Your insurance dropped it. Your doctor shrugged. Now you’re supposed to hand your credit card to a company called Mochi.

First, the part you already suspected

The advertised price is not the price. It was never going to be the price.

You have seen the number. It sits on a pale background next to a photograph of a vial, and it is usually somewhere between sixty and a hundred and fifty dollars. Here is what happens to that number between the advertisement and your bank statement.

It goes up in month two. 5 of the 21 programs we checked charge more from the second month than they charge for the first. That is not a price rise. That was the plan.

It goes up when your dose goes up. This is the one that catches people who are doing well, which is the cruel part. You titrate up, the medication finally starts doing its job, and the bill climbs along behind you. A woman on a review site put it better than we can: “the doses from 0.25 to 1.0 were $260 per month. I filled my first script for 1.7 it has gone up to $380!!” Two exclamation marks. She earned them.

There is a second charge you did not see. At some companies the advertised figure is the medication, and the membership is billed separately. It lives on a different page, answering a different question, in a different part of the FAQ. You find out on the statement.

And some of them bill every 28 days. Which is 13 charges a year, not 12. Nobody has lied to you. The price page is accurate. It is the calendar doing the work.

The thing we did not expect to find

Most of them will not tell you how to leave.

We tried to establish one plain fact for each company. If you want to stop, what do you click, who do you email, and how much notice must you give? That is not a hostile question. It is printed on the back of every gym contract in America.

We established it for all 21. 12 publish it plainly. A method, and a notice period, written where you can read it before you pay. 9 do not state it at all. Several of those say “cancel anytime” in their marketing and then never say how.

There is also a trap in this category common enough to have a shape. At several companies your prescription and your membership are two separate things, and cancelling one does not cancel the other. People find out on the statement, usually about three months later. It happens often enough at one company that the Better Business Bureau wrote a warning about it on that company’s own profile page.

4 of the 21 set a minimum term. That is a stretch of time you have agreed to pay for whether you carry on or not. At one of them you cannot cancel mid-term at all. None of this is hidden, exactly. It is in the terms. It is simply not in the advertisement, and the advertisement is the only thing most people read.

The part you can use tonight

Four sentences that make a company tell you the truth

Send these before you give anyone a card. Send them in writing rather than on the phone, and keep the reply. You are not being difficult. You are asking a business what it charges, which is a thing businesses are supposed to be able to answer.

1. “What will I be charged in month two, and in month six? Please give me the figures in dollars.” Not the starting price. The recurring one.
2. “Does my price change when my dose increases, and if so what does each dose cost?” This is the question that sorts the honest ones from the rest in about four seconds.
3. “Is there a membership or consultation fee billed separately from the medication?” Ask it even if the website says there is not. Especially then.
4. “How do I cancel, how much notice must I give, and what happens to money already charged?” If nobody will answer this before you pay, that is your answer.

One more thing and then we will let you get on. You are allowed to ask these questions. You are allowed to ask them of a company with a soothing name and a photograph of a woman laughing on a beach. Being polite has never once stopped a subscription from renewing.