Don’t you just hate it when you have to mail in a letter or call a phone number to cancel your “Free Trial”? Chances are your potential customers do too.

The only way to combat this notion is to tell your customers how easy it is to cancel your service right when you ask for their Credit Card information.

This comment on Hacker News blew my mind:

“The reason I think long and hard before signing up for new web services isn’t even the cost 99% of the time, but the uncertainty in how difficult it is going to be to cancel should I decide I do not want to continue.” George McBay

Checkout what Netflix does to combat this:

Step 1: They don’t show the credit card form. They just want to grab your email address so they can send you marketing emails in case you don’t sign up on the 2nd step.

(click on image for a bigger image)

Step 2: Make it very obvious that your customer can cancel online anytime easily. {tweet}

Do you know other ways to combat the “It Sucks To Cancel” notion? Let me know in the comments.