Last year I signed up for a £1 Gourmet Society membership trial offer for three months. I never received the original membership card but chased them and eventually got this. In the original email with my order confirmation it stated: Important note: The Gourmet Society is an on-going membership subscription service. You will be sent a renewal towards the end of your Initial Term (detailed above) and your subscription will automatically renew at the renewal date (and at the end of each subsequent term) until cancelled. Details of how to cancel are contained in your renewal pack. If you change address, please contact us. I never received the renewal pack, which as per the above also included the details on how to cancel allegedly. I noticed that I have been charged £39.95 on my latest card statement so I contacted them yesterday. They said they would not refund this as I had not cancelled, but will not acknowledge that I never received the above, which is apparently my issue. Their customer resolutions manager was due to call be back between 0930 - 1230 today but never called. I called them this afternoon and they were due to call back at 1700 but there's been no call. I tried to call them a few minutes ago but their lines close at 1700. I've now been charged £39.95 for a service / product I don't even have, and they won't refund. Has anyone been in a similar situation / any advice please? Next time I won't trust a company to send the renewal notice, I will also make a note to call them [which I would have done if they hadn't said they send a renewal notice.....]. Thanks.

To cut a long story short, I had to cancel my Gourmet Society subscription by instructing my bank to block payments as the renewal correspondence hadn't arrived in enough time for me to action it with GS themselves. I notice many other people aren't so lucky and GS refuse to give a refund after having taken the payment against their will. GS are phoning and emailing me saying I owe them another year's subscription as I hadn't cancelled directly through them. Are they right?