Nuffield Health Membership (covid related)

Under_the_Radar_2

So I'm a little disgruntled and not sure the best way to proceed, if there is in fact anything I can do about it. 

Back in March just before restrictions came in I went in to my local gym and froze the membership for the 3 months (the maximum they would allow), as I am self employed and was not sure if I could afford it due to the loss of income (covid related). 

Anyway lockdown commenced and the membership would've been frozen anyway. I never received any official communication from them, but as of August out of the blue my payments restarted. I didn't notice right away as I'm not as eagle eyed as I should be with my bank account. It annoyed me a little but as it's a joint account and my wife has health issues that swimming and hot tub help alleviate the symptoms I figured we will be going back so left it. For personal reasons we ended up not being able to go back until today (we couldn't leave a pet unattended for long enough to make use of the gym). Their rules on swimming are restricted access and only able to book a 45 minute slot, we still haven't had any communication from them and when we got there we find the hot tub is closed (fair enough but would be nice to know that) and there were already 3 people in the pool, with us making 5. It's not a huge pool and to socially distance we have to swim the shorter length of the rectangle, essentially by the time you start swimming you have to turn back on yourself. A sixth person joined us about 20 minutes later. We would have considered 6 in that pool busy in normal times, in actual fact more than 5 and there was local etiquette of waiting for one to finish for another to get in, so the pool now has more people in it now than pre covid times. 

The pool is busier, barely any social distance, no room to swim a full length and the spa facilities are also closed and I have to wonder why I'm paying full price (£110/month) which got reinstated without my knowledge or authorization for a facility we just aren't able to make use of. I feel like I should've complained on the principle that they started up membership without my knowledge, but again I hoped it would help with my wife's health, but with the way things are this just isn't possible. I will be demanding our account be frozen or cancelled until such a time as we can use these facilities again. Is there any grounds for me demanding money back for the months they have charged without notifying me? I appreciate that is a long short but wondered if anyone had any advice, I really am quite annoyed at the lack of communication and the way they are handling their facilities. I appreciate it must be hard running a gym in these circumstances, but we are all struggling right now and this just doesn't feel good enough....Any advice? My gut is that all I can do is stop further payments, but remain hopeful someone can advise me differently .

Jeremy535897

Look at the threads on David Lloyd, which cover the subject in depth.

Grumpy_chap

I don't understand how this happened like this.  Have you spoken with the manager at the club?

I am a member at Nuffield Health and they were brilliant at suspending and reinstating payment around lockdown.  It was all automatic and we did not have to actually ask or do anything.  In the last week or so, we got an email saying they will automatically suspend payments if the local club needs to close for restrictions imposed.

Maybe because you took a voluntary suspension before the automatic suspension came into force, that tricked the automatic system into behaving incorrectly.  

Under_the_Radar_2

Grumpy_chap said:

I don't understand how this happened like this.  Have you spoken with the manager at the club?

I am a member at Nuffield Health and they were brilliant at suspending and reinstating payment around lockdown.  It was all automatic and we did not have to actually ask or do anything.  In the last week or so, we got an email saying they will automatically suspend payments if the local club needs to close for restrictions imposed.

Maybe because you took a voluntary suspension before the automatic suspension came into force, that tricked the automatic system into behaving incorrectly.  

Haven't spoken to the manager yet, was a very weird set up when I went in yesterday and no one was really available. Hadn't received any communication so assumed it had remained closed, only realised it had reopened when I noticed they had started charging me again. That on top of cramming the swimming pool with more than the usual amount of people and making us book for the privilege seemed a bit ridiculous, might just be my particularly branch is poorly run. I will call up later, thanks for the reply. Think I will just cancel until it is either run better or social distancing stops being a thing (yeah might be years). Thing is I don't really want to pay another joining fee in the future just because at present we aren't getting what we paid for, it isn't a massive amount and I appreciate running a gym / health club must be a nightmare right now, but we are all struggling one way or another. Would have been nice to have been given the option of reinstating membership or keeping frozen till we feel it appropriate to come back..