Scott complained because his bank wouldn't help him cancel a recurring payment he signed up for by mistake.
What happened
Scott signed up to try some weight loss pills. He chose a box of 50 and was excited to get them almost for free, only paying £1 for post and packaging.
During the ordering process, Scott had to enter his card details and tick a box to confirm that he agreed to the terms and conditions. There was a link to read these on a separate web page, but he didn’t click it.
After a month, Scott got another box of 50 pills. Thinking they were part of the trial, he accepted the package and kept taking the pills. The next month, the same thing happened.
But when Scott checked his bank statements, he discovered that he'd been charged £89.99 for the second and third boxes – adding up to £179.98. The business had set up a continuous payment authority (CPA) that started when his ‘free trial’ ended. This is a type of recurring payment that businesses can set up on a customer’s card account with permission to take payments when they’re due.
Scott tried to reach out to the business and cancel his payments, but couldn’t get an answer. Thinking he’d been scammed, he complained to his bank, which told him to complain to the business.
Unhappy with this response, Scott came to us.
What we said
We didn’t agree with the bank’s argument that the problem was between Scott and the business. Scott had taken steps to try to cancel his unwanted CPA with the company that sold him the pills, and he couldn’t. At this point, it was his bank’s responsibility to step in.
We also thought the website for the weight loss pills was deliberately unclear. The CPA was described in the terms and conditions, but many people don’t read these fully. The site itself didn't mention the CPA, only the £1 payment.
Based on this, we thought that the CPA was unauthorised. But we didn’t ask Scott’s card provider to refund him, because he’d finished all three boxes of pills. He’d used the goods he’d purchased.
Instead, we asked the bank to cancel Scott’s CPA immediately and pay him a small amount of compensation for handling the situation badly.