This is probably old news for many but when it comes to renewal time, cancel your auto-renewal well before it is due and, a few days before expiry you’ll get an offer to renew that is substantially cheaper than the standard renewal and, it appears, also cheaper than most of the “special offers” that you’ll see.
If you’re feeling a bit naughty, you can set your billing country to the USA and they won’t charge TVA either.
I do exactly that with Bitdefender anti virus. It usually starts with an offer of 20% off and increases until I settle for 50-60% off.
Same with Adobe Creative Cloud - I cancel every year and when I get to the “do you really want to cancel?” screen a magic discount of 35-40% appears.
Mine was up for renewal last month, but I managed to blag a couple of years as a benefit of my Revolut account 
Same here. Two free years, which at the time was handy as I’d just come to the end of my paid subscription.
I gave up on Nord VPN as it was blocked by the BBC, as all VPN’s seem to do after a couple of months. That was the only benefit I perceived, otherwise it just slowed down various loads etc.
Odd, it’s working just fine here.
With NORD VPN, you just need to refresh the connection/ reboot the connection to UK if the BBC have blocked the current one and it will work again.
Key to success always end the VPN connection before switching off, so you start with a new one when you switch back on.
It works well with our connection across phones tvs etc.
Maybe old news but it sure works to get a better deal each year.
Such a shame they don’t reward loyalty.
My sub to The NYTimes was €20 p.a. It says on the subs page that after the first €20/12 month the sub goes up to €90, auto-renewal.
Oh no it doesn’t. At the end of last year I cancelled on account of a pending doubling to €40 p.a. An exchange with a subs person had the sub roll over, continuing at €20 p.a.
Checking at the end of this April, subs termination date, it seems to have rolled over on auto-renew at €20 p.a.
So…what was all the hoop-la earlier this year about the VPNs being forced to exit France? Anything came out of it? I never had a need for a VPN but was planning to get it when in France (later this summer) because I need access to certain government services that normally get blocked once they detect you are logging in from overseas.
Always good to mention even if most people are aware. The standard renewal is bordering on a scam. I was offered a discounted renewal in $ and when I went to take up the offer it switched to the same amount in € so I refused and queried it. They responded but I couldn’t be bothered to go through the hoops and for the most part I use a smart DNS service which works fine most of the time. On odd occasions it doesn’t and sometimes Nord VPN will work instead, but on others it doesn’t, and Nord interferes with so many other things (eg I can’t access my router settings if Nord is on).
Does this work with the house insurance?
If you mean threatening to cancel in order to get a discount, usually yes.
Most insurers will haggle to keep a customer - which makes it all the more annoying that the default renewal amount is so often inflated. They rely on inertia to make themselves some extra bucks.
With any insurance it’s worth doing the rounds on the Meerkat sites to get alternate (like for like) quotes, then either switch or phone up your current insurers and use the competitor quotes as a stick to beat them with. 