Direct Debit!!

gunslinger13401

Hi
Not sure if this is the right forum but here goes. My 18yr old daughter was offered a cheap gym membership on the High St so she signed up and started going.
She paid for the first month then realised that first she wasnt getting the service she was offered and second she really did not want to commit to going to the gym. And was already starting to get into debt.
This is probably quite normal for an eighteen year old.
When she spoke to the manager and said that she did not want to continue,She was told that she had no choice as she had signed a 3 year contract.

So she went to the bank and cancelled the direct debit and was told that if she wanted to re instate the debit at sometime in the future she would have to come into the bank and authorise it.
So imagine her shock when checking her latest statement to find that the money had been taken.
She rang the bank and was told that the recipient had reinstated the direct debit without her authorisation and was at liberty to do so.
Surely this cannot be right.
No one can set up a DD without your specific authorisation.
Or can they?
Also I have a problem with the gym signing a teenager into a 3 year contract without making the consequences clear.
Not a reasonable contract or practice?
Help
Mike

C_Ronaldo

Did your daughter actually sign a contract,

dunstonh

Gym contracts are notorious for having a tie in. A 3 year contract is very heavy but I suggest you do a google search on gym contracts. You will see this is a lot of coverage.

Your daughter is not a teenager. She is 18 and an adult and is legally able to enter into contracts and be responsible for those contracts.

jonesMUFCforever

DD can be set up by the companies themselves under a system called AUDDIS.
Cancelling it at the bank does not mean the 'debt' is cancelled as she has found out.
Like previous posters you need to see what she has signed -if she really does have a 3 year tie in then she will have to continue to pay unless she can negotiate a get out.

Zebedee69

Oh Dear,

Your next stop is to have a look at the contract to try to find a way out of it. Gyms are quite big on contracts as they know people tend to join on a whim and then stop going after a bit. 3 Years is a bit steep though like dunstonh said...

Its common for parents to shield their teenagers from money and credit but its not the way. Try and teach your daughter to be a savy customer, perhaps get her onto this website? I know you want to wrap her up in cotton wool and make sure no harm comes to her because after all she is your daughter but the fact she has debt and signed upto a 3 year contract shows she needs to be taught how to be a more savy customer when it comes to credit and business.

Whatever happens look on it as a learning curve and hopefully your daughter will become more carefull in time. We were all there when we were young (I know I was!)

gunslinger13401

ejones999 wrote: »

DD can be set up by the companies themselves under a system called AUDDIS.
Cancelling it at the bank does not mean the 'debt' is cancelled as she has found out.
Like previous posters you need to see what she has signed -if she really does have a 3 year tie in then she will have to continue to pay unless she can negotiate a get out.

My daughter assures me that at no time was she told that she would be tied into a 3 year contract.
If that was made clear I guarantee it would never have been signed as she will be leaving the country for 3 years commencing May 2008. This is something she has known about for 2 years.

I grant that they may be in dispute with my daughter but their only recourse is the same as anyone else 'SMALL CLAIMS COURT'.
And attempting to claim funds by re establishing an AUDDIS payment whilst knowing the previous one had been cancelled is unethical and could mean losing their AUDDIS authorisation .

The bank should have at the very least queried this payment as the previous identical DD had been cancelled.

Think this would come under duty of care.


Ok just done a bit of checking on AUDDIS.
This is scary that someone can set up a DD with your bank without the bank ever seeing any paperwork or signatures and there appear to have been numerous scams and fraud.Or maybe its just me that is bothered by this system.
The general public are under constant surveillance but business's seem to have no checks.

Mike

MarkyMarkD

The gym are quite entitled to have a 3 year minimum membership term - it's your daughter's fault if she doesn't read what she's signed up to.

But IF the gym aren't supplying what was contracted for, as the OP states, then the gym have themselves breached the contract.

Cancelling the DD is not necessarily the right way to go about a dispute but it can seem like a good idea - if the gym is actually in breach of contract, then they wouldn't be able to enforce recovery of the debt, so cancelling the DD is a way of forcing them to court to test the issue.

But in most of these cases, it is merely a change of mind by the gym customer and cancelling the DD doesn't help - it'll eventually go to court, get reported as a credit referencing default, etc. and have all sorts of adverse consequences.

I don't agree with ejones - and I normally do -

ejones999 wrote: »

DD can be set up by the companies themselves under a system called AUDDIS.
Cancelling it at the bank does not mean the 'debt' is cancelled as she has found out.
Like previous posters you need to see what she has signed -if she really does have a 3 year tie in then she will have to continue to pay unless she can negotiate a get out.

AUDDIS doesn't change the direct debit guarantee and should never be used by a merchant to re-instate a cancelled DD. The BACS website is clear that a cancelled DD cannot be re-instated without the customer's consent.

The OP's daughter should go back to her bank and tell them that this DD is NOT authorised and she wants her money back under the DD guarantee - and for no further payments to be made.

But as I've said before, this doesn't directly deal with the original contractual commitment which will continue until something is done about it - and that is likely to mean one party or the other initiating legal action.

YorkshireBoy

gunslinger13401 wrote: »

My daughter assures me that at no time was she told that she would be tied into a 3 year contract.

A High Street 'seller' isn't going to 'tell' her that it's a 3 year contract, because if they did she probably wouldn't sign it!

What they do is hope the purchaser signs the contract without reading it, which is what I suspect your daughter did.

Have you seen her copy of the contract she signed?

MarkyMarkD

Thanks for that point, YB.

There's no obligation on someone selling something to tell you all the terms and conditions. It's up to the buyer to read the contract.

If, on the other hand, she specifically asked whether she was tied in and they said "no", that would be a different matter.

SPANIEL36

i once cancelled a direct debit and the company set it up again using a different reference number. I didn't know this till i went overdrawn and i chased it up

amaialondon

LAst year i cancelled my membership with fitness first and i cancel the DD with the bank. The next month i found out that they charged one month against my account with the debit card that i used to pay for the first month. The excuse that they gave me was that i didnt give them a month notice and they were entitled to take out that money from my account. So beware that even if you cancel the DD if you used a debit card they will charge it to the debit card.