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We've spoken to two Watchdog viewers who told us that catalogue company Easylife has taken money from their bank accounts without their knowledge for subscriptions they say they never asked for.

We met Sue who bought fruit trees from Easylife three years ago. Her bank statements indicate that after she bought the trees, around £50 was paid to Easylife from her account every few months – totalling around £450. She also saw two more recent payments to something called The Rewards Club. Sue says she wasn’t contacted about any ongoing payments to Easylife after she bought the trees, and didn’t agree to membership of any rewards club.

We’ve also spoken to 81-year-old Rodney, who says he received three letters confirming subscriptions, including for The Puzzle Club and The Cooking Club, that he and daughter Sarah didn’t recognise. Rodney thought nothing more of it. But then he found that money for the clubs was leaving his account. Sarah flagged the suspicious transactions to her Dad’s bank, which put a stop to them. But he was still left out of pocket for something he’s adamant he didn’t sign up to.

We wrote to Easylife and it said:

Easylife Limited and The Rewards Club Limited, with effect from 29 November 2024, stopped selling the clubs, via both outbound and inbound calls.

As responsible companies, Easylife Limited and The Rewards Club Limited with regret, concluded that selling the clubs, in particular
during outbound calls, did cause some distress to a small number of its customers. Easylife believe, based on their experience of looking into these kinds of issues historically, that some of these customers may unfortunately have subsequently forgotten that they previously agreed to subscribe for club memberships during sales calls, which fact prompted our clients to take
this step.

Over the years, Easylife/The Rewards Club did make every effort to treat customers fairly in all their interactions with them. They introduced robust safeguards, including implementing best practice obligations on the telesales company which The Rewards Club used, including by the introduction of a dedicated vulnerable persons policy. Additionally, The Rewards Club greatly simplified its club cancellation processes: customers can now, for example, simply type "cancel rewards club" into Google for immediate assistance. Despite these measures, Easylife Limited and The Rewards Club Limited do recognise that some challenges have persisted within its
customer demographic. As a result, Easylife took the decision at the end of November to
discontinue the clubs business effective immediately.

Easylife Limited (and its predecessors in business) have been trading for over 32 years. Easylife Limited has served well over seven million customers with well over fifteen million orders. The vast majority of Easylife Limited's customers are satisfied with the service they receive. Easylife Limited's rating on Trustpilot (here) of 4.2 out of 5 based on 87,743 reviews (as of today) speaks for itself.
In 2015 Easylife Limited started offering to its customers memberships of various clubs. The clubs were sold to Easylife Limited customers in two ways. Firstly, if a customer called Easylife Limited to place an order they were offered a club by Easylife Limited on behalf of The rewards Club. Secondly, The Rewards Club Limited used a third party telesales company to call Easylife customers.

Customers either calling Easylife Limited to effect a product purchase or having been called by the telesales company used by The Rewards Club Limited were taken through a script that required them to give express consent to any club purchase. If they didn’t give such express consent then there was no sale of a club membership and the customer was not charged. Customers were told clearly what they had signed up for and how frequently payments would be taken. All relevant details were summarised at the end of the call and the customer was asked again if they consented.

Membership of the clubs can be cancelled with immediate effect, pursuant to the Rewards Club Limited's no quibble cancellation and refund policy, at any time via a number of easy to use methods including by phone, by email or by post. Those methods are identified:

- In the welcome letter that club members get when they join.
- On Easylife Limited's website at item no. 3 on its FAQ page.
- In multiple places on the website of the Rewards Club.
- During inbound sales calls made to Easylife Limited by its customers and during
outbound sales calls made by the telesales company, a statement is read out to the
Easylife customer giving them a phone number they can call to cancel their order: the
Easylife customer is asked if they have a pen/pencil and paper to hand to write down
the number, which is then slowly read out to them.
- A letter is sent to the customer ten days after the commencement of the trial, if they have
not cancelled at that point, notifying them that the payment for the club membership will
be taken shortly.
- Finally The Rewards Club has recently rolled out a change to what appears on Easylife
customers’ credit card and debit card statements: they now show a dedicated enquiry
number the customer can call, which they can use to cancel their memberships if they
so wish.

Easylife says it could hardly have done more to inform its customers of how they could cancel a
club membership, which they had agreed to subscribe for. Notwithstanding all the above, mistakes did of course occasionally happen when large numbers of calls were being made. When those mistakes were drawn to the attention of The Rewards Club Limited or the telesales company it used, they ensured that the facts were properly investigated and appropriate actions were taken.

In October 2022, the Information Commissioner fined Easylife Limited £130,000 (reduced to £104,000 due to an early payment discount) in relation to Easylife's historical failure to TPS screen customer data prior to passing it on to the telesales company, referred to above. That was due to Easylife having received the wrong advice from its then data protection advisor. In relation to Mr. Rodney Gould Easylife says that he is not and never has been a customer of either them or the Rewards Club. They say that he was the customer of an unrelated company which took payments from him.

Sales reps are told to stick to particular scripts as closely as possible so as to ensure consistency and that relevant details pertaining to any particular club product such as the cost, payment frequency, the ability to cancel and the phone number to be used to cancel are given in each and every call. However sales reps may deviate from scripts to answer questions raised by caller if, for example, it is apparent that the caller has not understood anything that has been communicated to them. It says that the contracts it has with the telesales company made it absolutely clear that no customer of Easylife Limited was to be pressured into agreeing to purchase any club product.

In relation to Rev Sue Humphreys Easylife says that contrary to what’s on her bank statement, the unauthorised payments taken after her purchase didn’t go to Easylife or The Rewards Club. It says that Easylife and the Rewards Club were indicated as the recipients because of a description error at a telesales company which was used by them and an unrelated company selling similar clubs. They say it was that unrelated company which Sue bought her fruit trees from, and which took the payments from her account.

They unreservedly apologised to Rev Sue and say that this is the first and only instance of this description error occurring.
Both Rev. Sue and Mr. Gould have since been refunded.

You can watch the full VT here for 28 days - /iplayer/episode/m0026yg0/the-one-show-15012025?seriesId=unsliced