Forgotten and duplicate subscriptions, and how to stop paying for them

Why subscriptions get forgotten

• They renew without asking. A free trial turns into a paid plan, and a yearly plan renews twelve months after you last thought about it.
• Someone else bills them. A subscription paid through Apple, Google Play, PayPal or Amazon shows that company's name, not the service's. Apple's support page says that if there's no Apple receipt, another company bills you, and to check your statement (Apple Support).
• They're small. One charge rarely stands out on a card statement.
• They're on another account. A subscription in Family Sharing shows only on the family member's own Apple account (Apple Support).

The US Federal Trade Commission advises watching your card statements for charges that keep coming after you cancel, and disputing them with your card issuer if a company keeps charging (FTC).

How to find duplicate subscriptions

The same service paid twice usually comes through two routes. Check for these:

For phone bills: du applies a cap of AED 0 to certain third-party services such as Google Play and the Apple App Store unless you ask to raise or remove it (du, Consumer Services Agreement, clause 11.7). e&'s default spending cap for app store services it bills is AED 0 a month, and you can set one up to AED 1,000 (e&, General T&Cs (Consumer), clause 16(g)). If you raised a cap, check your phone bill for app store charges.

How to stop surprise renewals

1. Make one list. Go through Apple, Google Play, PayPal, Amazon, your card statement and your email. Our guide to finding all your subscriptions has each company's steps.
2. Note each renewal date and cycle. Yearly ones matter most, because they are the easiest to forget.
3. Cancel what you don't use, with whoever bills it. See how to cancel subscriptions in the UAE.
4. Set a reminder a few days before each renewal and trial end, so you decide before you're charged.
5. Check for price rises. A subscription you keep can still cost more next time. See subscription price increases.

Subscription fatigue: keeping it under control

Too many subscriptions is mostly a list problem: nobody sends one statement for all of them. Once you have the list, three habits keep it short:

• Review it when a renewal reminder arrives, not once a year.
• Prefer one plan per service. Fold an individual plan into a family plan you already pay for, or the other way round.
• Keep household and work apart, so a work tool doesn't hide in the family total.

The best app to stop wasting money on subscriptions

Any tracker helps if you keep it up to date. The difference is how the list gets made. Trackers you fill in by hand work only for what you remember. Rasid finds subscriptions for you in your billing email:

• Finds what you forgot. With read-only Gmail access, Rasid searches only billing mail: receipts, invoices, statements and price notices. You confirm each find before it's tracked.
• Flags duplicates. The import review marks anything that matches an item you already track and offers to update it rather than add a second.
• Reminds you before renewals and trial ends, three days before by default.
• Shows like-for-like savings. Discover compares what you pay with the same service's yearly plan, a smaller plan or a bundle, and with rivals in the same category.
• Keeps spaces apart. Personal, Family and Work each have their own list and total.

Rasid doesn't cancel for you, and it needs no bank login. For other apps, compared from their own pages, see the best subscription tracker apps in the UAE.

Join the Rasid waitlist

Related pages

• How to find all your subscriptions
• How to cancel subscriptions in the UAE
• Subscription price increases: how to know before you pay
• Bills and subscriptions in one place
• UAE subscription prices