The Scottish Mail on Sunday

We need urgent law reform to protect customers by Gillian Guy

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AT CITIZENS Advice we see hundreds of people every year who have lost money from being trapped in subscripti­ons they don’t want and find difficult to cancel.

Laws surroundin­g subscripti­ons need to be reformed urgently to stop firms being able to take advantage of their customers.

As The Mail on Sunday has highlighte­d, continuous payment authoritie­s which automatica­lly renew and can be incredibly difficult to cancel, are a major problem. Yes, they have an important role in the digital economy as they allow payments to be set up instantly, but the law needs to be tightened to ensure people are better protected.

One of our concerns is that rogue companies can use these continuous authoritie­s to take payments whenever they want, for as much as they want, without the customer being told this has happened.

We think a customer should have to re-authorise such a payment when there is a significan­t change to

the amount of money being collected.

But these payment authoritie­s are only part of the problem. More needs to be done across the board so consumers aren’t trapped into paying for services they don’t want.

We can all think of a time when we’ve tried to cancel a subscripti­on and found it really difficult.

Our research shows you’re not alone – four in ten consumers (44 per cent) who attempted to cancel a subscripti­on said they found it more difficult to cancel than to sign up. That’s why we’re calling for subscripti­ons to be as easy to get out of as they are to sign up to. If you sign up by ticking a box, then you should be able to cancel the subscripti­on by ticking a box.

Many of us have also signed up for a free trial and then been stung when we forget to cancel it.

Once your trial period ends, companies should have to get your permission to start charging you for the subscripti­on.

Companies are preying on the fact we lead busy lives. Many subscripti­ons are built in a way that takes advantage of the fact that people are likely to forget the renewal date and end up staying in contracts they don’t want.

Too many of us feel misled by advertisin­g that doesn’t make the automatic renewal clear, and then trapped when we struggle to cancel payments.

At the moment the balance of power is firmly in the hands of business. It’s time to put that power back in the hands of the customer.

The Government has made it clear they are working to stamp this out, but they need to act urgently.

We hope to see their detailed plans for reform and greater consumer protection in the Consumer White Paper to be published later this year.

In the meantime, companies need to act more responsibl­y.

They should want to build their businesses on serving their customers fairly – not tricking them into paying for things they don’t want and hoping they won’t notice.

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