Subscriptions, payments, and billing questions.
Not every T&C clause holds up in court — understand which billing traps are real and which are legal bluffing that you can challenge under federal law.
Where to report deceptive billing — FTC, CFPB, State Attorney General, and payment network rules — with escalation path and sample complaint letter.
Your federal right to dispute credit card billing errors — 60-day window, step-by-step process, what the card issuer must do, and what to do if they deny your claim.
Step-by-step guide to cancelling a subscription — including pre-cancel prep, the phone protocol, post-cancellation monitoring for 90 days, and what to do if they keep billing.
Print-ready 10-item checklist for scanning any service before subscribing, plus real anonymized T&C samples rated A through F using the Billing Fairness Scoring Engine.
Which federal, state, and international laws protect you from billing traps — and the terms that are unenforceable in your jurisdiction.
Four measurable dimensions of billing freedom — Exit, Error Recovery, Price Stability, and Data Control — that determine how much power you have over your subscription.
A complete scoring system across four dimensions — Disclosure, Symmetry, Remedy, and Neutrality — with a red-flag penalty and A-F grade scale.
20 keyword and proximity patterns that identify billing traps in any terms & conditions — designed for both manual Ctrl+F scanning and automated crawler tools.
How companies use their own exchange rates (not Visa/Mastercard rates) to add hidden 3-5% markups on foreign transactions.
How services charge you for not logging in — dormant account fees that kick in when you stop using the service but haven't formally cancelled.
When a price change applies to the current billing period — including days you've already consumed at the old rate.
Minimum spend requirements and use-it-or-lose-it credit policies that make you pay for service you never received.
How companies can reclassify you into a higher pricing tier at their sole discretion — with no objective criteria, no appeal, and sometimes no notice.
Learn the five most common auto-renewal traps hidden in service terms & conditions — silent renewals, asymmetric cancellation, minimum commitments, grace period windows, and fake confirmations.
Quick-reference for all 24 billing traps with a 10-second pre-subscription scan checklist and severity rating guide.
Seven traps affecting payment data storage, dispute handling, and legal recourse — blanket authorizations, chargeback penalties, arbitration, and more.
Seven critical traps that protect companies from their own billing errors — short dispute windows, no-liability clauses, rounding, hidden surcharges, and more.
Five common refund traps — absolute no-refund policies, pro-rata traps, processing fees, short windows, and credits disguised as refunds.