Termination Experts: the cancellation service you've never heard of, until you receive its bill

Which? has spoken to several people who say they were unexpectedly contacted by a cancellation service called 'Termination Experts' to be chased for unpaid charges. 

Termination Experts says that it cancels services on your behalf by sending a cancellation letter by post or email for a fee. But cancelling any service should be possible by contacting the company you have a subscription with directly and Which? has concerns that people feel they're being charged for a service they didn't agree to. 

Here, we look at some of the complaints shared with us and what to do if you're being charged for a service you didn't ask for.

‘I clicked on a pop-up while trying to cancel a subscription’

When Ena’s daughter went to cancel her Specsavers contact lenses subscription online, she visited its website but claims she accidentally clicked on a pop-up from Termination Experts, not realising it was a third-party company.

Her daughter filled in her details and, after a while, received a demanding email saying she had to pay £32 by a specific date or she would have another £20 to pay.

Ena’s daughter got in touch with Specsavers and later told Which? that the company confirmed that it never received a letter from Termination Experts asking it to cancel the subscription.

‘It looked like PureGym's branding’

‘I searched Google to find a way to cancel my PureGym membership and clicked on what I thought was PureGym. It was the right colours.’ Clara (not her real name) told Which?.

‘It was only after I clicked cancel that I realised. I contacted them straight after to say I didn’t want to use their services.' Clara told us that Termination Experts said that even though she had already cancelled her membership directly with her gym, she still owed them £32 for their service, as per the terms she agreed to.

Clara told us that Termination Experts contacted her multiple times using different methods. 

Complaints on social media

A Facebook group with 1,400 members features complaints from people who say they received unexpected communication from Termination Experts.

Reviews of Termination Experts complain of receiving notifications via letter, email and text to make payments to the company, despite claiming to have never heard of it or visited its website.

Some people said they'd been contacted by Termination Experts despite never cancelling their subscription or membership with the company mentioned.

Others stated that they had spoken to the company who Termination Experts claimed to have cancelled their memberships with, and the company said it hadn’t received any such request.

Some comments mentioned a pop-up appearing on the legitimate website of the company they were attempting to cancel their membership with, while others say they searched Google to cancel their subscription and were led to the Termination Experts website, which they claimed mimicked the site of the genuine company.

Targeted adverts

At the time of writing, Termination Experts had hundreds of live adverts on Google promoting various subscription cancellation services for well-known brands.

Which? spoke to several companies whose customers had claimed that they were contacted by Termination Experts after cancelling their subscriptions. All of them told us that they weren’t associated with Termination Experts and that pop-ups from it weren’t found on their websites.

Some said that they hadn’t been contacted by the company on behalf of customers and others said that they had. One company told Which? that it had reported Termination Experts to the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Another company informed us that Termination Experts are bidding on its brand term in order to appear at the top of Google’s search results. It also told us that it had received over 160 emails from Termination Experts in the past two weeks and around 400 letters from them in the past two months.

What to do if you’re contacted by Termination Experts

Some people claim that they have successfully ignored communications and eventually stopped hearing from them.

If you've been contacted by Termination Experts, contact the company referenced by them directly and ask if a subscription or membership has been cancelled on your behalf. If it hasn’t, the service you supposedly owe money for hasn’t been carried out.

When buying services from a company online, in most cases, you should be given a cooling-off period. This is the period of time you have to change your mind about something you've purchased from a distance. This starts when you enter the contract and ends 14 days after. The company should not provide the service before the end of the cooling-off period, unless the consumer has expressly requested it.

To cancel a service, you’ll need to tell the seller within the 14-day cooling-off period that you don’t want it anymore. It's best to do this via email so you have a written record. However, if you asked the company to begin the service before the end of the cooling-off period, and the service has been completed, you won’t be able to cancel.

In its terms and conditions, Termination Experts state that there is no cooling-off period due to the service taking place entirely within the statutory cooling-off period.

Which? contacted Termination Experts using two different email addresses listed on its website and didn't receive a response.