Gym membership unused for over 5 years.

la531983

Brie said:

I don't know what the T&Cs are but the gym I used to use had a 3 month cancellation period so if you cancelled you were expect to pay for another 3 months.  I

Its a PureGym. No notice required. Cancelling the DD cancels the membership with immediate effect also, no need to officially cancel through their website or app...

"You may terminate your membership at any point by cancelling your direct debit with your bank, allowing 4 working days for the bank to action this. Please call Member Services for options available to you or for any further information."

Exodi

la531983 said:

The only possible thing here might hinge on "5yrs of gym fees is a significant amount of money, probably £1200-£1500 depending on how their prices rose"
Can you go back through the 5 years of statements and look at the monthly amounts drawn? 
How and when have those amounts varied?
If the amount changed, then I understand that the gym would need to notify you in advance that the DD amount was changing.  If the gym wrote to you ate your old address, did you have mail forwarding in place?  
If you can prove that you were not notified of a DD change, there may be a route under the DD Guarantee.
It is a long shot as, if the gym wrote to you at the address they had on file for you, that would probably be sufficient to count as notification.

He will be out of luck here too. My PureGym membership price hasnt changed in years, it doesnt change until you cancel and then rejoin at whatever the rate is at the time, or do an upgrade of some sort (Which he wont have done either)

Therefore, there is likely no email notifiying of a change in DD price, because quite simply it wont have changed price. And it would have been by email, like all their their other mailings.

Makes you wonder whether this is generosity to award loyal members.... or a tactic to avoid reminding unsuspecting customers that they still have an active gym membership.

I know which my money is on!

la531983

Exodi said:

la531983 said:

The only possible thing here might hinge on "5yrs of gym fees is a significant amount of money, probably £1200-£1500 depending on how their prices rose"
Can you go back through the 5 years of statements and look at the monthly amounts drawn? 
How and when have those amounts varied?
If the amount changed, then I understand that the gym would need to notify you in advance that the DD amount was changing.  If the gym wrote to you ate your old address, did you have mail forwarding in place?  
If you can prove that you were not notified of a DD change, there may be a route under the DD Guarantee.
It is a long shot as, if the gym wrote to you at the address they had on file for you, that would probably be sufficient to count as notification.

He will be out of luck here too. My PureGym membership price hasnt changed in years, it doesnt change until you cancel and then rejoin at whatever the rate is at the time, or do an upgrade of some sort (Which he wont have done either)

Therefore, there is likely no email notifiying of a change in DD price, because quite simply it wont have changed price. And it would have been by email, like all their their other mailings.

Makes you wonder whether this is generosity to award loyal members.... or a tactic to avoid reminding unsuspecting customers that they still have an active gym membership.

I know which my money is on!

Luckily I dont leave my bank accounts unmonitored for five years....

Grumpy_chap

Exodi said:

Makes you wonder whether this is generosity to award loyal members.... or a tactic to avoid reminding unsuspecting customers that they still have an active gym membership.

It is the latter.

I know the gym I visit lost a lot of unused memberships during COVID when they had to write to members who forget they were members to advise about the gym closures and not drawing DD for those periods and then write again to take the DD.  Any prompting to remind inactive members is a negative for the gym.

It was a double-whammy for active members as, not only was the subsidy from inactive members gone, with the inactives cleared from the system, there was no incentive for the gym not to increase rates in each of the years following.

Badger36

It's not that I didn't check my statements for 5 years (I was out of the country for 3 of these 5 years, so wasn't getting paper statements. 

We bought a house 10yrs ago, I got moved to another location (where I joined puregym) then got moved abroad in my work before moving home again a couple of years ago.

We set up an account where 1) we would pay our mortgage money into 2) the tenant we rented to in our absence would pay into 3) mortgage payments come out of, 4) we also pay some extra in for a rainy day. We set it up so every time a payment goes in/out over £100 we get a text message with amount paid in/out and remaining balance. It was human error on my part that account was used for this direct debit, it should never have been. However in checking my normal statement I would never see a Puregym payment, and in my head it's cancelled. 

We also deliberately lost (in a secure location) the online banking information to remove any temptation of using that account for anything other than what it was intended. It was only the rainy day situation and finally logging in that got it noticed. 

BTW, 5hrs now and still no notification from PureGym my account has been cancelled. 

Hoenir

Badger36 said:

 I completed the process about 2hrs ago and still haven't had any confirmation email through that my account has been cancelled. 

People have probably alredy been assigned their workload for the day. Many email boxes aren't constantly monitored either. 

born_again

Have you now cancelled the DD?

Aylesbury_Duck

Badger36 said:

It's not that I didn't check my statements for 5 years (I was out of the country for 3 of these 5 years, so wasn't getting paper statements. 

We bought a house 10yrs ago, I got moved to another location (where I joined puregym) then got moved abroad in my work before moving home again a couple of years ago.

We set up an account where 1) we would pay our mortgage money into 2) the tenant we rented to in our absence would pay into 3) mortgage payments come out of, 4) we also pay some extra in for a rainy day. We set it up so every time a payment goes in/out over £100 we get a text message with amount paid in/out and remaining balance. It was human error on my part that account was used for this direct debit, it should never have been. However in checking my normal statement I would never see a Puregym payment, and in my head it's cancelled. 

We also deliberately lost (in a secure location) the online banking information to remove any temptation of using that account for anything other than what it was intended. It was only the rainy day situation and finally logging in that got it noticed. 

BTW, 5hrs now and still no notification from PureGym my account has been cancelled. 

It's unfortunate, and I can see why you set things up the way you did, but I'm afraid this situation is of your own doing.  Your hopes seem to pin on them not having updated you if the price changed at any point (and you'd have to be sure you didn't miss a letter to an address you weren't living in or an email to an account you no longer use or check), or some goodwill, because it doesn't seem that they've breached the contract.

la531983

And again, they likely wouldn't have changed the price, this has already been explained.

bluelad1927

When you were an active member of the gym did it never occur to you that you weren't paying as the money wasn't being taken from your "normal' account. The first thing I and imagine most people do is check that a new DD has taken the correct amount

 Not seeing a payment leave your account when you were a member and again not seeing  it when you weren't just seems poor management of your accounts.

The gym has done nothing wrong here and while others have suggested a goodwill payment I'd be amazed if you got anything back