Company renewing membership with no warning

tintysteph

Afternoon,
Hope someone can advise what to do about a situation i am in...
A company has renewed my membership to one of their schemes and said they sent me an email a few weeks back to warn me of this... I didnt get the email so wasnt reminded that this was going to happen. The company has taken the money for my renewal and it has left me out of pocket. They are totally unwilling to help me out at all and have been sending very rude sounding emails. It has got to the point where i am writing to the operations director to see what she can do to help.... just wondering if anyone can tell me if i am able to report them to any trading standard type bodies if they dont agree to help?
I thought when you pay for things there is a 'cooling off' period that you can be in???
Any help is much appreciated!
Thanks in advance!

pinkshoes

What did your initial contract say about renewal?

tintysteph

automatic renewal and we would get notice 3 weeks before renewal - no email was received nor any written notice....

marywooyeah

did it go into your junk mail folder? most memberships are automatically renewed unless you cancel it though

tintysteph

nope, i have received many emails from them before and all gone straight into my inbox ...

somethingcorporate

Usually a renewal notice would be out of courtesy. At the end of the day you have signed a contract agreeing to an auto-renew and this is what they have done.

If you are a squeaky wheel I am sure you would get them to cave though. Whether you have any rights to it or not is another question (and I don't think you do).

InsideInsurance

What sort of "membership" is it?

Only certain types of things have cooling off periods and not everything.

Email nor post is perfect at arriving to the recipient. You really should always make a diary note to when things renew rather than relying on others to remind you when it is in their interest that you forget!

pinkshoes

I would argue that an email is not a sufficient form to send a renewal notice when taking money, and that a letter would be required, so could they please either show you their proof of postage showing a letter was sent, or refund you the money.

pmduk

I've got subscriptions to publications and rarely, if ever receive renewal reminders. I rely on my Google Calendar.

arcon5

pinkshoes wrote: »

I would argue that an email is not a sufficient form to send a renewal notice when taking money, and that a letter would be required, so could they please either show you their proof of postage showing a letter was sent, or refund you the money.

That would rely on their being a legal requirement to inform the user of the renewal.. i'm not sure there is?

Would a rolling contact (ie month-to-month phone deals, hosting accounts ect) and auto-renew be classed as the same thing?