Roon, like many other software providers, have a very annoying habit of offering free trials that require one to submit their credit card details. Now I’m a busy person, not well organised and very lazy so free trials that require credit card details always cost me money because it usually takes me two to three months before I remember to cancel and often the process of cancelling is difficult to navigate. So, roon may have the best music software on the planet but unless I can try without credit card details it will never happen that is now my general rule. I occasionally take advantage of free trials of photo editing software but only of companies that offer free trials without credit card information, so it can be done and it just leads me to think that companies who want financial information for free trials are a little bit predatory and not someone I want to deal with. Just my take on life.
Life is all about choices and responsibilities!
How is that Roon’s fault?!
This might help…
In reply, I certainly take responsibility for my actions hence the very reason I won’t take advantage of the free trial offer because in this busy world it is so easy to get sidetracked. How is my laziness roons fault, of course it is not their fault. What is their fault is that they have made a conscious corporate decision to require credit card details for free trials which, in doing so, they know very well that many people will, through laziness, forgetful or many other reasons, delay cancelling subscriptions and hence money in their pockets. I’m not critising roon per se, many other software developers take the same approach but equally there are many others that quite happily allow free trial with only an email address. Why I started this post was because today I thought I might like to give roon a free trial to simplify my music management but once I realised that they wanted credit card details I declined their free trial. Had they been different they may have enticed me to subscribe after a trial. To give an analogy, if I went into a shoe shop to buy a pair of shoes and they wanted me to put down a deposit to try them on my reaction would be to go to another shoe shop. It is not unreasonable to try before you but without any financial penalty.
Frank,
not getting into an argument; but may I say - respectfully - that your posts (like it or not) run the risk of implicitly criticising Roon’s business practices. It’s common (perhaps almost universal) to use this method to offer trials which do not become ‘indefinite’ for whatever behaviour or reason on the user’s part.
You can certainly trust RoonLabs not to charge your card if you decide that Roon is not for you.
I’d hate to think that anyone reading your posts concluded (wrongly) either that Roon does not offer a free trial. It does! Or that you are taking any kind of risk by ‘lodging’ your security with them to try it out.
I hope you find what you are looking for 
.
Five years is a mighty long time to take mulling over whether you might want to try something! Maybe I was wrong in assuming you were frivolous about decision making. If it has genuinely taken that long for you to realise that you would like to give Roon a free trial then I am sure you have the mental capacity to cancel after twenty eight days. That level of patience and thoughtfulness is to be admired, be brave and take the leap, I believe in you!
Hi Mark and all others, rest assured my comments are not directed at roon who I have no doubt are a very trustworthy company but it just happened that roon was the last free trial that I declined because of the details they wanted. So that everyone has a better understanding of where I am coming from, in the old days when there was bricks and mortar shop fronts if I was buying something I would go to the store, talk to the staff, try out whatever I was thinking of buying without the necessity of giving them any personal information. Today bricks and mortar have been replaced by internet stores but I still expect the same level of service without the necessity of giving personal financial information. in any one year I might trial a dozen bits of software be they photo editing, photo management, virus detectors, music services, daws for music production and the list can go on depending on my particular interest that year. That’s a dozen organisations that I potentially have given my personal financial information to whom I may never contact again. There may be people who have the utmost faith in the internets security but I’m not one of them and I am certainly not in the habit of giving financial information to every Tom, dick and harry. If I am suggesting anything it is that software companies who offer free trials, which includes roon, should take on board that there are people who still value their privacy and a free trial is no more than me browsing a shop to see if I want to buy the product and providing my financial information is not something I would do in a bricks and mortar store so why should I in an internet store. I would still like to do a free trial of roon given my current equipment setup but not under their conditions. So again, let me make it quite clear that my comments are not directed at roon but at their procedure for offering free trials which may cause people like me who are interested in their product but not under these circumstances. If you like, it is positive feedback to roon to perhaps look at their procedures.
I guess Roon would still like you to do a free trial, but not under your conditions.
Choices and responsibilities.
Noted, but you obviously have never been the target of identity theft or scammers who somehow know your credit card details. It’s a very frightening thing. Again I am not suggesting that any company gives out your personal information willingly but here in australia there have been at least two very big breaches of personal information by hackers of government sites so the least information you give out the less chance you have of being scammed. Even banks tell you not to provide your credit card details haphazardly. Credit card details pretty well tells you your name, address, age everything. Yes I did try roon out several years ago and it offered me no advantage to what I was then using but situations do change and it still maybe not to my liking but, like buying a pair of shoes, I should still be able to try to see if it meets my needs, if it does good, if it doesn’t than that’s still ok and it a right to choose that we should still have or are we at a place now where if we try something then we must buy it, if I do that what is the point of trials.
May I suggest that you change the (to my mind misleading) subject of your thread, then, to something like “Roon trials are free; but I have reservations”?
No reference to the fact that hotels usually require a credit card to make one .
Are you effectively saying you just don’t want to pay for anything?
Where I work, we offer free software trials without credit card details. Then some new users complain how difficult it is to start the subscription after the trial, “why do I have to start all over again, I already had a trial”. Can’t please everyone.
Also, if you forget to cancel, the worst that happens is you spend the equivalent of a drink or two It’s not as if they take your firstborn.
Finally, you may want to look into anonymous/virtual credit card options to use for such things:
Some trials I take out that ask for CC details tend to allow you to cancel the subscription immediately, but still allow you to use their service until the end of the trial period.
If I get charged because I forgot, then it’s my fault for not reading the T&Cs.
I appreciate the OPs opinion, but if they are against this they have a choice not to sub to a trial.
Maybe PlexAmp would appeal to the OP. It’s free now.
Frank_Sullivan is concerned about identity theft and consumer fraud protection. But there is another side to that coin: service theft and business fraud prevention.
Free e-mail addresses are readily available and easily set up. A freeloading Roon user ostensibly could create an infinite number of new e-mail addresses for an infinite number of free trials.
Thus, does Roon use a credit card number as an additional requirement to help counteract free trial overuse?
AJ
Probably. Without credit cards, the trial fraud isn’t limited to individual users either. With our policy of not requiring a card for trials we see resellers from some countries (even resellers we otherwise have an actual relationship with) mass-create trial accounts and then sell them at reduced price to unsuspecting customers.
It’s always a question of balance and the best solution depends on details of how the software works, what your main customers are (e.g. private consumers vs B2B) etc.
Don’t forget the annual subscription repeats without your input on a valid C C
Today my doctor said I am ill, I’d better cancel Roon just in case , or should I take the Blue Pill
PPPPPP 
my annual repeat is Xmas Day hard to forget , I do feel for you
I paid $500 seven years ago and feel for no one.
AJ
Which is quite understandable. But is there any credible evidence that identity theft etc can be and/or are more prevalent and/or likely to happen during a trial period than that over which the use of a cc for an eventual purchase?
For the serial free trial user - yes…
How so? Because they repeatedly transmit details to the vendor?
But I didn’t necessarily read @Frank_Sullivan’s posts as his wanting to do that.
And I suspect that we are all sympathetic towards anyone who has had their identity even slightly compromised.
My main reason for posting was that some potential buyers, users, triallers etc of Roon could be confused and wrongly assume that Roon’s trials are not free and/or are suspect in the ways in which RoonLabs ('s accounting procedure) works.
As the rider to this thread now reads - Yes they are!