15th March, 9:47 in the Morning

You’re reconciling the business account when a payment stops you. Three and a half thousand pounds, to the agency whose contract you were fairly sure had just ended.

You find the agreement and scroll to section 8.

“This Agreement shall automatically renew for successive twelve (12) month periods unless either party provides written notice of non-renewal at least sixty (60) days prior to the expiration of the then-current term.”

Your term ran to the end of February. Sixty days before that puts the deadline in the first week of January, which was ten weeks ago, in the middle of everything else January contains.

So you’ve just committed to another twelve months, roughly forty-two thousand pounds, with an agency you’d already privately decided against.

I’ve had this conversation more times than any other. Never with a careless owner. Always with a busy one, which is the whole design.

---

Why the Window Is Always Missed

Work the calendar through and the reason becomes obvious.

A twelve-month term with sixty days’ notice means your real decision point falls at month ten. Not month eleven, not the final quarter. Month ten, while the campaign is still running and nothing has come to a head.

Month ten is precisely when nobody thinks about renewal. You’re two months from a natural review, results are what they’ve been all year, and there’s no prompt of any kind. By month eleven, when the question does surface on its own, the door has already shut behind you.

Nor will anything remind you. Agencies grow noticeably quiet in the weeks before a renewal window, and I say that as someone who watched it happen from the inside. Nobody schedules a call to point out that you could leave next month.

Read the wording carefully too, because the phrasing varies in ways that matter. “No fewer than sixty days prior” means any time before the deadline. “Between thirty and sixty days before expiry” means notice sent too early is as void as notice sent too late.

---

Four Cousins of the Same Clause

Auto-renewal rarely travels alone. Four other provisions do similar work, each deciding in advance how long you’ll keep paying after you’ve stopped wanting to.

The discounted trial

A three-month starter package at half price feels like a sensible way to test an agency. Read what it converts into.

One e-commerce owner I worked with signed exactly that, a three-month trial at fifty per cent off. It rolled automatically into a twelve-month agreement carrying ninety days’ notice. Four months in, with performance clearly poor, he found he owed another nine months regardless. The low-risk trial had been the hook for the commitment sitting underneath it.

Price escalation

Some agreements let fees rise without asking you. An inflation-linked adjustment is ordinary and reasonable. “Fees may be adjusted to prevailing market rates” is neither, because the agency decides what the market rate is.

Ask for a cap in writing, expressed as a number or a published index. A supplier unwilling to name a ceiling is telling you they’d like the option.

Assignment

You chose these people. Their approach, their sector knowledge, the strategist who impressed you in the room.

An assignment clause can let the agency transfer your contract to whoever acquires them, without asking. The obligations follow you; the reasons you signed do not. Ask for written consent to be required, and for the right to leave if the people named on the account change.

Jurisdiction and arbitration

Buried near the signature block, and worth thirty seconds of your attention.

A UK business can find its disputes must be heard elsewhere, or settled by private arbitration rather than a court. Arbitration is not inherently unfair, but it usually costs more and happens out of sight. Either way the effect is the same: when pursuing a claim costs more than the claim is worth, the clause has quietly removed your recourse.

---

The Diary Entry That Prevents All of This

Everything above is defeated by ten minutes on the day you sign.

Find four dates in the contract and put them in your diary before you file it away: the start date, the day your cancellation window opens, the day it closes, and the renewal date itself. The third one is the only one that can hurt you, so give it three reminders rather than one, at ninety, sixty and thirty days out.

I use scheduled emails to myself rather than calendar alerts, because a calendar alert can be dismissed in half a second on a busy morning and an email sits in the inbox until it’s dealt with. Whatever you use, do it while the contract is still open in front of you. Nobody has ever come back to this later.

This one habit removes the entire category of problem described on this page.

---

What to Ask For Before You Sign

• No automatic renewal at all. If the agency wants another year, it can ask for one. Continuing should be a decision rather than a default, and framing it that way is hard to argue against.
• If they insist, put the duty on them. Written notice to you, ninety days before any renewal takes effect. That single amendment turns a trap into a diary reminder they’re obliged to send.
• A capped escalation, stated as a figure or an index. Not “market rates”.
• Consent required for assignment, and an exit if the named team changes.

Watch the pressure that arrives alongside the paperwork, too. Limited capacity this quarter. A rate that expires on Friday. A competitor about to launch. In my experience these deadlines evaporate the moment you say you’d like a few days with the document, which tells you what they were for.

An agency that won’t give you a week to read a year-long commitment has answered a question you hadn’t asked yet.

These clauses govern time. For the ones that shift risk, including ownership, scope and the cap on what the agency can owe you, work through the rest of the contract before you sign anything.

---

If the Renewal Has Already Fired

Most advice on this subject arrives too late to be useful. So, assuming the charge has already landed:

Check how notice was defined, not just when. Contracts often specify a method as well as a deadline. If the clause required written notice and you raised it on a call in November, you may be in a weaker position than you think. Occasionally the reverse is true, and an email you’d forgotten meets the requirement precisely.

Ask for a shortened renewal rather than a release. Agencies refuse cancellations far more readily than they refuse compromises. Six months instead of twelve, or a reduced fee for the remaining term, is a proposal a commercial director can approve. “Let me out” usually isn’t.

Know that “standard wording” is a position, not a verdict. The Competition and Markets Authority’s guidance on unfair contract terms is worth reading if a provision genuinely caught you off guard. I’m not a solicitor and this isn’t advice on your circumstances, but knowing the question exists changes the tone of the conversation.

If you’re staying anyway, use the year. A renewal you didn’t want is still twelve months of leverage you haven’t spent. Set the standard now, in writing, and hold them to it. And if you’ve decided this is the last term regardless, the groundwork for leaving starts well before you give notice.

---

Send Me the Contract and I’ll Find the Dates

Free, written, and yours to keep either way.

What you receive:

• Your four dates, written out, ready to put straight in the diary
• Exactly how notice must be served for it to count
• Whether escalation, assignment or jurisdiction clauses are present
• The amendments worth requesting, ordered by how likely they are to land

If the renewal has already gone through, I’ll tell you what room you’ve realistically got left.

Request Your Free Contract Review →