Cancelled gourmet society membership - still been charged

miss_rosieannie

Hi
I signed up for a free trial of the gourmet society membership and cancelled it back in December. I received written confirmation it was cancelled by email by themselves, copy pasted below. Yet I've just been charged today for renewal:

"Your current gourmet society membership is valid until 01-02-2019 and you can continue to enjoy using your membership until this date.

Please accept this email as confirmation that your subscription with the gourmet society has been cancelled and your membership will simply expire as dated above.

At this point, you may receive a letter and/or email from gourmet society giving you the option to renew and also offering renewal at a discounted rate. No automatic billing will occur so if you choose to accept this, you will need to contact us.

Thank you for your interest in the gourmet society and we hope you will consider re-joining in the future."

They've charged me today the full price of the renewal!? What are my rights here - will I be able to claim it back via my bank? Will they just keep charging me over and again? How do I get rid of them! I literally cannot afford this fee and I'm really annoyed that after cancelling this well in advance I've still been charged.

Thanks.

Diamandis

Have you tried just contacting them and giving them the opportunity to fix it?

DoaM

As above, contact them and advicse them that you have written confirmation of cancellation, therefore you expect the renewal charge to be returned immediately. If they haven't refunded within, say, 7 days then raise a chargeback with your bank.

On that point, how was payment made? Was it a continuous payment authority? Did they charge against stored debit card details? Was it a direct debit? If the latter then you can easily invoke the Direct Debit Guarantee with your bank.

nj6013

Gourmet Society operate an insidious passive 'auto renew' policy. You don't realise you are still a member year after year as the CC statement says something like 'Simard Ltd'. This is a key part of their business model and difficult to avoid. Why do you think they do not have an ACTIVE choice where you get a reminder and you actively tick a box to say 'YES I'd like to renew' ? More reputable subscription companies (e.g. Spotify) do this because they are confident their customers will appreciate their product and renew if they want to. Gourmet AGGRESSIVELY defend their T&C's policy at every level of customer service. They dig in rather than just say 'Sorry to see you go, come back again when you want to. No, this is a nasty company. Yes they probably send out email reminders. But everybody gets so may marketing junk emails from people like Gourmet Society and delete them without realising. GS rely on this.

Aylesbury_Duck

nj6013 wrote: »

Gourmet Society operate an insidious passive 'auto renew' policy. You don't realise you are still a member year after year as the CC statement says something like 'Simard Ltd'. This is a key part of their business model and difficult to avoid. Why do you think they do not have an ACTIVE choice where you get a reminder and you actively tick a box to say 'YES I'd like to renew' ? More reputable subscription companies (e.g. Spotify) do this because they are confident their customers will appreciate their product and renew if they want to. Gourmet AGGRESSIVELY defend their T&C's policy at every level of customer service. They dig in rather than just say 'Sorry to see you go, come back again when you want to. No, this is a nasty company. Yes they probably send out email reminders. But everybody gets so may marketing junk emails from people like Gourmet Society and delete them without realising. GS rely on this.

Not sure that makes them nasty, and it's your responsibility to check your emails. I agree I'd rather they adopted an opt-in default position but consumers have to take some responsibility. If you're a passive customer, you're going to get caught out by things like this so probably best not to give your custom to businesses that operate that way.

Manxman_in_exile

nj6013 wrote: »

Gourmet Society operate an insidious passive 'auto renew' policy. You don't realise you are still a member year after year as the CC statement says something like 'Simard Ltd'. This is a key part of their business model and difficult to avoid. Why do you think they do not have an ACTIVE choice where you get a reminder and you actively tick a box to say 'YES I'd like to renew' ? More reputable subscription companies (e.g. Spotify) do this because they are confident their customers will appreciate their product and renew if they want to. Gourmet AGGRESSIVELY defend their T&C's policy at every level of customer service. They dig in rather than just say 'Sorry to see you go, come back again when you want to. No, this is a nasty company. Yes they probably send out email reminders. But everybody gets so may marketing junk emails from people like Gourmet Society and delete them without realising. GS rely on this.

If I saw something I didn't recognise on my credit card I'd query it, not let it run on year after year.