Why Did Bumble Charge You After a Boost Trial?

Bumble's terms say that if you sign up for a free trial and do not cancel, the trial may convert into a paid subscription, and your payment method is charged at the price in force then. After that it renews at the end of each period and keeps charging until you cancel. To avoid a charge you have to cancel before the trial or the current period ends, and deleting the app or your account does not do it.

A trial is a subscription with a start date and an end date. If you started one and did nothing, the end date arrived and the subscription carried on as a paid one.

Bumble says a subscription renews automatically unless it is cancelled at least 24 hours before the renewal date. So the real deadline is a day before the date you may remember as the last free day. Cancelling on the last day of a trial can leave you a day late.

Many subscription trials work this way, which is why the charge catches people out.

You cancel in the place where you subscribed, not necessarily inside Bumble.

• Apple App Store. Open Settings on your phone, tap your name, then Subscriptions. Find Bumble and tap Cancel Subscription.
• Google Play. Open the Play Store app, tap your profile icon, then Payments and subscriptions, then Subscriptions. Select Bumble and tap Cancel Subscription.
• Card, PayPal or Apple Pay through Bumble. Open the Bumble app, tap your profile icon, choose Subscription details, then Manage your subscription, and cancel there.

If you cannot get into the app to cancel, Bumble says its support team can help.

You can see the start date and the renewal date in the same place you cancel. Check it so you know the exact day.

Men often delete the app as soon as a trial ends and assume that ends it. It does not. Bumble says deleting your account or deleting the app does not cancel a free trial. Its own page on deleting your account warns that subscriptions may not cancel automatically, so you should cancel first.

The charge also survives for another reason. If you subscribed through the Apple App Store, deleting your Bumble account does not cancel the subscription, because Apple holds it. You have to cancel in your App Store settings.

If you only want to stop being charged, cancel. Bumble also says that after you cancel, you keep your paid perks until the end of the period you already paid for.

If you subscribed through Google Play, you may see a small preauthorization charge before your renewal date. Bumble says this is Google making sure your account has enough money for the upcoming payment. It is a check, not the renewal.

Bumble says refund eligibility depends on its Terms and Conditions, the platform you used, your location, and what you purchased. Nothing is promised, so ask clearly and do not wait.

• Apple purchases. Apple manages payments and refund decisions for purchases made through the App Store. You request one through Apple's report a problem page, signing in with your Apple ID.
• Google Play purchases. In the Play Store, go to Subscriptions, select the Bumble purchase, and tap Request a refund.
• Card, PayPal, Apple Pay or Bumble Web payments. Contact Bumble Support. Include your order number, the email or number tied to your account, your Bumble User ID, the payment method and a short reason.

Cancel at the same time. Bumble says cancelling stops the next renewal, and that if Apple or Google approves a refund you may lose access straight away.

Put a reminder in your phone calendar for two days before any trial ends. Write the name on it, so you know what you are deciding.

Decide in advance what the trial has to prove. For Boost, the useful test is whether matches were expiring and whether Extend and Rematch saved some of them. If you cannot name one match it rescued, you have your answer before the first charge.

Bumble says paid features are optional and that the app works well without them. The only result that counts is how many women you met, not how many extras you had.

If the free app is giving you matches and you are writing to them, a subscription adds little. If your photos and bio are not getting matches at all, no tier will fix that, and the money is better spent on a better set of photographs.