I have also had a couple of really rude emails since Christmas regarding a similar thing, why do I bother

RIGHT!!!
NEW AND OLD GOLD MEMBERS, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR CANCELLING YOUR OWN SUBSCRIPTION IF YOU NO LONGER WANT TO BE A GOLD MEMBER.
Moderator: phpBB2 - Administrators
Then you will continue to have the same issue with your Paypal account taking hits. Sad fact of life is that even though people have agreed to cancel their own auto renew they will forget.
True but PayPal know the situation now as it was their idea to cancel memberships ASAP after I sent them the joining page where it states its an auto renewal service that the member needs to cancel.