C45P3R

On further thought I recall my system was running a bit sluggish and Antimalware Service Executable and Malwarebytes were both showing activity. So I quit Malwarebytes and it was not running at the time I had rebooted during windows update (during which time the trial had ended for at least a couple days).

One caveat is I was running a different/previous version of Windows 10 when the free trial ended and it was after the update installed that I received the trial has ended msg and I was stuck with the program being registered in Action Center. Seeing as I was not offered a free trial after re-installing there is no way to reproduce on-demand.

That is exactly what happened. In previous versions I could decline the trial option but did not see that available this time. I only periodically run Malwarebytes to make sure windows defender hasn't let anything slip through. I disagree. I have only ever used windows defender on this machine.

Windows 10 Pro Ver. 1809 Build 17763.253

That works, annoying that the only solution is to uninstall/reboot/reinstall.

January 18th 2019 and this is still an issue.