UK law on refunds for digital services

UberTiger

UberTiger

UberTiger

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Are there any EU or UK laws regarding getting refunds on digital subscription services?

I bought a service online and paid for a month, but auto renew was turned on.

I forgot to turn it off after I had used the service for a couple of weeks.

Then they charged me for a second month. Within minutes of getting the email I contacted them to explain the mistake and request a refund, which they're refusing as it's against their policy.

I could only find info on digital downloads, but not digital services.

Anyone got any ideas?
 
Surprised we don't have laws to prevent auto renew being turned on automatically, this should be something the customer should have to enable.

Same goes for insurance, they are setup to auto renew at the end of the year, in your case you forgot to turn off auto renew and they carried on providing a service.

I bet they will come back with how were they to know you didn't want to carry with your subscription, they did give you a month to turn off auto renew.

How much did it end up costing you?
 
labcoattech said:
Surprised we don't have laws to prevent auto renew being turned on automatically, this should be something the customer should have to enable.
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Agreed.

What's more annoying is that it's a service I use every year, it's essentially some online productivity software, but I only need it for one month every year.

So I have actually disabled the auto renew in the past, multiple times. But every time I sign back up to the paid option, auto renew gets switched back on.

It's not much money, only £25, so I'm not really worried about that. It's more the principle at this point as the customer servivce agent wouldn't budge at all or even do it out of goodwill for a long time customer, and just kept quoting that it's against their policy.

It's a large company with revenue of over $200M per year too. Feels like a revenue maximising cash grab.
 
You could try calling again as another customer service agent might be in a better mood and willing to help other than that you could complain to the customer service department.
 
I too hate auto renew, it should be like Amazon. My mum accidentally signed and paid for a month of prime, she wasn't paying attention. We logged into her account, went to the cancel section and because there had been nothing used on the prime membership, there was an automatic cancel and refund option, no fuss, no hassle.
 
You don't get phone support unless you pay for the £100 a month plan billed at £1,200 annually, lol :rolleyes:

Now the agent is copying and pasting their policy to me in the emails, he's still not budging even though I pointed out that they keep turning it back on when I pay them.

I suggested this implied a bug in their system or a dark pattern, but he's having none of it.
 
VaderDSL said:
I too hate auto renew, it should be like Amazon. My mum accidentally signed and paid for a month of prime, she wasn't paying attention. We logged into her account, went to the cancel section and because there had been nothing used on the prime membership, there was an automatic cancel and refund option, no fuss, no hassle.
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I think they do this simply because they are so, so, sneaky about signing you up for Prime that they would otherwise get into trouble. It's really very easy to do it by accident. I'm sure Amazon get a pretty decent conversion rate of accidental signups converting to long-term Prime member, so it's worth whatever additional resource it requires in their customer service department.
 
VaderDSL said:
I too hate auto renew, it should be like Amazon. My mum accidentally signed and paid for a month of prime, she wasn't paying attention. We logged into her account, went to the cancel section and because there had been nothing used on the prime membership, there was an automatic cancel and refund option, no fuss, no hassle.
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Yeah Amazon are pretty good for this. I think they accept that people do forget that it's enabled and as long as they haven't used the service since they paid for it, they should be entitled to a 100% refund.

UberTiger said:
You don't get phone support unless you pay for the £100 a month plan billed at £1,200 annually, lol :rolleyes:

Now the agent is copying and pasting their policy to me in the emails, he's still not budging even though I pointed out that they keep turning it back on when I pay them.

I suggested this implied a bug in their system or a dark pattern, but he's having none of it.
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Assuming you've not used the service at all since you've been billed for it, I'd put in a complaint at this point. You could even lie about it and say that you did unselect the auto-renew, but it's evident that their system hasn't updated the option. Then threaten to go to your bank and flag it as a fraudulent transaction.

Then make sure you leave a negative review on places like trustpilot so other people don't get caught out by auto-renewal.

It's a practice that whilst handy, needs a no quibble refund guarantee if you've not used the service.
 
labcoattech said:
Same goes for insurance, they are setup to auto renew at the end of the year, in your case you forgot to turn off auto renew and they carried on providing a service.
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This is to stop people from driving around uninsured. It's the one thing I think should have/keep auto-renew on by default.
 
Already left them a 1 star on trust pilot - there's a lot of recent 1 start reviews, so I guess I'm not alone.

Oh man. I just googled the company name and complaints, they have a dedicated page on their official site for customer complaints and dispute resolution.

On that page they link to the European Commision website and say that if you're unhappy with any resolution and you're located in the EU you can use the EC's Online Dispute Resolution system

How many complaints do you have to be getting to have a dedicated page like this and tell people to take it up with the EC? Jesus.

It looks like they find an independent dispute resolution company in your area to handle it, but at a cost.

About the ODR platform

The Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) platform is provided by the European Commission to allow consumers and traders in the EU or Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein to resolve disputes relating to online purchases of goods and services without going to court.

The ODR platform is not linked to any trader. You can use it to send your complaint to an approved dispute resolution body.

A dispute resolution body is an impartial organization or individual that helps consumers and traders settle a dispute. This process is know as alternative dispute resolution, and it is usually quicker and cheaper than going to court.

The ODR platform only uses dispute resolution bodies approved by their national governments for quality standards relating to fairness , transparency , effectiveness and accessibility.

The ODR platform is easy to use and takes users through the dispute resolution process in a step-by-step fashion. It provides translations in all EU languages and has inbuilt time limits for resolving complaints.

How to make a complaint

1. Make a complaint
To create a complaint the consumer and trader both have to be based in the EU or Norway, Iceland, and Liechtenstein.

Start by filling in the online complaint form. Enter a few details about yourself, the trader, your purchase and what your complaint is about. Upload any relevant documents (e.g. invoice, purchase order).

You can submit your complaint right away, or save it as a draft.

You have 6 months to submit your complaint if you do save it as a draft. After that, all drafts are automatically deleted for data protection reasons.

2. Choose a dispute resolution body
Once the trader has agreed to use the dispute resolution procedure to address your complaint, you will have 30 days to agree on the dispute resolution body that will handle your dispute.

The trader will send you, via the platform, the name(s) of one or more dispute resolution bodies able to deal with it. It's advisable to read the information provided about these dispute resolution bodies (fees, geographical coverage, procedures, etc.) to make sure they handle complaints like yours.

You can agree to one of them to handle your complaint or request a new list. If you created your complaint without registering, you must now sign into the system to register. If necessary, create an ODR account.

If you cannot agree on a dispute resolution body within 30 days, your complaint will not be processed further through the platform.

3. Get an outcome
Your complaint will be sent to the dispute resolution body you agree to use.

If the dispute resolution body can handle your case and reaches an outcome, you will receive an alert through the platform.

If the dispute resolution body cannot handle your case, you will also receive a notification with the reason why.

You can view our detailed user guide for a step-by-step tutorial for using the ODR platform.
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I've had another email from him as I type this up, he's not budging at all no matter what I say.

As a last ditch attempt I've asked if he can credit my account to effectively use the month at a later date, so we'll see.

If he says no I'll just leave it. It's not enough money and I find the service too valuable in terms of what I've created in their system to screw things up over £25.

Puts a terrible taste in my mouth though.
 
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jpaul said:
From a eurosport experience I thought they had to send and email warning it was going to auto-renew ... so if they didn't ....
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That would be good to have in law, companies must send you a renewal notice x days before they actually take payment, rather than just the payment receipt once it's processed.
 
Adobe is the worst.. If you don't cancel the subscription the month before it expires then you will be signed up to another monthly paid annual subscription that you can't leave without paying a fee.
 
That sucks and doesn't sound right. It's not like it's a gym membership with a direct debit. You should be able to cancel instantly. Apparently Adobe have started to give discounts now though if you try to cancel your subscription. They'll sometimes offer you a cheaper retention deal.
 
Well, that's that. They have no system in place to provide credit on accounts, so I'm SOL.

At least it's only £25 and I'm not on their £100 plan.

Not worth pursuing it further, I don't want them to close my account or delete my data (which other complainers have reported happening to them after looking around online) as I'll need it again in the future and it's so tightly integrated into my workflow now.
 
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UberTiger said:
You don't get phone support unless you pay for the £100 a month plan billed at £1,200 annually, lol :rolleyes:

Now the agent is copying and pasting their policy to me in the emails, he's still not budging even though I pointed out that they keep turning it back on when I pay them.

I suggested this implied a bug in their system or a dark pattern, but he's having none of it.
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When dealing with stuff like this, email everything. Don’t even bother phoning or using a live chat thingy, straight to email.
 
Yeah, although on the flip side I had a subscription billing issues with an iOS app the other day and was completely stonewalled using the online/itunes store complaint system.

I think something in my typed out message triggered a filter and completely blocked me from submitting the message at all to request a refund.

Called Apple support instead and the lovely lady on the phone processed the refund for me straight away.
 
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