Team Knowhow Cloud Storage - charged for years without use

S23G · 14 July 2021 at 12:14PM

Due to my mother-in-law (MIL) asking us to look into an email from her bank regarding a possible fraudulent payment, we discovered they have been paying for Team Knowhow Cloud Storage every year since 2013 without ever making use of it (£30-40/year,approx £250 total).

This started when they purchased a laptop from Curry's (must have been a very good salesman as they have no need or interest in Cloud Storage at all!), and then an annual email gives them notice the next payment of their rolling subscription is due to be taken. Given awareness and caution of potential scam emails, of which she receives quite a few, my MIL ignored these as she was unfamiliar with the company name, unfamiliar with the service it was referring to (we had to explain Cloud Storage to them) and received one email once a year so it didn't become familiar either. Even if they had been convinced to give it a go (Team Knowhow insists they must have signed up themselves), they certainly have no need for it, no interest since, nor used it at all. My MIL called and has had this year's payment cancelled, and cancelled the account, but they won't give any refund beyond that due to the annual email. I'm quite angry that they have taken over £200 from them for nothing! I feel it was mis-sold and easy for people similar to my parents-in-law to be taken advantage of (and surely Team Knowhow must see it wasn't activated/accessed).

Has anyone faced this or heard about it before, and if so have you received any refund for previous years? Or any advice if it's worth pursuing further via other routes to get the money back? Sorry for the long message and thanks in advance for any thoughts or sharing of experience!

S23G · 14 July 2021 at 12:14PM

PS Apologies if this isn't in the right category - wasn't sure where to add it!

tacpot12 · 14 July 2021 at 12:59PM

I think this is worth a complaint to the CEO. As you say, it is all to easy for those who are not technically savy to be bamboozelled into buying something they don't need.

I can see from Curry's point of view they didn't know that your MIL didn't want the service, but the fact that they didn't check that the service was being used does seem to be questionable, because it should be relatively easy to link the renewal email to a check that there is some data stored on the service. Really they should not auto renew if the service hasn't been used in 12 months. This is plenty of time for someone to get to grips with their new laptop and start using all the services.

Your Mother-in-Law has been receiving bank statements throughout the time, so will have seen the payments going out , so legally Curry's are on solid ground, so any refund would be a "Good Will" payment for the mis-selling.

S23G · 14 July 2021 at 1:46PM

All very good points, thank you. I do indeed understand that they don't need to give us the refund back - just feel very frustrated with the situation! I personally do check bank statements, but my parents in law don't really look at the details as they only spend on a few things and didn't really notice the one-off payments. I agree it shouldn't be an auto renew if the service hasn't been used for the previous period of time, and will mention this in an email to the CEO as you suggest. Thanks again!

Chino · 20 July 2021 at 6:10PM

tacpot12 said:

but the fact that they didn't check that the service was being used does seem to be questionable, because it should be relatively easy to link the renewal email to a check that there is some data stored on the service. Really they should not auto renew if the service hasn't been used in 12 months.

Why? If I've subscribed to a service, I'd be quite annoyed if the supplier unilaterally terminated the service because it felt I hadn't used it sufficiently.