Pruhealth scrapping its free/discounted gym loophole in November. Discussion

MSE_Jenny

If you’re one of many MoneySavers using the Pruhealth loophole to save £100s on Virgin, Cannons, LA Fitness gym membership saving £100s, bad news.

From November, its changing and the new deal doesn’t look worth it for most people; we’ll still confirming with Pruhealth whether the change is a fait accompli, so keep going for now, but prepare to ditch it in October (a reminder will appear in the weekly email).

Read the Half Price Gym Loophole guide
& Pruhealth’s guide to the changes

Click reply to discuss your feedback/thoughts.

PS We know this discussion has been started in a few other threads, the aim is to bring them all together here. Thanks to all those that have posted info.

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Bargain_Rzl

MSE_Jenny wrote: »

From November, its changing and the new deal doesn’t look worth it for most people

Unless I have missed something, this is a needlessly sensationalist view of things, more so than I'm used to hearing from MSE

Pruhealth is NOT scrapping heavily discounted gym membership. It's just making some changes that will be beneficial to some and disadvantageous to others.

As I see it, Pruhealth customers and potential customers fall into one of three categories:
-Existing customers who are currently on Platinum status or who stand to reach Platinum status by the time the T&Cs change (that's me by the way)
-Existing customers who haven't yet reached Platinum status and who have no chance of doing so by the time the T&Cs change
-New customers.

There are two groups who will lose out from the upcoming changes:
-Those who are existing customers and have no chance of reaching Platinum status before November
-Those whose gyms were previously free but won't be any more.

New customers won't lose out because nobody's forcing them to sign up right this minute. They might as well wait till November and sign up then if it's still worth their while. Meanwhile they haven't lost a penny.

I have little sympathy with anybody who's been with Pruhealth for quite a while but has no chance of reaching Platinum by the end of October, because any true MSEr will have been trying to reach Platinum as fast as possible to knock their next year's premiums down. I say this as a fairly lazy gym-goer, 9 months into my first PruHealth year and due to reach Platinum in a couple of weeks' time.

I have some sympathy with those whose gym membership is currently free and now won't be - but it should still be very heavily discounted and cheaper than going elsewhere, especially if you're beyond the first year of your policy and are paying a Platinum discounted rate for your insurance premium.

The real losers under the new T&Cs will be those who have recently joined PruHealth and have no chance of making Platinum in time...

Personally, it's going to work out in my favour. I will keep the same rates I'm on now, but won't be tied into HAVING to keep my number of gym visits up as long as I continue to accumulate my Vitality points by whatever means I choose. What's more, with the new Vitality partners due to come on board with the scheme, there should be even more benefits.

Bargain_Rzl

P.S. One point which isn't necessarily clear for existing customers (I had to phone up to ask, since which it's been discussed elsewhere on MSE): if your policy year is due to come to an end soon and you've reached Platinum, that status holds for the next year even though your points reset. So come November you'll automatically be paying the lowest applicable gym fees for the club you're signed up with.

Pound

This change is actually brilliant for people who have already achieved platinum status, especially if they're in the second year and enjoying a 100% discount. They'll continue paying the discounted premium of a couple of quid a month for gym membership and health insurance combined.

As well as that it actually gets easier to keep within the requirements to get free gym membership. You now need to get 2,000 vitality points to reach platinum the next year and carry on with free gym membership. IMO it's not difficult to hit 1,500 points in a year from other easy, mostly online activities. This leaves 50 gym visits to make in a year, so only once per week.

People who are platinum may be getting a better deal than they were before.

melancholly

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1017123&highlight=PruHealth

i don't use this, but read this thread the other day so thought i'd link to it here - i don't know the ins and outs, but thoughts there are a lot less positive than they have been on here. at any rate, it's both sides of the arguement!

camaj

Ok, I think I have this figured out. I found the table of the new charges. The bad news is for those of us in London who belong to LA Fitness or Cannons. Londoners on platinum will see their monthly fee go from £0 to £8 a month. It's impossible for any Londoner to get free gym membership now, no matter what chain they use or what vitality status they are. :mad:

If you're slightly outside the M25 but use a gym inside the M25 it might be worth switching to one outside, but since the difference is "only" £8/month you'll probably use that in petrol getting there if you're a regular visitor.

If you're in London and live near a Virgin gym, you may want to consider switching from LA/cannon since the price for a Tier1 gym is now the same price, under the current scheme Virgin is £5 a month more, so some might have opted for a different chain to save money.

The other change I notice is that only the first 15 gym visits in a month get counted towards your vitality points.

In a lot of ways this isn't as bad as it first seemed. If you were aiming for platinum status (which saves money on your premiums) then you probably won't be much worse off. I'd be surprised if many people here weren't aiming to be platinum members under the old scheme. If you live outside London you'll probably be no worse off. If you "only" go to the gym twice a week, you'd have silver status under the new scheme.Going three times a week would take you to gold and a few additional tasks would take you to platinum.

So what now? As I understand it, the best thing to do for existing members is get to platinum as fast as possible. Am I right in thinking that if you miss out on platinum, but get gold, you will lose most of your points (anyone got a link to the details?), I believe it's 10% the first time you renew, so a gold member could start year 2 with 150-199 points? If this is the case, wouldn't you be on Gold until you could earn the next 1800 or so points, which would take you 10 months (assuming you get the maximum 150 points per month from gym visits)?

That would mean 10 months at £22/month + 10 months at the higher premium, right?

RUFFYONEVILLA

Hi,
I am currently on 1170 pts and it looks like I need 2000 by November in order to keep my Gym membership at £20.
There seems to be some easy ones to get such as another fitness test thingy, I am a triathlete so any of this testing stuff is not an issue.
Can anyone confirm how easy it is to get any of the others as I've plenty to do in order to get these pts.
It does annoy me that they seem intent on making us jump through all these hoops, and it makes me think that they didn't really think it through in the first place.
Hopefully they'll now change the rule whereby I cannot swipe my card like everyone else at the gym and have to stand there like a muppett waiting for someone to let me in!!
I never went in to the gym for a sandwich to register a visit before but now they have moved the goalposts I might just start popping in there to use the toilets and get 10pts.

Gambit

RUFFYONEVILLA wrote: »

It does annoy me that they seem intent on making us jump through all these hoops, and it makes me think that they didn't really think it through in the first place.

When I spoke to them about this they said they were doing this to help improve their members health and not just let their members go to the gym and do nothing else. But the cynical side of me thinks that this was TOO successfull for their liking and so had to think of a way to change it...

adrian3221

Im thinking about signing up to this Pruhealth scheme but not sure when I should do it. Should I sign up now and try to accumulate as many points as I can before November, or wait till Nov 1st?

timbotambo

I spent 40 (yes 40!) minutes on the phone yesterday. We go dilligently twice a week, are young, non smokers, would do all the tests and meal plans online etc and we discovered that we would still be 1160 points short of gaining platinum membership to get the gym to £8 a month (up from £5). The ONLY way to get it up is to pay over £100 (£400 on bronze) for a Nuffield Health Screening. This is still only worth 400 points. You only get 10 points for every guym visit btw. In fact, we would be short of even gold status by Nov 1st!!

So bascially, nearly everyone will be worse off unless you invest hundreds of pounds and start using their partner companies to earn vitality points! Sounds very much like blackmail to me.

The new vitality points thresholds, and costs (Virgin Active), are:

1) Bronze Vitality under 1499 points £50 a month
2) Silver Vitality 1500 points to 2249 points £38 a month
3) Gold Vitality 2250-2999 £22 a month
4) Platinum Vitality 3000+ points £8 a month

If you quit ON OR BEFORE 13TH NOVEMBER, you won't incur the extra premium, apparantly. This is really annoying as we have only joined recently and the twice a week incentive was a great stick approach to get us to go.

timbotambo

adrian3221 wrote: »

Im thinking about signing up to this Pruhealth scheme but not sure when I should do it. Should I sign up now and try to accumulate as many points as I can before November, or wait till Nov 1st?

No, it's impossible for you to gain enough to gain fiscal benefits.