‘Two pairs of Fabletics leggings ended up costing me £5,000’ | UK News

A woman who found she had spent thousands of pounds on a monthly subscription with a sportswear firm after having bought two pairs of leggings seven years earlier says she had “no idea” she had signed up to such a commitment.

Clare Lane said she had bought the leggings from Fabletics, an online sportswear retailer, in 2017 and “as far as I was concerned, it was a one-off purchase and that was the end of it”.

“I wore the leggings, they were decent. I hadn’t thought about it at all in that time,” Ms Lane said.

She told Radio 4’s You & Yours that she only realised she had also taken out a subscription when she and her husband were changing credit cards in October this year.

Purchases on their existing card were being automatically paid off from their joint bank account, she explained.

Ms Lane, from Leeds, said that when she went back to her credit card statements, she was horrified to find monthly payments of about £50 to Fabletics going back seven years – adding up to a total of almost £5,000.

The company has since refunded most of Ms Lane’s money, but its general manager for Europe told the that customers must also take “a little bit of responsibility”.

Fabletics was set up in 2013 and co-founded by Hollywood actress and singer Kate Hudson.

The company has also run high-profile collaborations with Lizzo and Khloe Kardashian.

It claims to be an innovator in bringing subscriptions to fashion, and its latest UK accounts showed revenue of just under £20m in 2024.

Fabletics runs a “VIP” subscription service which means that for a monthly fee of £59.99 its customers get store credit which can only be used to buy products from its website.

The firm has told the it tells customers four times during purchases that they are signing up for a subscription, adding that it is easy to cancel.

However, several of its customers have told the that was not made clear to them.

Ms Lane also said the firm’s emails had all filtered into her junk folder.

She said that getting her money back from the firm after discovering she had been paying a monthly subscription had proved difficult.

“It’s been a whole series of emails and phone calls, a lot of correspondence and formal recorded delivery letters,” she said.

“We’ve tried to go through our credit card company to retrieve some of the money. We’ve gone to Trading Standards.”

Other Fabletics customers told the they had faced similar problems.

Lowri De Gennaro, from Llangollen in Wales, said she had bought a pair of its leggings on a new credit card in March 2023.

She explained it was only 30 months later that she discovered Fabletics had billed her £54.99 a month for a VIP Membership.

Ms De Gennaro said she had since got back £500 from the company, but she had been told the remaining £1,100 would not be refunded as her VIP credits had since expired.

“The customer service is dreadful. I email daily to no avail. I Facebook Message daily and I am still waiting for a resolution,” Ms De Gennaro said.

Meanwhile, a woman from Lanarkshire in Scotland, who only wanted to be known as Claire, told You & Yours that she had lost £2,000 in a similar manner.

She said the experience had left her feeling “physically sick”.

Mark Ralea, Fabletics’ general manager for Europe, told You & Yours the firm did attempt to contact by email any customers who were building large credit balances.

Mr Ralea also defended the company’s use of a subscription model.

“We want to be as sustainable as possible, so we know how many products we are producing based on our subscription base,” he said.

“If you’re not going to a gym for one month, the money is gone. In our case, you can still use that money for products, which is a pretty fair deal compared to any other membership.

“We are trying to be as transparent as possible with every single customer.”

Mr Ralea said the firm had refunded most of Ms Lane’s money out of goodwill, and he insisted VIP subscriptions were easy to cancel.

However, when challenged on this, Mr Ralea responded by saying his customers had responsibilities too.

“I’m checking my credit card statements every month. We try to help as much as we can, but a little bit of responsibility is on people as well,” he said.

The government has estimated that UK consumers lose £1.6bn a year in unwanted subscriptions.

New laws on so-called “subscription traps”, forcing companies to be clearer about subscriptions and make it easier for customers to cancel without penalty, were due to be introduced in the spring.

However, the Department of Business and Trade has confirmed these have been delayed until next autumn at the earliest after retailers raised questions.

Mr Ralea told You & Yours he believed Fabletics already complied with the new rules.

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