Chris Hemsworth’s workout app is suddenly charging people $99

By Will Nicol May 13, 2020

Chris Hemsworth’s fitness app, Centr, has charged some users a surprising subscription fee (up to $99), according to a report by The Verge. Centr had offered users a free six-week trial as a response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has left many people isolated indoors with no gym access.

Centr offers users workout videos hosted by professional trainers, meal plans with recipes by “world-class chefs,” and guided meditation videos, among other features.

Some users, it seems, tried to cancel their subscriptions, but got lost in Centr’s byzantine unsubscribe process. In order to cancel your subscription, you have to use whatever platform you used to sign up (website, iOS, Android), and each method comes with its own unique process.

Others simply forgot to cancel before their trial ended, or forgot they had signed up for the app at all. There’s a cautionary tale here. Companies often require users to provide payment info when signing up for a free trial, expecting that some number of them will forget to cancel before the charges kick in.

Always be cautious about signing up for free trials, read the terms and conditions, and remember: Burpees are free.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Will Nicol is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends. He covers a variety of subjects, particularly emerging technologies, movies…

Mobile

How do people really use apps? We asked an expert

how do people really use apps man with iphone at bar feature

The rapid and relentless rise of the smartphone can’t be easily explained because it was driven by the convergence of multiple trends and technologies. But if you were to search for the evolutionary leap from feature phones, it would be hard to look past apps. By making it easy to develop, share, and sell apps, and allowing developers to dig into device functionality in new ways, Apple, and later Google, paved the way for an industry that has claimed a healthy portion of our daily attention.

“Every consumer-facing business is being transformed by apps,” Bertrand Schmitt, CEO, chairman, and co-founder of App Annie, told Digital Trends. “Consumers are spending around three hours a day on their smartphone on apps.”

Outdoors

Sweatcoin is the fitness app that pays you in digital currency to work out

Sweatcoin

At the start of a new year, many of us vow to work out more, lead healthier lives, and lose some weight. Unfortunately, studies show that most of us also abandon those goals only a few weeks later. But a new app called Sweatcoin has a unique way to keep users exercising by offering virtual currency that can be used to purchase real products and services.

Available for iOS and Android, Sweatcoin uses your smartphone's GPS capabilities and onboard accelerometer to track your movement. For every 1,000 steps that it records, the user earns .95 "sweatcoins," which can later be spent on a wide variety of things, including electronics, workout classes, fitness gear, gift cards, and so on.

Emerging Tech

Want to help bail people out of jail with spare change? There’s an app for that

appolition bail jail app 53956782 l

When is the last time you donated money to charity? When is the last time you donated money specifically to help people who are arrested to post bail? For most people, no matter how charitable, the second of these questions is unlikely to yield any reaction other than “never.” But it probably should. Even though the United States justice system states that a person is innocent until proven guilty, a sizable proportion of the 12 million people arrested each year can’t afford to pay bail -- with some spending weeks, months, or occasionally even years behind bars before seeing their day in court.

Well, to paraphrase an iconic Apple commercial, there’s now an app for that. Called Appolition, the idea is that it is linked to a user’s bank account. Whenever they make a payment -- either via debit or credit card, or even PayPal -- the price is rounded up to the nearest dollar. That spare change is then donated to a grassroots organization called National Bail Out, which provides funds to black Americans who are being held on bail that they cannot afford.