Cancellation of Virgin active gym membership

lilkizc

sandhum wrote: »

How did you get on?

Im moving house next week and have a VA gym within a mile of my new home and have been interested in joining. Thought id have a search on reviews and what they're like. Quite worried now whether to join etc!

They do sound like rip off merchants but thats the way alot of these companies are now days - leeches sucking you dry. But if im made aware of when I need to cancel if I ever do want to in the future, then thats good enough for me. You can't claim forgetfullness or I didn't know because you didn't read the contract properly. Thats why they make these contracts unfortunately.

there is diffrent types of contracts and you could go on a monthly 1 and you can cancel before the 15th if you didnt like it its a good gym im always in there!

jankuci

I have just seen all these comments. I have basically the same problem with Virgin but bit different.
My membership started in May 2008. I have tried to cancel my in December 2009 due to moving home and I fell pregnant. There is no Virgin any close to the new place we moved to . I went to my local gym asking to cancel my membership detailing there was no club nearby to our new home. I was told i couldn't cancel as I have commited to a 12 months membership. I told it was well over 12 months then I received the "well known" answer with the automatic renewal. I was offered the buyout option. I pay £120 for the remaining 4 months but can't use their service any longer. I felt very unfair to pay £120 for nothing so I just cancelled my Direct debit.
6 months have gone and I received a phone call from ARC debt recovery saying I owe VA £240 as I have not paid since December.
VA never called me between December and July not even when my membership would have been ended in May.
As there was no contact from them I thought my membership just has been cancelled. I have not used the gym for 6 months and now they are asking for payment and I can't end my contract till May 2011.
Is there anything I could do about it? Any help would be appriciated.

m33r4

jankuci wrote: »

.... I felt very unfair to pay £120 for nothing so I just cancelled my Direct debit.
6 months have gone and I received a phone call from ARC debt recovery saying I owe VA £240 as I have not paid since December.
....

Hi jankuci - sadly you have gone about it in a wrong way by cancelling the direct debit. I would think you have now also tainted your credit report with the non payment.

You still owe Virgin Active the money as you still have a legal contract (although you have read how unfair this contract is on here). Perhaps you can try getting in touch with Virgin Head Office and offer to pay the £120 to get you out of the £240.

Best of luck.

Scunny_2

Had an issue with this diamond membership rolling scheme had to honour the 2nd 12 month term. I waited and cancelled through the website July 22nd (with confirmation email)

They did not act and instead sent me a letter Sept 2010 saying I had cancelled my DD and had to ring the customer service line. I did this explained the situation they said no problem just send a confirmation email to Stockley Park (the club). I did this and again confirmed in the email. I received a phone call September 22nd asking why I had cancelled the DD (they even stated they had received confirmation from the club of cancellation). Explained that I had given enough notice and had emails backing up the cancellation in good time - the lady asked me to send this through (again) which I did. I received a letter on 13th October which again ignored all of the above stating that despite numerous messages and phone calls (1no phone call from them) they would freeze the membership (the cancelled one!) and that any cancellation procedure would have to begin afresh. This is a blatant attempt to try and time bar the cancellation which took place in July, backed up in September. They also threaten further action (I guess from the ARC bunch mentioned previously)

I find this action quite astonishing. I have all the documentation going back to July and still they try and claim more membership dues from me. I am willing to take this to court (as a matter of principle) but there must be more that can be done to prevent other people being treated this way.

Any thoughts on who I could contact i.e OFT, Richard Branson would be a good contact! to raise this borderline criminal activity?

I have copies of all emails and letters written but they are completely ignoring all types of correspondence in pursuit of another 12 month rolling contract

Racheo

Virgin are a joke! We have just come to cancel our virgin active membership because we are moving house and we have found that we are on a rolling 12 month contract with 6 months remaining. After the initial shock at the long cancellation period (as this wasnt explained when we signed up) we decided that as it was in the ts and cs and we'd signed the contract we would honour the contract and transfer it to our new home. We've now been told that the gym in our new region is limited access so were going from paying £43 a month for unlimited access to £43 a month for 4 sessions a month! That's £11 a session! Outrageous! How come they can change their terms and we can't?! Before this happened I was a fan of the virgin brand, in fact we have, tv, house phone, Internet, broadband, mobile, credit card and gym membership with them, totally a monthly outlay of about £200! I'm cancelling all of them this week, in the long run virgin will loose out as a result of their bad customer services, noone should put up with being treated in such an unethical way.

triggs11

I've been a member with Virgin Active for 3 years now and am loving it. I must admit I totally forgot I was on a 12 month rolling contract and couldn't cancel when I wanted to (I had moved house) but their Customer Services department were really helpful. They offered to transfer my membership to another club which turns out is even better than my previous club. The number on the back of my membership card is 0845 130 4747, try giving them a call, I'm sure they'll be able to help you.

jimmgc51

If it helps anyone stuck in these contracts in my experience with Vigin I signed up for 12months of Diamond and until reading this had no idea it was rolling. I also went for 6 months and as it always happens stopped going to the gym and therefore stopped paying by cancelling my DD, as far as im concerned I'm happy to pay for a service I'm using but if im not using it why SHOULD I pay for it. An I dont care if there is a contract or not, its a gym!

Anyway my point is the letters did come & I ignored them they threatedned this an that and then nothing they didn't bother to take it further and in my opinion at the time I felt that it probably wouldnt be worth it for in my case 5 months gym thats £250 court costs and bad publicity as in me telling lots of people not to sign with them, it was dropped. Me also being a student at the time I was used too seeing many red letters drop through the door so this was not out of the ordinary.

Basically in my opinion these are scare tactics and in many cases work for when people see a letter in red at the top they panic and pay instantly, the reality is its an expensive drawn out process to take it further. If they do take it further they sell to debt collectors for a fraction of the debt price so effectivly they write it off so you now owe a debt collector and this isn't a bad thing for when they do call and if it got this far, in most cases if you can pay there and then they would offer you a discount of possibly 50% of the original debt, instant saving for you instant profit for them, credit file untouched. Its only the debt collectors that would take it any further and obviously at this stage you would pay the money back even at so much a month but again if it got this far. At least you have a chance of paying nothing.

So this is my advice its certainly a different perspective but thats what message boards are for. It just really annoys me when companies bully people to a bit of paper with a clause in this saying you must do this, its not fair, legal or not!

There is only one company in my past that got me and I finally did pay with debt collectors (for a £250 saving by the way). But i have never signed with them again due to the cheap tactics they used to make a quick buck!

brettcta

let me get this right, you signed up for 12 months, stopped going after 6 and are now refusing to pay the next 6 months of your contract because you've stopped going?


how is a contract from a gym any different to a contract from anywhere else? you still put pen to paper agreeing to pay virgin active £x per month and therefore it's still legally binding. you can't just decide now because you're too lazy to go (or whatever your reason is) to cancel your direct debit

System

I had a month by month contract and just cancelled online, it was seamless and there were no nusiance phone calls. I was very impressed with them. JimmyGC you've obviously a bad seed. When you sign up for something you should honour your contracts.

charlesworth82

hi - does anyone know the answer to this?

I started my membership in September 2007 but upgraded to the better (more expensive gym) in Jan 2009. Will my membership 'renew' in Sept or Jan?

Thanks