Is this really the normal way to do this in the US? Does no billing info mean you’re immune? If they have your real name in Germany, they would just send it to collections and get their money if you really owe them something, even if they don’t have a way to charge it directly themselves.

This would be fairly uncommon for consumer facing services in the US, outside of medical services.

I guess if you signed up for a cell phone contract and didn’t pay after the first month, and didn’t have a billing method set, it would go to collections. Things like that are generally uncommon though. It usually only happens with things like medical services, loans, auto repair, home repair/contractor services, and contractual services such as cell phone plans and utilities. (Contractors and mechanics may actually take out a lien.) Usually this only happens when there’s larger sums of money at stake or when it’s a large company with an airtight contract and a well-staffed billing department.

Things like consumer software subscriptions don’t usually involve this risk, there have been exceptions but consumers don’t like it and tend to punish it.

I'm sure they could technically do that if they have the right wording in their terms. But most consumer services are not actually going to give you a paid service without billing info, because it'd create such a headache for them to collect.

Even if they sell the debt to collections, the collections service is probably only going to pay them fractions of pennies on the dollar, since "bill for random service someone signed up for the internet" is not likely to have a high recovery rate.

Generally yes, though I remember seeing a post on hacker news in the past month where a SAAS sent an invoice after the free trial ended rather than terminating it.

I always expect a failed billing or no billing info after a trial to cancel and not be pursued (I regularly do trials with a temp card that I immediately de-activate so it cannot be billed in case I forget to cancel)

Yeah, as far as I know. Also github doesn't have my real name, for instance. I am sure they could know it, but I never agreed to any billing, either.

For the vast majority of services, yes