Bust #10: The 'Free Trial' That Renewed Itself

🎬 Bust #10 · The Commercial As You See It

A Friendly Mouse, A Free Month, And A Door That Swings One Way

Today's bust does not shout. It smiles. A cheerful little mouse invites your child, aged two to eight, into a bright academy of reading and math games. The pitch to parents is warm and simple: try a 30-day free trial, grab a “Special Offer”, and relax — because signing up comes with “Easy Cancellation.”

It is a lovely front door. Wide open, well lit, one friendly click wide. What the Federal Trade Commission later examined was the rest of the house: what happened when the trial ended, what happened when the first paid term ended, and how that “easy” exit actually worked for the parents who went looking for it between 2015 and 2018.

To be fair from the very start: a free trial that converts to a paid subscription is not, by itself, a trick. Plenty of honest services work exactly that way — when the renewal, the price, the deadline, and the exit are told to you clearly, before your card is charged. The FTC's case was never “trials are bad.” The case, in the agency's own words, was that this trial's most important sentences were not clearly told at all, and its promised easy exit was anything but. Today we slow those sentences waaay down, using the FTC's September 2, 2020 press release as our script.

🔍 The Fine Print, Slowed Waaay Down

What “Free Trial” And “Easy Cancellation” Actually Said, At Walking Pace

• “Special Offer — 12 months for $59.95.” Slowed down: according to the FTC's complaint, that was the advertised price — and the sentence that did not travel with it was that the plan would automatically renew indefinitely when the 12 months ended. Parents who thought they had bought one year, the FTC says, kept incurring additional charges. A one-time price with a forever renewal attached is not a one-time price. It is a subscription wearing a one-time price's hat.
• “Start your 30-day free trial — extend for $39.95 for 12 months, or $29.95 for 6 months.” Those extension prices are the FTC's numbers, straight from its press release. And here again, the agency alleges, the automatic part went unsaid: when the initial period ended, consumers would be charged automatically and indefinitely — not once, but renewing — and that was not adequately disclosed. “Free” described the first 30 days accurately. It said nothing about day 31, which is the day the meter started.
• “Easy Cancellation — cancel any time.” This is the line the whole bust hangs on, because it was a promise made at enrollment. The FTC alleges the reality ran the other way: parents who tried to cancel by calling, emailing, or submitting a customer support form were instead required to negotiate a lengthy and confusing process that often prevented many of them from completing their cancellations at all. Easy to enter, lengthy to leave — the revolving door in our cover picture is not our invention. It is the FTC's description, drawn as a cartoon.
• “I cancelled, so the charges stopped.” Not always, the FTC alleges. In some cases, even consumers who completed the full cancellation process later discovered recurring charges for services they thought they had cancelled. And the company's own records, the FTC says, show that between 2015 and 2018, hundreds of thousands of consumers who visited the cancellation path nevertheless remained subscribed.
• The bottom line the FTC put on it. Tens of thousands of people, the agency says, were renewed and charged for memberships without proper consent, and the company unfairly billed users without their authorization. The director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection summed the pattern up in one sentence: the company didn't clearly tell parents their subscriptions would renew automatically, and then made it very difficult for them to cancel.

Every number and quotation in this section comes from the FTC's own press release about its own case — read at normal speed, which is all this blog ever does.

🧠 What The Song Doesn't Spell Out

The Three Sentences Every “Free Trial” Owes You Up Front

1. “Free” is a time period, not a price. In a trial offer, the word “free” answers exactly one question — what the first days cost — and quietly leaves three others unasked: What will I be charged when the trial ends? How often will that charge repeat? And by what exact deadline must I act to stop it? The settlement the FTC reached answers those questions by requiring them to be disclosed: what you must do to cancel, the total amount you will be charged if you do not act, and the deadlines for cancelling to avoid unwanted charges. If a trial ad cannot state those three things in the same cheerful voice it uses for “free,” the ad is telling you the fun half of the contract.

2. Consent is a moment, not a mood. The settlement requires the company to explain key terms clearly before collecting a consumer's billing information, and to obtain the consumer's informed consent before enrolling them in any automatic billing program. Slowed down, that is a profound little idea: handing over a card number to start something free is not the same act as agreeing to be charged forever. The law, as this settlement applies it, treats those as two different yeses — and requires both.

3. “Easy” is a testable claim. “Easy cancellation” sounds like a vibe. The FTC treated it as a measurement — and measured a lengthy, confusing process that left hundreds of thousands of visitors to the cancellation path still subscribed. The settlement therefore requires simple cancellation mechanisms, and bars misrepresenting a plan as “free,” “trial,” “sample,” or “no obligation” when a consumer must take action to avoid future charges. When a company promises you an easy exit, the honest question is not “do they sound sincere?” It is “how many steps, screens, and save-offers stand between me and the door?”

4. And fairness, in the other direction: read the current terms, because they changed. This bust is about marketing and billing practices the FTC challenged for 2015 to 2018, settled in 2020 for a $10 million judgment plus new rules for how the company must disclose, get consent, and let people cancel. The company's current published terms and help pages now state the mechanics out loud — that a subscription renews automatically, that the Premium trial converts to a renewing monthly plan (its help page lists $14.99 a month) unless you cancel before the trial ends, and how to cancel before a renewal date. That is what a settlement doing its job looks like, and it is also your reminder that the fine print worth reading is always the one in front of you today, on any service — not the one from a headline, including ours.

⚖️ The Busters Verdict

Verdict: A Sweet Trial, With The Contract Whispered After

Is a free trial that renews a scam, slowed down? The honest answer is: not when the renewal, the amount, the deadline, and a genuinely simple exit are disclosed before you are charged — and that “when” is the entire bust. In the FTC's telling, this trial's ads sold the welcome mat and skipped the lease: a $59.95 “special offer” that renewed indefinitely, trial extensions that charged automatically, and an “easy cancellation” that hundreds of thousands of people walked into and somehow never walked out of. The $10 million settlement did not ban trials. It ordered the missing sentences back into the ad — disclosure before billing, informed consent before enrollment, and a cancellation that is actually simple.

So here is your Commercial Busters homework — the questions worth asking of any free-trial offer before you type a card number, and worth taking to a qualified professional if a billing dispute ever needs one, because they can see your situation and we cannot:

• “What exactly happens on the day this trial ends — what amount is charged, and how often does it repeat?”
• “What is the exact deadline, date and time, by which I must cancel to avoid the first charge?”
• “Show me the exit before I enter: how many steps is cancellation, in the same place I signed up, and will I get a confirmation I can keep?”
• “If I choose a discounted longer plan during the trial, am I billed immediately — and does the trial still run first?”
• “Where, in writing, did I give informed consent to automatic billing — separate from simply starting the free part?”

Sources you can check yourself: Federal Trade Commission, press release “Children's Online Learning Program ABCmouse to Pay $10 Million to Settle FTC Charges of Illegal Marketing and Billing Practices” (September 2, 2020) — the $59.95 special offer, the $39.95 and $29.95 trial-extension prices, the undisclosed indefinite renewals, the “Easy Cancellation” allegation and the lengthy cancellation process, the charges found after cancellation, the hundreds of thousands who remained subscribed, and the settlement's disclosure, informed-consent, and simple-cancellation requirements: ftc.gov — ABCmouse settlement press release. Age of Learning, ABCmouse Terms and Conditions (current version) — the current published terms stating that subscriptions renew automatically and how to cancel before a renewal date: ageoflearning.com — ABCmouse terms. ABCmouse Help Center, “Using the Free Trial Offer for ABCmouse Premium” — the current help page stating the trial converts to a renewing monthly plan at $14.99 a month unless cancelled before the trial ends: support.abcmouse.com — free trial help page.

Final reminder: This post is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not medical, financial, legal, insurance, or any other professional advice, and it should not be used to make any kind of decision. Talk to a qualified professional about your own situation. Please do not contact us about the products, drugs, policies, or services covered here — we do not provide advice on any of them.