Dear Liz: I paid for several magazine subscriptions online. At the end of the transaction, I received notice that I had also been signed up for automatic renewal.

While I will be notified prior to the end of the current subscription period and given the opportunity to cancel the subscription, this seems like an underhanded way of subscriptions being renewed.

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Answer: Many companies in recent years have adopted automatic renewal as a way to take advantage of customers’ inertia. Some

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