You know, normally, I understand this policy. Although some companies, like Amazon Prime, send you a reminder that it is about to renew before they charge you.
But in the case of Pilates by Lisa (whose workouts I love and do subscribe to), I think this is poor customer service, because there is NO place on their website where you can see your account and when you last renewed, and to cancel you have to email someone. I think that until they make their website a little less clunky in that regard, they should have refunded your money. In fact, I contacted them to renew me for a year because it NEVER occurred to me that they would charge me for another year without my specific okay, since it is all done via email.
Is there any way to pay with a prepaid card for some of these sites? It might be worth trying. Using PayPal might also prevent this, but many sites don’t use it.