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'Meeting a fool at the gym: how to waste £1,500' blog discussion
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Guys like him subsidise stuff for the rest of us!0
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This one really made me laugh. Imagine one of his 'guests' later explaining to him that the man gawping at him throughout his whole rant was MSE Martin.0
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Martin's missing the point a bit with his charity argument - saying the bloke could give the same money to charity and it would do a lot more good.
It's not a "nil sum game" and, as ALaKurt says, people who pay membership and don't use it are all part of the pricing of gyms. They know very well that with a capacity of a few hundred, they can sell many thousands of memberships because (a) not everyone turns up at once and (b) some people never turn up at all!
Encouraging stupid people to stop paying gym memberships which they don't use will just, ultimately, end up in gyms charging those who do use them more.
So, stupid bloke's £1,500 may go to charity, but the gym will make the same money by charging the non-stupid customers (and the remaining stupid customers) slightly more.
The same argument applies to most of MSE. Encouraging people to switch savings accounts, banks, supermarkets, whatever simply reduces the amount of surplus profit from the less astute the institutions have to cross-subsidise the more astute.
That doesn't mean it's bad to be astute and to be an MSE - quite the opposite. But it's important to recognise that the money saved doesn't come out of a bottomless pit of corporate profit - often it merely comes from other customers, at the end of the day.0 -
I just want to warn people to steer clear of the Virgin Active Diamond membership. I've just tried to cancel my contract with them after being a member for 15 months. To my dismay I was told that because I didn't cancel on a certain date in January they automatically signed me up for another 12 month contract. It's not their policy to write to customers to let them know that this 'magic date' is coming up and before you know it you're tied in for another 12 months with no way out.
Of course this is all hidden away somewhere in the small print in their terms and conditions, but it certainly isn't pointed out to people when they join and you would think that they would at least remind people when they are going to sign them up again.
This is ruthless, unreasonable and probably illegal customer management. It's certainly put me off the whole of the Virgin brand.
So, please don't get caught out - don't join the diamond membership!0 -
You need to move this to somewhere better like, Consumer Rights. I would cancel my Direct Debit and find out what a judge says about there T&C's.0
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