I subscribed to Your Party at its shambolic start and am now finding it impossible to cancel my membership. No one replies to emails. My local party branch told me it can’t help.
The portal requires me to open a new account and commit to another payment in order to cancel anything.
I tried to block the payments from my Amex card but they managed to sneak a £5 payment again this month. My attempt to reclaim the money from my card issuer was rejected. I’m so frustrated that they are helping themselves to my account when they’ve been messing people about so much.
My husband and I are of Asian heritage and have both noticed more outright racism this year. Your Party seemed like a beacon of hope for people like us, but it became a toxic joke overnight.
Name and address withheld
“A party that belongs to you,” proclaims the website of Your Party, set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, along with four other independent MPs, to challenge what it claims is a rigged political system.
Others have reported the same vain battle to cancel their subscriptions after months of public infighting among the founders. These are supporters who signed up when Sultana launched a membership portal in September with a different domain name to the party website and began collecting subscriptions.
A company, MOU Operations, set up to oversee the creation of Your Party administered the funds. Corbyn declared the portal unauthorised, while Sultana claimed she had been forced to act to “safeguard grassroots involvement”. By then more than 20,000 had signed up. Corbyn and the other founding MPs launched a second membership portal a week later.
It seems the two websites can’t communicate. Disillusioned subscribers can’t cancel via the new official portal, which has no access to their money or data, and can’t get a response from the old one. Moreover, they were obliged to sign up to recurring payments from their bank card that lack the consumer protections of the direct debit guarantee and are harder to cancel.
In October, subscribers were instructed by email to contact MOU for refunds; MOU’s directors promptly resigned, declaring that the responsibility and liability for donations and members’ data was “thrust upon them” without their agreement. Sultana became the sole director responsible for the estimated £500,000 raised through her membership portal. She told me that all subscriptions through that portal have now been cancelled.
“I am naturally sorry that your reader has had difficulty getting in touch, and assure them they will receive a full, immediate refund if they email herewego@yourparty-membership.uk,” she said.
A spokesperson for Your Party said: “The unauthorised portal has unfortunately caused serious issues for individual members and for Your Party. We had no knowledge of the portal and regret its publication. We know this has caused confusion and upset for many Your Party members and supporters, so, while refunds lie with MOU Operations Ltd, we have offered all those who signed up on Zarah’s portal three months’ free membership as an apology.”
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