You download a free program or app and install it on your computer or mobile device. You use the software for several days without a hitch, then out of the blue you receive a pop-up message offering you an upgraded version of the program/app for a small fee.
At this point you are given two options:
1 – You can accept the offer right then and purchase the upgraded version, or…
2 – You can click a button that says “Remind me later”.
My pet peeve is when you get a game app for free but keep getting messages to subscribe to it so you won’t see adds. At one time you could get that with a one time charge and that was ok but I would never agree to pay an ongoing cost for it.
Wmj - I would gladly pay a small one time charge for a game that I like and have done that in the past when it was an option. However, I feel very differently about subscriptions where they can charge your credit card indefinitely and sometimes they are difficult to cancel.
I have a few games on my phone…my pet peeve isn’t being urged to pay to remove ads, but it’s one type of ad in general. It’s for a game called “Royal Match”, and if you play free games, odds are that you’ve seen these ads at least once. They tout that Royal Match has zero ads. I downloaded the game just so I could give a review where I said most other games would have zero games as well were it not for the Royal Match ads. I sometimes wonder if, as part of their marketing strategy, gets a cut of the subscription fees for people who pay to escape the endless Royal Match ads.