Ofcom should ban Automatic Renewals

[Anonymous User]

Now TV you sneaky thieves,

I've only just noticed, after several months of you taking over £30 a month off me that you have  automatic renewal as a default. 

You can read the small print to me all you want but the truth is automatic renewals are clearly designed to passively steal money from people who might not be particularly attentive or are too busy to keep an eye on such things. I hate you for this and I'm reporting your practices to Ofcom.

I work in the broadcast tv industry and will be talking about your scumbag practices to my colleagues. You low-life money grubbing losers.

What really irks me is that you design this system knowing that you will benefit from people who forget to switch off the renewal. It's so cynical.

I want a complete refund on the months other than my first month of use. You might want to consider that you sent me no correspondence or invoices for each of the subsequent months.

Mark.

[RoyB]

@Anonymous User 

Bizarre….

[Anonymous User]

Seriously, Roy! How much are Now TV paying you for this comment?

I've cancelled three times with this company, and they are still attempting to take money from my account. 

The call to my bank is what stopped further payments. But it should never have come to that. NOW TV also cancelled the subscriptions themselves! 

All I was offered was half of the money they took, after I cancelled. 

Daylight robbery at it's best!

All of this I have proof of..

The best one is an email saying I purchased another package, yet a screen shot I took on the first day of my enquiry shows clearly, no devices were used from the day of cancellation.

But hey! I'm fully aware I'll never be able to take them down with Offcom, Ombudsman Services or anyone else who pretends to give a flying... 

It's a real shame though.. As this is 100% fully certified a rip off company! 

I'm sure they pay you well.. With the money they stole from me and many MANY others.. So Bravo to you!

[RoyB]

@Anonymous User 

Well, somewhat to my surprise, I brought @Anonymous User (who of course isn’t me - I deprecate sock puppetry and certainly wouldn’t do it) round a bit.

Rare on the internet, alas, but not entirely unheard of.

So, are you going to be a lost cause, or can we unpick your issue a bit? At my usual rate, to both you and to Now, which is ‘free’. It sure as hell isn’t Now putting bread on my table, though when a certain make of car goes by, I think ‘Well, that owner helped’ 😛

So I guess you have the three cancellation emails?

And it’s possible to buy a package and never use it, so it never shows up in your devices. Unlikely, but it means that that device list is only indicative, not proof positive.

But the price of using the internet is eternal vigilance. Check your bank accounts every month, as there are real scammers out there, not just a streaming service which thinks its customers can look after themselves, when we have daily evidence that not all those users can actually do that.

We found a rogue 98p debit in my wife’s bank account, and so, Clifford Stoll-like, we chased it down. Apparently, after a data breach, scammers would take a tiny amount of money; if it’s noticed they would back off, but if not, they would come back for the rest 😢

This particular incipient scam is now thwarted by 2FA

But it wouldn’t, even then, have threatened any money Now might give me, because they have never given me any.

I do this because I like doing it. You might be the grit in my Now Vaseline, but hey, there’s plenty of Vaseline out there 😛

Oh, and if it hasn’t sunk in yet ⬇️⬇️⬇️

[Anonymous User]

Idiot.what a reply

[RoyB]

Cheers @Anonymous User 

Care to pick my reply apart and tell me what’s wrong with it?

Your blanket dismissal doesn’t give me much to go on 😢

[Anonymous User]

You would think you owed NOW the way banging on.worst company I have dealt with ever.nothing compares to the crap I have had to put up with.the blatant lies on calls and then admitting on live chat not trained properly by MANAGER after same question being asked around 14 times!! Lied 14 times.then admitted truth.screen spotted it all.THEN cut me off because I asked why continue lying when you are manager?!

Spent hours today on calls chasing shadows and speaking to competent morons.no managers ever.told all on tea break.. ALL SAME TIME?? WTF. Confirmed to me 3times by 3 dif people called back by manager as requested I was to be treated as vulnerable person and flow procedures with this.

Nope.hung up on.no call back. Money STILL not in account.

Disgrace.if tomorrow no change this page will be interesting reading.every name time date and call and lie will be on here.all of it.

Passi g to ofcom be ause lies.breaking own procedures and no Interest in any guides on their official template they boast they adhere too. I will question it all.the stress has been terrible and they no help AT ALL.

So ye..THATS picked apart for you eh.

Could barely understand a single person on the calls either. hence the constant dismissing me and repeating a script. 

Told if doesn't work out then that it..

That a comment along with just wait we will call in 72 hours can't help.cant transfer can't do a bloody thing.useless.all of them.

prob crap wages so why make effort..even when finally one manager olive chat..lying to me...then admitted..but iv screen shotted it all. Told no compliance or quity assurance.no reference to keep any calls no name beside notes.cant see any previous notes-all lies.

Can't have calls listened to.have to hang uo call back.

Hang up wait for  call.

Hang uo can't help further.

Absolute idiots the lot of them.

Taking it far far further.

do THATS ripped your crappy remark apart.

[redchiz1]

@Anonymous User Do you have any active NOW TV memberships showing in My Account? Do you have records of the payments made? I do, that is normal. If there is something untoward with your account please let us know. We can only try to help if we understand what the problem is. 

[RoyB]

@Anonymous User 

Well no, you haven’t picked my reply apart at all, you have just gone off on one about a very bad experience you seem to have had on Live Chat, completely unconnected to anything I said. Unless your beef is that I, and the other customers who commit our time here trying patiently help fellow customers with issues, don’t fit in with your worldview that Now is a nest of lying thieving charlatans and vipers.

Well, I can’t help that, sorry.

But I will certainly be interested to read your coherent chapter and verse about how Now has got you so riled up, when you publish it tomorrow, not least to know what your problem with Now actually is, as I don’t think you have described it yet.

[Anonymous User]

ofcom should ban nowtv altogether, they sell a product they cannot provide.

[RoyB]

@Anonymous User 

And yet here you are….

Which product are we talking about?

Is it Now Broadband, with its 550,000 subscribers?

https://www.choose.co.uk/broadband/guide/market-share/

Or Now streaming, which 13% of all UK households have accessed in the last year?

https://www.finder.com/uk/tv-streaming-statistics

Just asking….

But those are big numbers for ‘products that Now cannot provide’, either way 😛