'I ended up paying £500': Your subscription trap stories

ShareSaveAdd as preferred on GoogleEmer MoreauandLucy HookerGetty ImagesNew rules will make it easier to cancel subscriptions or get a refund.When Neha paid for an online CV builder, she thought she was only making a single transaction. In order to download the CV, you have to pay. So I did that, and I just thought it was a one-off thing. But two years later, she discovered she had been signed up to a monthly subscription with the service, LiveCareer, and over £500 had been taken from her joint account with her husband. My husband just assumed it was something that I had signed up to, so he never questioned it at the time, said Neha, 50. In a time where there seems to be a subscription for everything - from security cameras to meal kits to shaving blades - many of us have been caught out by direct debits we didn't even know we signed up for. And the cancellation process can require a Herculean effort. After the government announced a clampdown on subscription traps , many people got in touch with BBC Your Voice to share their stories. Neha says she contacted LiveCareer to get the subscription cancelled. I emailed them to say, 'Look, you know I've not used this and you've not communicated at all about this'. She said LiveCareer agreed to cancel the subscription but would not give a refund. Because it's an American company, I can't go to Small Claims, I can't go to Trading Standards, Neha said. She is seeing if she can get a chargeback from her bank. Their website sort of implies they've got a UK presence, but they haven't. I know it's my responsibility to check statements, but it's so easy for these companies to just carry on taking money. A spokesperson for LiveCareer said it was committed to transparency and aimed to make its subscription terms clear. Information about billing, including whether a service is part of an ongoing subscription subject to auto-renewal, is presented throughout the user experience. We also communicate with customers regarding their subscription through transactional emails and reminder notification, which include details about access to account settings where subscriptions can be managed or cancelled at any time. Some people say they've resorted to fibbing about illnesses, emigration or even prison sentences so the company will stop trying to keep them signed up. Others have simply cancelled the direct debit with their bank, but this can impact your credit score – and it doesn't cancel your contract with the company. One company mentioned by several readers was Adobe, the maker of Photoshop and Acrobat. When Carmen, from London, took out a free trial of Adobe Creative Cloud, she wanted to subscribe for three months. But she found herself on an annual contract, with a £250 cancellation penalty. After a year, she tried to stop it from auto-renewing, but was told she had missed a very specific cancellation window, so was locked in for another year. The