cancel.
In fake renewal scams, scammers send phishing emails or texts pretending to be well-known brands claiming your subscription has successfully auto-renewed for hundreds of dollars. According to the BBB, companies do this to panic you into calling a fake helpline and giving up your financial information.
Like Moorhouse, the BBB recommends consumers audit their bank and credit card statements. They also recommend folks look very closely at the checkout page when buying items or signing up for software online to ensure you haven’t agreed to a recurring monthly delivery or premium membership.
Additionally, the BBB recommends consumers add an alert to their calendar two days before the trial expires so they have time to cancel.
If consumers have challenges trying to cancel a subscription or have been signed up without explicit consent, they can always opt to go through official channels by filing a complaint with the BBB, which will contact the business and mediate a response, usually within 30 days.
You can also submit a report to the Competition Bureau Canada or the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre if you think the billing was fraudulent or misleading.
Finally, you can contact your credit card provider directly if the charge was billed to a credit card. Explain that the merchant is charging you without authorization or making it impossible to cancel and ask to initiate a dispute on the charges.
Wayne Doyle is a Barrie, Ont.-based writer who has recently righted his subscription creep thanks to this assignment.
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