This exploit will leverage the power of a customer support discussion forum. Support teams can give so much advice on how application logic works when troubleshooting user issues, they can unintentionally help out if your exploit is not working. Reading old archives of these discussions can be a great resource, both for application logic and helpful links.
In this case, I was wondering if I had other options for the trial versions of a service. Yes, there's a premium service for 1 week, and a standard service for 1 year... but can I hack it to get a trial they don't offer? The premium for 1 year? Yes.
At first, I signed up for the standard tier trial for 1 week. After some googling, I came across a support forum with an old link to a page they no longer supported. (Since the company was bought by another, the users are now encouraged to go through the parent company's site to be able to get the special 1 year offer... but the user registration process is much harder, requiring a service plan, account number, etc.) So, instead, I used the defunct page to get a link to the premium 1 year service, while still logged in with the other trial. It didn't seem to work at first. Then I found the customer service thread describing how the service must be inactivated before the new one could start. So I did that, and watched the subscription end date of my trial reset. Success!
Keep in mind, this hack doesn't seem to be active anymore. After all, a year is PLENTY of time for development to patch a fix!
UPDATE: It actually is still active... sign up for the short trial, then reuse a URL parameter from the first trial's URL in the longer trial, which references the partner company.
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