Forgotten subscription: getting your money back, step by step

A free trial, never cancelled, fourteen months charged: 83 euros for something you used once for twenty minutes. In forums that’s called the “ADHD tax” – the amount forgetting costs. The good news: some of it is recoverable, and the procedure is remarkably dull. It takes an hour and the right order.

Step 1: Find every charge

Not from memory, from your account. Download the last twelve months of transactions as a CSV and sort by amount – identical amounts that appear repeatedly are almost always subscriptions. Do the same in your app store: all running subscriptions sit in one place there, including the forgotten ones. Write down every subscription you find with its amount and next charge date.

Step 2: Cancel first, argue second

This is the order that matters: cancel first, so that what you’re trying to recover doesn’t keep running. In the EU, contracts concluded online must offer a cancellation button – “cancel contracts here” on the website, no login, no phone call. Use it and save the confirmation as a PDF or screenshot. If there is no button, a short email does: contract number, “I hereby cancel at the earliest possible date”, please confirm.

Step 3: Ask for the money back

Three routes, strongest first:

• Return the direct debit. A SEPA direct debit can be returned through your bank for up to eight weeks after it was taken – no reason needed, usually two clicks in your banking app. Careful: that doesn’t end the contract, the claim remains. Hence step 2 first.
• Ask the provider. Many refund the last one to three months on a friendly, short request – especially if the account was unused. Wording that works: “I haven’t used the subscription since [month] and missed that it kept running. I cancelled today and would like to ask for a refund of the last [n] charges.” No drama, no accusation, just a request.
• Card chargeback. With cards this goes through the issuer and needs a reason (“service not provided”, “charged after cancellation”). Deadlines vary, often 120 days.

Realistically you get back: the last few weeks via direct debit reliably, one to three months on request often, a whole year rarely. If you want more, the next stop is a consumer advice centre – they check whether the contract and its cancellation terms were valid at all.

Step 4: Stop it happening again

The pattern is always the same: the cancellation deadline falls eleven months after signing up, far outside anything you’ll remember. Two things help reliably:

1. Add a deadline on the day you sign up – not at the end, but a week before the trial ends, with the amount. “Netflix: 7 March, €13.99” is one line and saves 167 euros.
2. One virtual card per subscription, where your bank offers it: once it expires, nothing can keep running. That’s the most robust protection, because it doesn’t depend on memory.

What DayBlock does

In DayBlock you can attach a deadline with a date and an amount to any block. Everything with a deadline sits at the top of your list, the nearest one first; three days before, the line is marked “tight”. There’s also a day template “paperwork evening”: thirty minutes, open the post, invoices, check subscriptions – and then you stop.

As of October 2026. This is a general overview and not legal advice. Deadlines and rights differ by contract, payment method and provider; when in doubt, consumer advice centres help.