Springer trial account invoice

[Saull]

Hello,

Two months ago I registered trial account at Springer professional digital library, downloaded few stuff and stop using their service. I was assuming that after the trial period ends the account becomes inactive. Now two months later invoice waits me from them for 1k€(for last month). Of course I don't want to pay this invoice. I am wondering if they can convert trial account to payable one and at the end charge me ?
How do I deal with this situation, can you give me any advice ?

Thanks for your help.   

[Zero999]

Did you read the small print when you signed up?

Offering a free trial which automatically converts into a paid account, after a certain period of time is fairly common. To avoid being charged, you need to cancel before the free trial period expires.

1000€ per month sounds excessive though. What's the usual going rate?

[wraper]

Cancel account and don't pay a dime. I doubt they would be able to even prove it was you who registered.

[Halcyon]

Two months ago I registered trial account at Springer professional digital library, downloaded few stuff and stop using their service. I was assuming that after the trial period ends the account becomes inactive.

Never assume. Always read what you're signing up for and agreeing to. You wouldn't sign a contract without knowing what you were putting your name to, this is no different. Consider this a lesson learned.

Trials like this are very common and the onus is on you to cancel a trial subscription before it carries over into a non-free account.

Cancel account and don't pay a dime. I doubt they would be able to even prove it was you who registered.

I'd be very careful with following this advice. Depending on what personal details and proof of ID you have given them you may find yourself in a bit of a hard place. I'm not sure what country you are in so you'd need to check your local laws but to give you an example, in Australia if you sign up to something, have a contract or a loan and have an account/invoice that is more than 14 days in arrears, then that missed payment will be reported to our credit reporting agencies. Leave it longer and the matter just gets worse and you start getting defaults recorded against your name. You could find it very difficult or impossible to obtain credit or even open a telephone contract in the future. All they need is your name, address and/or date of birth. Not to mention the company can sell the debt to debt collection companies who will start hassling you or even worse, obtaining court orders to begin repossessing your belongings in order to recoup the amount.

The best thing you can do at this stage is contact the company and come clean. Tell them you didn't read what you were signing up to and your understanding of the free trial was not what you expected or assumed. See if they will be nice enough to close your account and wipe the slate clean. Doing nothing and pretending it will go away usually ends up worse for you.

[edavid]

5.2 Trial subscription

Depending on the offer, access to digitised Content may initially be ordered as a free trial subscription. In this case, access to the Content specified on the website and in the offer will initially be enabled for free. If the Customer is convinced by our offer, the service will automatically be converted into a paid subscription at the end of the trial period. If the Customer does not wish to continue to use the service as a paid subscription after the end of the trial period, it shall notify Springer in text form (e.g. by email or fax) at the address specified in clause 18 of these General Terms) before the agreed trial period ends.

Since it seems that English is not your native language, I would try telling them that you didn't understand the above terms.

[Saull]

Hello,

Only information that they have about me is email, name and country. I did give false address. I went and check out the price stated on their web site and it is 39,95€ so I don't know why they are charging me 1k€. I will definitely contacting them and try the nice way.

Thanks for reply's.

[Halcyon]

That's it. Start off nice and escalate from there if necessary. It sounds like they don't have much on you even if they wanted to pursue you, in which case you can probably safely just ignore the invoice if they refuse to do anything about it. If your name is fairly common, you can just blend in and that'll make it very difficult (and costly) to try and locate you over a relatively small amount.

[amyk]

I think you may have accessed some "pay-per-download" content?

Springer are quite well-known for being sneaky, greedy bastards.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I'd be inclined to not engage with them at all - less risk of acknowledging any terms.
Maybe auto-bounce any future emails.

[mikeselectricstuff]

If they're dumb enough to give out 1K's worth of content without any pre-payment or verification I have no sympathy.
Sounds like a scam.