[tie_]

More like gym, "clubs" (Verein-s), mobile phone, internet, electricity, etc. It's an established contractual practice, and e.g. Telekom are not in any way obligated to notify you when your cancellation date approaches. They can very well sue you, however, should you refuse to pay your automatically-renewed-in-advance contract.

Even in the cases where you're allowed to cancel on the last day of the subscription, we as humans are very prone to forget to do that, particularly for longer-term contracts. Tracking contracts and subscription deadlines is a damn profitable habit that I wish I had acquired much earlier.

[indus]

Curious: if they sue, then the only damage is money they owe or there is more to it such as credit history, etc?

[tie_]

I haven't really tested it in court, though I did get the official correspondence that leads up to it. Friendly law practitioner had suggested that I really don't stand a chance.

Not sure about credit damage, but in case of a loss in such a suit, I'd also have to cover the expenses for the other side, so it's a risky proposition.

With my wife we did consider it for a while, but then decided it's better to do focus on solving that problem with software and thus started working on contrax.app (shameless plug!).