The money goes out, the message arrives, and only then do you remember a subscription you forgot months ago. The problem is usually not the amount — it is that cancelling is not done inside the app, and that is what wastes the time.
Recurring subscriptions are not managed from within the app. They are managed from the store account you bought them through: Apple or Google. These are the exact paths.
On iPhone and iPad
Settings, then your name at the top of the page, then Subscriptions, then pick the subscription, then Cancel Subscription. You may have to scroll down before the button appears.
If there is no cancel button at all, or you see a message in red about an expiry date, the subscription is already cancelled and there is nothing for you to do.
On Android
From the app: open the Play Store, go to Subscriptions, pick the subscription, then Cancel subscription, and follow the steps on screen.
From a browser — useful if you no longer have the old phone: Settings, then Google, then your name, then Manage your Google Account, then Payments and subscriptions, then Manage subscriptions, then select it and cancel.
The most common mistake
Deleting the app does not cancel the subscription. That is not our observation — it is stated plainly on Google’s own support pages.
The app disappears from the phone and the charge keeps coming off the card, because the financial relationship is between you and the store, not between you and the icon. A great many of the subscriptions people discover a year later started exactly like this.
Cancelling does not cut the service off today
With Google, the service keeps running until the end of the period you have already paid for. Cancel an annual subscription halfway through the year and you keep the remaining months; you simply are not charged at the next renewal.
Which means delaying the cancellation until just before renewal gains you nothing. Cancelling early does not shorten the time you paid for.
Free trials
Apple gives a clear number here: if you signed up to a free or discounted trial and do not want it to renew, cancel at least 24 hours before the trial ends.
Google does not publish a specific window on its subscriptions page, saying only that the charge is taken at the start of each billing cycle unless you cancel before it. The safest approach is to cancel the moment you decide, rather than waiting for the last day.
If the money has already gone
With Apple: go to reportaproblem.apple.com and sign in, choose “I’d like to”, then “Request a refund”, pick the reason, select the app or subscription and submit. Apple says a request takes 24 to 48 hours to be answered, and that an approved refund needs additional time to reach your payment method.
One practical point: you cannot file a request against a transaction that is still pending. You have to wait for the purchase receipt to arrive by email first.
With Google: its first advice is to contact the app developer directly, which it describes as usually the fastest route. Unauthorised transactions, Google says, must be reported within 120 days of the transaction date.
Before you close this page
Open the subscriptions list on your phone now, not later. The same screen you cancel from is the screen that shows everything currently active on your account, and plenty of people find a subscription there they do not remember starting.
Sources: Apple’s official support pages on managing subscriptions and requesting a refund, and Google Play’s official support pages on cancelling subscriptions and its refund policy.
Photo: hourglasses — by Sauvagette, licence CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
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