Gym Membership Notice Periods

alecpr

Hi,

I don't know if some kind sould would have the answer to this question:

If you subscribe to a service and that service has a 90 day cancellation period, you hand in notice with only thirty days notice and cancel the direct debit and then as a result the service is cancelled within those thirty days could the company still chase you for the remaining sixty days subscription, essentially making you pay for a service you cannot access?

David Lloyd Gym are trying to extort £340 for cancelling a gym membership that was hardly ever used and cancelled in writing. Apparently the office of fair trading said that 90 days was unreasonable, but since they restricted access to the gym with 30 days I want to start there as a dispute for the "debt"

Cheers
Alec

hollydays

If you signed a contract saying you agreed to the 90 days and they were expecting 90 days worth of fees from you,I would say yes.Surely you requested to stop going after the 30 days,so the restriction was initiated by you.

Are you saying you spoke to the oft or have read something.
When you joined you didnt think £340 was extortionate?
Its not their problem you didn't use it.

alecpr

Not me, but I would argue that this is a subscription service and that the 90 day notice period would be enforcable had the gym provided the service for the 90 days. This is a cancellation period not cancellation fee. If David Lloyd can effectively cancel the membership within 30 days then the canellation period they claim us by defenition unreasonable and invalid. Which ever way you run round the circle you come to the same conclusion.

My quesiton was if I am leagally correct as I see how it's a very grey area logically and morally.

Anihilator

alecpr wrote: »

Not me, but I would argue that this is a subscription service and that the 90 day notice period would be enforcable had the gym provided the service for the 90 days. This is a cancellation period not cancellation fee. If David Lloyd can effectively cancel the membership within 30 days then the canellation period they claim us by defenition unreasonable and invalid. Which ever way you run round the circle you come to the same conclusion.

My quesiton was if I am leagally correct as I see how it's a very grey area logically and morally.

Im sure once you stopped breaching the contract and paid they would have been happy to allow you to use the facilities again.

hollydays

no you are not legally correct OP.

DVardysShadow

alecpr wrote: »

...
If you subscribe to a service and that service has a 90 day cancellation period, you hand in notice with only thirty days notice and cancel the direct debit and then as a result the service is cancelled within those thirty days could the company still chase you for the remaining sixty days subscription, essentially making you pay for a service you cannot access?

David Lloyd Gym are trying to extort £340 for cancelling a gym membership that was hardly ever used and cancelled in writing. Apparently the office of fair trading said that 90 days was unreasonable, but since they restricted access to the gym with 30 days I want to start there as a dispute for the "debt"

Please clarify. Is it a 90 day notice period for cancellation or a 90 day period from start of contract in which you cancel?

I am assuming it is a 90 day notice period, you gave 90 days notice but service was withdrawn at 30 days. If this is the case, can you give the entire clause from the T&C's relating to cancellation?

DVardysShadow

Anihilator wrote: »

Im sure once you stopped breaching the contract and paid they would have been happy to allow you to use the facilities again.

Can you elaborate on how OP has breached contract?

Pete*G_4

Hopefully I can help here, as I work in the fitness industry and sell gym memberships on a daily basis... We used to base our contracts on DL contracts too (although they have changed slightly) so I may be able to shed some light.

If I've interpretted your post correctly, your contract states that to cancel your membership you had to privde 90 days prioir written notice. What you actually did was to give them 30 days, then cancel the D/D so that they couldn't take any further money. As a result, when they tried to take the D/D and it was returned, they restricted your service (i.e. banned you). Now they are pursuing you, for breach of contract.

unfortunately you are in the wrong here - you terminated your contract with less than their required 90 day notice period, and as such I would suggest that the £340 they are pursuing is in fact for the total outstanding membership (i.e. the remainder of the year, not the remainder of the notice period). This is almost certainly written into your contract that they can do this.

My advice to you is to contact them and offer them a settlement of the remaining 60 days you should have given for your notice period. They are well within their rights to pursue you for the monies they are claiming, as it will implicity say that the "full remaining balance of the account will become due" (or words to that effect). They may accept your 60 day payment as a goodwill gesture. If I remember correctly, David Lloyd have their own collections/legal team dealing with contracts, and also contract out debt reclaimaion to DCA's. As such they will have done this before and ben successful in claiming the monies due to them. With regards to the OFT "saying the 90 days is unreasonable" then I would tread very very carefully. I have yet to hear of any ruling being made that says 90 days is too long (although I'd be interested to hear if such a case has been heard!). Certainly there's not beein anything in any of the industry mags we get sent through each month.

the moral - read your contracts, and don't try to wriggle out of them. if you've no intention to fulfil the terms and conditions that you sign up for, then don't sign up.

NYGiants

Pete*G wrote: »

the moral - read your contracts, and don't try to wriggle out of them. if you've no intention to fulfil the terms and conditions that you sign up for, then don't sign up.

Ignore this, most gyms have unfair terms written all over their contracts and you should pursue the 90 cancellation period as being an unfair term. The monkeys that sell these contracts are almost as bad as those that put them together in the first place.

Just because it's written in the terms and conditions it doesn't mean it's legally binding, they could write in the contract that you need to be hopping on one leg when you hand in your cancellation letter but of course you wouldn't have to do that.

Have a read through this: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1999/19992083.htm

alecpr

Thanks for the feedback, both posotive and negative. NYGiants seems to have got my point, thanks for the link I'll look in to it.

Beleive it or not I've already read that Statutory Instrument for a problem with a notice period for a certain Newsgroup provider (they wanted to keep 12 months subsctiption fees as notice for cancellation because I missed a renewal). I won that one.

I don't have the contract, as I mentioned previously is't not my fight, just helping out a friend, but I should have it in the next day or so. Will check it out and see if he has a leg to stand on.

barvid

> David Lloyd Gym are trying to extort £340 for cancelling a gym membership that was hardly ever used

How often it was or wasn't used is irrelevant to the argument.