My complaint:

I was persuaded to get a Hotel Gold Card. I wasn’t impressed with the quality of the participating hotels and the deals so I decided to cancel my membership. Not before, however, they automatically took another €149 annual membership off my account in July 2010.

My fault I thought for not cancelling my membership – but they did take it off my account 2 months before my annual membership expired!!!

My new membership now ran from September 2010-September 2011 (note).

At the beginning of December 2010, they emailed me with the subject line: “Gratis extra verlenging van uw goldcard abonnement”

They said I could now extend my membership until 1 January 2013 (with “geen abonnementskosten”)…

… all I would have to do was pay €149 jaarabonnement WITHIN 5 DAYS.

Well naturally I ignored it as I didn’t want this ‘special deal’ [cough] and I already had paid membership up until September 2011 which I was cancelling anyways.

I emailed them at the beginning of January 2011 to ask them to cancel my membership.

No response.

Then on 10 March 2011, I got a threatening email saying I had incurred a €25 fine for not paying €149 in December and that they would refer me to a bailiff if I didn’t pay WITHIN 3 DAYS…

My god! WTF. What kind of evil company is this? If you don’t take them up on their ‘special deal’ you get a fine?!? Not least if they have already taken €149 off your account five months earlier for annual membership!!!

I have emailed and I have phoned. No-one answers the phone. No-one has responded to my emails.

So I have reported them to ING (where they now have a bank account) and I have blocked their various bank accounts so they cannot take any money from my account.

I also sent them another email (I assume someone is reading them as they don’t bounce back) telling them exactly what I thought of them… which is too rude to repeat here.

Desired solution:

What I'd really like is, of course, my €149 back and an apology. But I'm unlikely to get that.

So my point in writing this is actually to let other knows what a corrupt company they are and not to fall for this scam. That they should report them to the Consumentenbond and phone their banks to block their accounts.

I'm fine but I feel particularly sorry for vulnerable, particularly elderly people who may well have paid extra for this 'special deal' in case they were worried about bailiffs coming round.

I also want participating hotels to be aware of this too.