The Telegraph: most-reported complaints
Automated analysis of 115 public Trustpilot reviews published 2025-12-07 to 2026-09-19. TrustScore 1.4 from 1,082 total reviews — see the Trustpilot page. Quick answer: is The Telegraph legit? Issues below reflect what reviewers reported, not findings of wrongdoing.
Reviewers most often report difficulties with subscription management and customer support. Specifically, 48% of complaints cite a subscription trap, while 32% mention that the service is hard to cancel. Additionally, 18% of reviewers state that support is unhelpful, and another 18% report that refunds have been refused.
Trustpilot lists this business as no longer collecting reviews. New reviews are not currently being gathered for its profile. See the Trustpilot page for the current status.
The company claimed its Trustpilot profile on 2020-02-28. We last checked this profile on 2026-09-26 and found 0 new reviews. These are facts Trustpilot publishes about the profile, as of our last harvest.
Forum footprint: 2,805 MoneySavingExpert forum discussions mention this company (browse). Roughly 0 of the top, relevance-sorted search results were posted in the last 90 days — an approximate figure by construction, not a true recency count. Recent thread titles: “The Telegraph newspaper - free gardening books this weekend”, “E: 28/05 Win an iPad mini with the Telegraph!”, “Free Roll of Christmas Wrapping Paper @ Waitrose with the Telegraph”.
Elsewhere: 3.4★ on Google (70 reviews) — a 2.0-star gap between its Trustpilot and Google scores.
TrustScore over time
1.3 → 1.4 across 9 census measurements since 2026-08-24. Our own record, independent of Trustpilot’s display.
Reply behaviour over time
Solid: % of negative reviews replied to. Dashed: typical days to reply. Both as reported on this company’s Trustpilot profile, recorded whenever our census re-checked it and a figure had changed — the gaps between points are not equal: 2026-08-24 (0%, 0.0d) · 2026-08-27 (0%, 0.0d) · 2026-08-30 (0%, 0.0d) · 2026-09-05 (0%, 0.0d) · 2026-09-08 (0%, 0.0d) · 2026-09-11 (0%, 0.0d) · 2026-09-14 (0%, 0.0d) · 2026-09-17 (0%, 0.0d) · 2026-09-20 (0%, 0.0d).
Severity: 32% of this company’s 92 graded complaints were classified as severe (money lost, an essential service cut off, or a problem unresolved for months). See the harm index.
Reviewers here waited a median of 0.7 days between the experience and publishing their negative review (105 reviews record both dates).
What their policy promises
support availability: as quickly as possible
“Our team will endeavour to fix the problem as quickly as possible.”
support availability: one business day
“We aim to respond to all enquiries within one business day.”
Quoted verbatim from the company’s own published policy (source page); complaint counts are census classifications. As of 2026-09-23.
Policy-page monitoring
We monitor this company’s published policy page for changes. No changes have been detected since we started watching on 2026-09-01.
Automated change detection on the company’s own published policy page — a record of when the page changed, not a judgement on what changed.
Sector benchmark: subscription trap makes up 48% of this company’s complaints vs a 15% median across 20 ranked companies in its sector.
Review velocity: 138 of this company’s 1,082 Trustpilot reviews (13%) were written in the last 12 months.
What are the most common complaints about The Telegraph?
Subscription trap
44 reports · 48% of complaintssteady“They make it extremely difficult to cancel. Don't accept email cancellation.”
5 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“charged £34.99 per month immediately on sign up.”
4 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“Keep getting emails despite unsubscribing. They keep trying to charge me.”
3 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Hard to cancel
29 reports · 32% of complaintssteady“They make it extremely difficult to cancel. Don't accept email cancellation.”
5 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“You have to telephone to cancel.”
5 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“cancellation process is so broken and obstructive”
3 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Support unhelpful
17 reports · 18% of complaintsfalling“cancellation process is so broken and obstructive”
3 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“It feels like deliberately hostile subscription design: easy to join, difficult to leave.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“I had an offer and the subscription said I could cancel whenever I wanted. Well that means if I go onto their website investigate how I can cancel and finally see that I have to ring a number.”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Refund refused
17 reports · 18% of complaintsrising since 2026-07“cancellation process is so broken and obstructive”
3 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“Apparently i signed up for a subscription, which I didn't ! They started taking money which I've stopped and never logged into the paper. refusing to refund the first charge”
3 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“they refused to give refund”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Overcharging
12 reports · 13% of complaintsfalling“it took forever to get through to their call centre (obviously you can’t cancel digitally”
3 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“they tried tu take the $500 again while I was on the messaging app with them”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“charged me even though I cancelled my sbuscription”
2 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Support unreachable
12 reports · 13% of complaintsfalling“Keep getting emails despite unsubscribing. They keep trying to charge me.”
3 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“they want you to call to cancel an online subscription.”
3 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
“it took forever to get through to their call centre (obviously you can’t cancel digitally”
3 readers marked this review helpful on Trustpilot.
Method: reviews are classified into a fixed complaint taxonomy by an automated reader; every category shown is backed by at least two verbatim quotes from distinct reviews. Trends are computed from dated review counts only. Negative reviews are deliberately over-sampled for evidence depth; headline percentages use an unbiased recent sample only. Report updated 2026-09-20.