How to find and cancel subscriptions in NZ

Subscriptions in New Zealand usually come out in one of five ways:

• Card payments. Streaming, music, software, news and gym memberships often charge your debit or credit card each month.
• App store billing. Subscriptions bought on a phone are charged by Apple or Google, so your statement may show something like "APPLE.COM/BILL" or "Google" rather than the app's name.
• Direct debits. Power, insurance, gyms and some memberships take payments directly from your bank account under an authority you signed.
• Automatic payments. Regular payments you set up yourself in your banking app, such as rent or a donation.
• PayPal and similar. Some services bill through PayPal, which then charges your card or account.

Annual subscriptions are the easiest to forget: antivirus, cloud storage, memberships and domain names often renew once a year.

1. Download or open the last three months of statements for every account and card. Go back twelve months if you want to catch yearly renewals.
2. Look for the same company name, or the same amount, more than once.
3. On an iPhone, open Settings, tap your name, then Subscriptions. On Android, open Google Play, tap your profile, then Payments & subscriptions and Subscriptions.
4. Check PayPal's automatic payments if you use PayPal.
5. Write each one down with the amount, how often it's charged and the next date.

Then decide which you actually use. A useful question: would you sign up again today at this price?

Card subscriptions: cancel in your account on the company's website or app, usually under Account, Billing or Membership. Removing your card isn't the same as cancelling, and the company may still bill you or chase the debt.

App store subscriptions: cancel from the same Subscriptions screen where you found them. Deleting the app doesn't cancel the subscription.

Direct debits: tell the company you're cancelling. You can also cancel the direct debit authority with your bank, but be aware that this stops every direct debit that company takes from you, and it doesn't end the contract itself: you may still owe for anything already provided.

Automatic payments: you control these. Delete or change them in your banking app, under scheduled or automatic payments.

Contracts with a minimum term: gyms, phone plans and some memberships can have a notice period or a fee for leaving early. Check the terms before you cancel so you're not surprised by a final charge.

• Keep the cancellation confirmation email or a screenshot.
• Note the date the next payment would have come out, and check your statement after it.
• If you're charged after cancelling, contact the company first with your confirmation and ask for a refund.
• If that doesn't work, talk to your bank. For a card payment, ask whether it can dispute the charge. For a direct debit, ask it to stop the authority and look at the payment.

Free trials: set a reminder a couple of days before the trial ends. Most trials roll into a paid plan automatically.

Korin finds your regular payments for you from your bank transactions and lists them on its Recurring page with how much each costs a month. Help me cancel gives you the quickest way out for each one: the company's cancel page, a message for your bank for a direct debit, or where to stop an automatic payment.

After you cancel, Korin can watch for that company and tell you straight away if it charges you again. Korin can't cancel anything for you, because its access to your bank is read-only. See How can Korin help me cancel a subscription?.