I signed up with the intention of only using the $5 free credit, turns out you need to add a Credit Card to verify your account and thus use the free credit.
My question is when I've ran out of credit is my CC going to be charged? I'm under the impression that the CC was ONLY for verification, but I feel if I forget to cancel the account before my credit expires that I will incur charges.
If you run out of credits, and you have an outstanding balance, your card will be charged, since that`s how you pay for the service in the first place.
To be really honest, the point of a promotion is to bring new customers in, not permit people to leech for free while at the same time degrading the experience of paying users.
I'm well aware of what the promotion's goal is, but I cannot find anyway of removing my CC before my credit has run out.
I don't think you can remove the CC by yourself. You can try support, but most likely they'll reply that you need at least PayPal credit added to the account or an active CC to keep it going.
This is the verification part - they don't want people using exclusively credit to be able to operate their servers because it leads to abuse. Even if you use only credit, they want you to add a card (or add some real money via paypal) so they have a way to validate who's using the account.
So the idea isn't to force you to pay, it's just that if they don't, they have no way to verify your account for security purposes.
You can remove your CC by canceling your DO account, for that you need to destroy all your droplets, and have no any outstanding balance with them, so you need to destroy your droplets before the $5 dollars run out and then cancel your account, while canceling your account you have an option to wipe all your info, this includes your CC info.
Almost any and every service that is paid will require you to supply a valid credit card when you sign up. It is on you to remember to cancel the service before your card is charge, it's just like other paid service/bill.
It is also stated here in the Pricing and Billling: https://www.digitalocean.com/help/pricing-and-billing/
Almost any and every service that is paid by a CC lets you remove the CC when you want to cancel payments, DO does not. I don't want to completely remove my account, I'll probably use it in the future I just don't need a VPS next month or after.
I'm trying to do exactly that. Also to add to this I don't want my credit card on file anymore for security reasons.