Cancelling services: why is leaving so hard to do?

Fans of the TV series Friends will remember when Chandler wants to quit the gym. He goes to the health club to cancel his membership, but they bring out “Lycra/Spandex-covered gym treat, Maria”. Chandler then agrees to the gym taking $50 from his account each month for ever, and Ross signs up, too.

But this fictional gym isn’t the only membership tricky to cancel. A whole raft of companies, from insurers and telecoms companies to magazines and slimming clubs, make it easy to subscribe, but annoyingly difficult to leave.

When I bought a car insurance policy from Esure last year, completing the application and paying the premium online was fairly straightforward. But if I didn’t want to auto-renew 12 months later, there was no option online – I had to phone Esure instead. Presumably the hope is I’d forget to call.

Esure says: “We have found that most customers wish to renew automatically … saving them the hassle of having to renew manually and ensuring they adhere to the legal requirement of car insurance. Customers are provided with a number to call should they not wish to renew and staff will activate this immediately.”

Weight Watchers (recently rebranded WW), Ocado Smart Pass, British Gas Homecare and, ironically, consumer champion Which? are among a raft of other companies happy to let customers sign up online but require a call to leave.

Cathinka Guldberg, 51, a speech therapist from South London, signed up to Weight Watchers online in August last year. When she decided to cancel a few months later, the only way was by phone. She says: “You can do everything on the WW app … the one thing you can’t do is cancel – the only way is calling. Then, obviously, they try and persuade you to stay.”

WW says members who want to leave can request the cancellation with an online coach via the WW app, or call customer services.

Mobile phone and broadband firms are reluctant to let customers go without a fight. Sky insists you call or use web chat. Even then, it doesn’t make it easy, with some reports of web chats lasting for an hour or more.

Alistair Cunningham, 39, a financial adviser from Surrey, signed up for Sky in 2009 and decided to leave in 2015. “You have to call them or use web chat,” he says. “Sky wanted the last four digits of the card I used to sign up – but it had long been destroyed. We managed to cancel in the end but the question about the original card was farcical.”

Sky says that asking for the last four digits on the card used to set up an account was “not normally” how it verified information”. It says customers could cancel via phone, live chat, letter or email but it would often phone customers to confirm.

James Daley, founder of Fairer Finance, says if customers can sign up and manage accounts online, there’s no excuse for not making it easy to cancel online. “Companies need to have confidence in the services they’re selling and allow customers to make active choices.”