Premier Sports 30-Day Cancelation Policy

jonronnquist

Hello. 

On 13 May 2024 I signed up to a monthly subscription with Premier Sports' online streaming service to watch the games in the World Ice Hockey Championship that were not being streamed on the IIHF YouTube Channel. I cancelled the subscription on 24 May to make sure I was not charged for another month as I would not be needing access to the service after the end of the competition. However, I was charged for an additional month on 13 June. When I went into my online account, it said the cancelation had been scheduled for 24 June. 

Having now contacted their customer service department, it turns out Premier Sports have a 30-day cancellation policy. This makes absolutely no sense to me and I have never run into anything similar on any other subscription service. It effectively means that the moment you sign up for one month you are locked into at least two by default unless you cancel it right away. And if you sign up during February, not even this would get you off the hook as there wouldn't even be 30 days until your renewal date. 

Surely this cannot be right. I mean, there must be some law governing what terms can be set. Or could they just as easily make it 60 or 90 days notice?

To be clear, I will be getting my money back one way or another. I'm just wondering if I can present them with some clear cut legal argument before I begin my campaign.   

Penguin_

Sign up & cancel on the same day is the best way with these things.

born_again

jonronnquist said:

Hello. 

On 13 May 2024 I signed up to a monthly subscription with Premier Sports' online streaming service to watch the games in the World Ice Hockey Championship that were not being streamed on the IIHF YouTube Channel. I cancelled the subscription on 24 May to make sure I was not charged for another month as I would not be needing access to the service after the end of the competition. However, I was charged for an additional month on 13 June. When I went into my online account, it said the cancelation had been scheduled for 24 June. 

Having now contacted their customer service department, it turns out Premier Sports have a 30-day cancellation policy. This makes absolutely no sense to me and I have never run into anything similar on any other subscription service. It effectively means that the moment you sign up for one month you are locked into at least two by default unless you cancel it right away. And if you sign up during February, not even this would get you off the hook as there wouldn't even be 30 days until your renewal date. 

Surely this cannot be right. I mean, there must be some law governing what terms can be set. Or could they just as easily make it 60 or 90 days notice?

To be clear, I will be getting my money back one way or another. I'm just wondering if I can present them with some clear cut legal argument before I begin my campaign.   

30 day cancelation is just like mobile or internet connections.

So checking T/C when signing up would have been the way forward.

Pretty  clear in T/C

Subscription plans and One-Time-Purchases

The fees payable for a Premier Sports subscription are collectively referred to herein as the “Subscription Fee”. Each period that you subscribe to Premier Sports by paying the Subscription Fee is referred to herein as a "Subscription Period". Your Subscription Period will automatically renew unless you have cancelled your subscription prior to the next billing date. To cancel your subscription, you must provide at least thirty [30] days' notice prior to the next billing date. 

Irish company.

jonronnquist

Okay, I get that I should have read the terms and conditions. But my oversight notwithstanding, I don't think I'm being unreasonable when I say that their cancelation policy is completely unreasonable. I mean, what does someone do if they signed up for a month on 13 February and their renewal date is 13 March? If I've done the math correctly, that's only 28 days. 

born_again

And if you signed up on the 1st April & renewal date is 1 May, that is 31 days.🤷‍♀️

Either way does not help you get any refund.

jonronnquist

born_again said:

30 day cancelation is just like mobile or internet connections.

Not really. Those contracts run for a year or more. This is a monthly subscription and Premier Sports clearly states that the minimum term is 1 month. The only mobile plans I know of that are monthly have no such cancellation notice period. And I've never heard of rolling monthly internet service. 

jonronnquist

born_again said:

And if you signed up on the 1st April & renewal date is 1 May, that is 31 days.🤷‍♀️

Either way does not help you get any refund.

Thank you for taking the time to share your views. 

Alderbank

jonronnquist said:

Surely this cannot be right. I mean, there must be some law governing what terms can be set. Or could they just as easily make it 60 or 90 days notice?

There is indeed law governing what terms can be set.

Basically for a consumer contract they are:

• the terms must be available for you to view before you sign up
• both parties must agree to be bound by those terms
• the terms must be reasonably fairly balanced and must not give undue benefit to either party (although if there is any doubt the interpretation favourable to the consumer will apply)
• neither party can unilaterally change any terms while the contract runs
• the contract must be written in clear English

The online T&Cs do make it clear how the system works and it does seem to be exactly as they are applying it. Also, it's not that unusual for a contract to end only at the end of a billing period. Most gym contracts do that as do rented property tenancy agreements.

Yes, they could have made it 60 or 90 days before the next billing date if they had written that in the contract you both agreed to.

The only contract term I might challenge as unfair is fee increase by Premier Sports. They say they will give you notice and you can cancel at 30 days notice. They say the increase will not 'normally' kick in for 30 days but if their costs increase more suddenly eg. in a week then you must pay the increased fee from that date. That seems unfair - if their software can take an increased fee at very short notice then they could equally terminate the contract pro-rata at similarly short notice.

However I'm afraid that does not help you.

Why did you assume you could cancel in the middle of a billing period by giving 30 days notice at any time? If you have any published material by Premier Sports saying so, that would form part of the contract and might give grounds for a challenge.

Penguin_

jonronnquist said:

Okay, I get that I should have read the terms and conditions. But my oversight notwithstanding, I don't think I'm being unreasonable when I say that their cancelation policy is completely unreasonable. I mean, what does someone do if they signed up for a month on 13 February and their renewal date is 13 March? If I've done the math correctly, that's only 28 days. 

So they class a month as 30 days, give you have to give 30 days notice. This means you'd get charged for the month from the 13th Feb - 13th Mar (29 days) then one day for the 14th Mar.

sheramber

There's not much point in concerning yourself with what happens with a February subscription when you did not subscribe in February.  

It isn't relevant to your situation.

jonronnquist

Okay. Netflix do not have a notice period for cancellations. Bow out before your next renewal date and off you go with your wallet intact. Same goes for Now TV, Amazon Prime (video), and Apple TV. This is also true of Spotify, You Tube Premium, Experian, my Express VPN subscription, and every other digital subscription service I have ever used, including Premier Sports themselves the last time I was there. One exception is Disney Plus, who it appears now want a 20-day heads up before you jump that rapidly sinking repository of garbage. So I don't think I was being unreasonable when I took it on faith that this was the industry norm. It is, and has been for most such services until quite recently.

I suspect the reason Premier Sports has made itself such an egregious exception is because it's a bottom feeder. Headquarters in Europe's most generous tax haven, unreliable budget servers, and a call centre somewhere on the other side of the planet with phone lines that sound like it's located next to a jet engine testing facility all seem to point that way. But their bottom line and the means they use to achieve it are not my problem. 

If the legal standard is fairness and the stipulation that the terms should not unduly favour one side or the other, then Premier Sports fails on both accounts in my opinion. Their sales pitch clearly states that the minimum subscription term is one month. But nowhere does it state, or even insinuate, that in order to pull this off the customer must be as cunning as the streaming service itself and engage in the entirely counterintuitive act of cancelling the contract the moment they enter in to it or be undone by the math, which leans heavily in the seller's favour. 

What Premier Sports is effectively saying with this is that the moment I turn up out of the blue and hand them £14.99 for one month's access to their streaming service, they are instantly entitled to know whether they can book a second £14.99 as guaranteed income for the following month. Again, not exactly a square deal. This would be like BT insisting on two years notice to pull out of a 24-month contract. Nonsense, in other words. 

Yes, they made their terms clear in the small print. So, I presume, did the banks that sold us PPI. I don't remember any of the companies that dealt with my claims asking if I had read the terms and conditions. Legal and ethical are not the same thing. They're not even synonyms. Anyone who has ever run into the parking enforcement mafia, another bottom feeder par excellence, will know this all too well.