Cancelling Gym Membership with 14 days

heretolearn_2

OP,

All you can do is wait for their response. Why get so wound up about it until you know what that will be?

You seem really angry with the gym but I can't see that they did anything wrong. They would not have known about his disability, and even if they did notice his poor writing, that's no reason to refuse membership. My son is also dyslexic and his writing looks like a scruffy 7 year olds, but he's in top 3% IQ-wise. If he were refused membership of something because of his dyslexia (which has no effect on someone's IQ level) he'd go bonkers! That would be disability discrimination. I would think the issue here with your son was more his asbergers, which is something not obvious in a lot of people, and again, would that be reason to refuse membership automatically?

After all, they didn't chase your son down the street, he must have decided to go into the gym and join for himself, so there's no reason to think he was somehow a victim of bad sales ethics.

So give them a chance. I'd be less aggressive towards them in future, ask nicely instead of demanding, this is pretty much down to their discretion and I'd be more inclined to help someone who didn't treat me as if I'd done something terrible when actually I'd done nothing wrong.

4Chickens

Thanks for your further responses.
Just to clarify some points:
No, the gym did not chase him down the street and make him sign up. They lured him in with 2 free days of activities at the gym.
I don't think that they should have refused him membership because of his disabilities but I think they should agree to cancel his contract because of his disabilities.
The letter I sent and the subsequent conversation I have had with the membership team has in no way been aggressive or threatening, quite the contrary, I have been factual and polite.

The reason I have the armageddon complex right now is if the gym membership is not cancelled and the bank allow them to take payments, thus sending him overdrawn, unauthorised I might add, then he is going to incur unauthorised borrowing charges to infinity and beyond (I love Buzz Lightyear). I need to halt this problem sooner, rather than later.

PZH

4Chickens wrote: »

I don't think that they should have refused him membership because of his disabilities but I think they should agree to cancel his contract because of his disabilities.

As is already being discussed in this thread.

4Chickens wrote: »

The letter I sent and the subsequent conversation I have had with the membership team has in no way been aggressive or threatening, quite the contrary, I have been factual and polite.

Well said

4Chickens wrote: »

The reason I have the armageddon complex right now is if the gym membership is not cancelled and the bank allow them to take payments, thus sending him overdrawn, unauthorised I might add, then he is going to incur unauthorised borrowing charges to infinity and beyond (I love Buzz Lightyear). I need to halt this problem sooner, rather than later.

As you mentioned earlier.


OP - I hope that you get a decision soon from the Gym. Whether it be positive or negative - at least you will then know your next course of action.

Undisputedtruth

There seems to be loads of complaints about Bannatyne. So sooner or later they will go bust since gym companies are getting a bad press and you can never underestimate the power of the internet. I have never seen a thread where Bannatyne has acted reasonably and done the decent right thing. In your son case that would be cancelling the contract due to mental capacity. I suspect Bannatyne will argue their way to ill gain money no matter what the circumstances are.

Your best hope is to get some legal advice and take a view in taking this to a county court. Of course there'll be court fees but you stand a better chance of winning than dealing with a company like Bannatyne.

mo786uk

They probably have a 'continuous payment authority' which means they can keep taking money if the account is open.

If you are insistent on not paying close the account, not just cancel the card (however give the gym reasonable time to respond to you).

You would then have to show in court your sn doesnt have capacity - presumably you would have to wait for the gym to take your son to court.

I am unsure as to whether you could pre-empt it and have a court cancel the contract ASAP to stop the gym taking money - but it would cost you money though no doubt. I believe you can only sit back and let them attempt to go to court for breach of contract.

4Chickens

Hi All

Just a quick update on the gym membership with Bannatynes.

My sons doctor wrote a letter confirming his Aspergers Syndrome.

Yesterday we got a letter from Bannatynes cancelling his membership.


RESULT:j:beer::T

PZH

4Chickens wrote: »

Hi All

Just a quick update on the gym membership with Bannatynes.

My sons doctor wrote a letter confirming his Aspergers Syndrome.

Yesterday we got a letter from Bannatynes cancelling his membership.


RESULT:j:beer::T

Fantastic news :T:T

Took some time to get there - but well done :beer:

shaun_from_Africa

That's good news.

In a couple of months, it might be worth your son contacting one of the credit reference agencies and getting a copy of their credit record. (I think you can do this for a couple of £s).

You really want to make sure that everything has been cancelled, and that it wasn't passed to a collection agency by mistake.
This is unlikely to have happened, but it has been known to previously occur.
My mother had problems with O2 over mis-selling, (they admitted that they were at fault and cancelled the contract), but the debt which O2 admitted in writing shouldn't have existed, still ended up being passed to a collection agency.

LUCY_3-2

Glad you got that sorted. I used to work at a gym and I was pretty sure that Head Office would agree to cancel the membership in these circumstances.

I'm not sure sure if anyone else suggested this already but twitter might have been a good place to get the ball rolling a bit faster - Duncan Bannatyne has a twitter account and I am sure he would have been interested to hear of your plight. He may well have cleared the issue up swifter when it became public knowlege on a social networking site as it would not have made for very good PR!

Pollycat

A happy outcome, 4Chickens - and thanks for coming back and letting us know. :T