Virgin Active - Crap Service - Identity Theft.

pickers2win

Hi All

Back in April 2011 I cancelled my gym membership to Virgin Active, confirmed in writing and went into the club and cancelled and paid what I owed in cash up front. They have all of this on record.

What I didnt know until now is that someone had gone back in and re-activated my account, changed the active telephone number on the account. They have been debiting my account for the last 18 months since of £50 a month and whoever this person is has been going to the gym under my name. I only just found out as my debit card expired so the payments failed. They then wrote to me saying my payment had failed which raised the alarm.

Before anyone asks, yes I do check my statements but over looked it as I pay for other things Virgin and simply overlooked it.

The disturbing thing is that this person was able to simply re-activate my DD without ID's and how the hell did they not notice that the photographs didnt match at point of re-activation or at any point this person has visited the gym in the last 18 months!

Don't trust them with your data, they clearly have loopholes that can be exploited. Im still waiting for an explanation over 2 weeks on, there customer service has been EXTREMELY poor.

WTFH

Did you phone the gym, or their head office?

Have you asked them to contact the person whose phone number they have on file?

JReacher1

You didn't notice you had lost £50 a month? Seems unlikely

Also you pay by direct debit not debit card so an expired debit card would have no effect.

This story therefore doesn't ring true. Although I am unsure why you would make it up though.

Very odd.

pickers2win

It is true...I earn a decent salary so I very rarely look at my balance...perhaps very shortsighted on my behalf but I cant help that.

I rang the club, who then escalated it to head office. I am speaking to someone in Head Office "Nadja Douglas" and Martyn Jones who are their customer services managers.

I don't know why else it would have suddenly failed, I assumed it was linked to my debit card. if you look on the internet it does say some direct debits are linked to Debit Cards so I guess thats it.

Either way the letter confirming the failure was the first letter I had had from them in 18 months.

They wouldn't give me the telephone number they had on file, just confirmed the last 3 digits which were not mine.

pickers2win

Tried to attach the transcripts of the emails flying around, but I have nowhere to upload the pictures...

bod1467

tinypic

photobucket

Redact any personal details before posting online.

pickers2win

Attached. Add a h to the beginning, it wont let me post image links up because I am such a new user...nightmare.

ttp://i41.tinypic.com/112alok.jpg[/IMG]
ttp://i39.tinypic.com/2myn1c1.jpg[/IMG]
ttp://i43.tinypic.com/ace8vq.jpg[/IMG]

WTFH

Just looking at this one...
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=ace8vq&s=5#.UmUJRLQiS8A
16th October at 18:43 - a reply from someone saying they are off on holiday.
Next morning at 08:57 you reply asking for a follow up.

You've also chosen to take the attitude that this is identity theft/blatant fraud and that a lot of people are either breaking the law or stupid (apart from the person who doesn't check his bank statements), rather than trying to find out the facts.

Next thing I'd want to check is what address they have for you on the account.
Is it possible that they have a different address for you as well as the different phone number? The fact that you have had no post from Virgin would make me think they had a different address on file for you - did you take out the membership through work and maybe gave your work address?

pickers2win

No, because they wrote to me to tell me my payment had failed...had no promotional marketing or anything up till then.

ThumbRemote

WTFH wrote: »

Just looking at this one...
http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=ace8vq&s=5#.UmUJRLQiS8A
16th October at 18:43 - a reply from someone saying they are off on holiday.
Next morning at 08:57 you reply asking for a follow up.

It's a generic email address for their customer services department. Just because one person was going on holiday doesn't mean it won't be read - as indeed it was.

WTFH

pickers2win wrote: »

...had no promotional marketing or anything up till then.

That's definitely odd.

When my wife left a Virgin gym she had been a member of, the one thing we got for several months after was marketing junk. Could it be they had two addresses - a billing address and a postal address?