The more you know: How to turn off automatic Xbox Live renewal

By default, Xbox Live is set to automatically renew Gold subscriptions when a user's current membership expires, but not everyone is down with a surprise credit card charge -- especially if they're rocking a parent's plastic. Thankfully, Xbox Live's Major Nelson has posted a quick guide to help users disable the automatic renewal process. The steps are simple:

• Sign in to Xbox.com and go to the My Account section.

• Click the Membership level link on the left.

• You'll see a page that has your Membership level, and the end date. Under that, you'll see your "Automatic Renewal" status (as shown above).

• If it reads ON, users can click the ON link and be brought to a page to turn the feature OFF.
  

• If you'd like to change the setting to ON or OFF -- Click the link, make your selection, then click next.

• You'll be returned to your Membership level page, where you can confirm your selection

That's it. Easy as warm apple pie -- now excuse us, we just got hungry.

[Thanks, Juan]