Non-recurring purchase option

Knavenformed

it's been so long since I last bought ESO+ but every time I do it I remember why I hate going through the trouble.

Simply I'm a one and done guy, I never buy recurring subscriptions, and if I do want to have the product on hand for a longer time I still like to buy in bulk with no after thoughts.

There are two main reasons I hate recurring payments:
-I need to have bank credidentials on an account at a constant
-It feels like "Customer forgetting to unsubscribe" is an actual tactic to make more money, which feels unethical.

At the basic level a service needs to be enjoyable, and ESO as a game does, but the transaction for ESO+ does not, from Steam it includes hoops to go through to add card information, authorizing the transaction and then removing the card information again.

I'm smart enough to know that I'm quite stupid, so I want to keep my account as safe as I can from the simple phishers or scammers, and a one time purchase option always helps with that.
And the ideal purchase loop for me is:
1.Get an idea of a game I want to play
2.Buy it
(Not having to backtrack on my account wasting time to double check on the purchase)
3.Go play it
4.Enjoy
(Not having to think about cancelling the pre-authorized transaction before I go into the game lest I forget and lose out on a purchase I don't know if I want to make yet or not)

For example, Blackwood is coming out and I am interested in it, but I also don't want to have ESO+ while there's a brand new mainline DLC as that's sure to keep me invested for a month or more, so having the option to buy a month of ESO+ only before the launch of Blackwood and then buying Blackwood for the next month is such a better way to handle my purchases rather than fiddling around to pre-emptively stop a transaction I would never want to make since the better option does not exist.

what_the

Try a ESO game card.

Danikat

It's really not that hard to buy ESO+ then cancel the renewal, I do it every time. (Admittedly every time is pretty rare for me, which is why I cancel the renewal, but it's not because the process is complicated.)

Buy whatever amount of time you want, as if you're setting up a repeat subscription, then as soon as you've checked it's active go into your account and on the summary page click 'manage subscription' then cancel the renewal then click 'edit account info' and remove your billing details. It's 4, maybe 5 clicks total.

I play on PC so I do the account stuff through a web browser, I just leave it open while I start the game up and check ESO+ is active, so I don't even have to log in again to cancel it, but I'm not sure how that works on consoles. But I can't imagine they've made it so complicated that it takes more than a few clicks.

Nastassiya

Just use Privacy. I have a virtual card, tied to my bank. I can pause that card after I make the purchase and then it can't be charged again until I want it to.

LaughingGremlin

If I remember correctly they use to have a non-recurring option for one of the bulk subscriptions (not sure which one). It does feel like Bethesda is using the "Customer forgetting to unsubscribe" tactic, otherwise why get rid of the non-recurring subscription. I avoid the problem by immediately canceling after subscribing.