[mdlthree]

I tried LinkedIn Pro as a try free for 30 days. This required a credit card as it will bill you if you forget to cancel. After a week or so, I was unimpressed and canceled. Or I thought I did. $150 later and three months of not seeing the recurring transaction on my credit card I realized that I had not clicked the right buttons to cancel. I felt cheated by deceptive UI design.

[xentronium]

Good ole' forced continuity[1]. BTW, what OP describes is also a dark pattern[2]. I guess they use darkpatterns.org as their handbook.

[1] http://darkpatterns.org/library/forced_continuity/

[2] http://darkpatterns.org/library/friend_spam/

[lincolnq]

Hope you got your $150 back. (You can probably get them to refund your money, or, failing that, issue a chargeback with your credit card)

[corin_]

I've found a lot of LinkedIn's UI to be unintuitive even in areas where they have no motivation to confuse you, even when it comes to upgrading to Pro - my conclusion was incompetence rather than malice.

Side note: happy LinkedIn Pro user here, well worth the cost at least in my case :)