Virgin Active/Gym membership cancellation

[Ewe]

Long story short, signed up to gym last summer, they told me they had a post natal trainer which I thought was great.

Went and did some exercisising by myself, had a bit of pain with my stomach and saw GP. He said I had diastasis (separation of stomach muscles) and should only do exercise in controlled environ with a professional to avoid more damage. So I speak to the club, around November now and they say that they don't have anyone post natally qualified.

In December I call them again to ask about cancelling memebership, nobody returns my calls. I also send a letter explaining my desire to cancel my membership. No response.

Call again and send another email. No response, so I cancel my direct debit.

Now a couple of months later I had a call from HO asking why I had cancelled DD, I explained and he said he would get back to me after speaking to the club. No response.

Today I have had a call from the credit company they use chasing me up. Just spoken to the branch and he said ordinarily I could cancel my direct debit this month (one year from the start of my contract) but because I cancellend my direct debit it is not able to be cancelled.

I am fuming! What the hell am I supposed to do? They have provided shockingly bad levels of customer service, lied to sign me up to a contract and now are chasing me for money despite me trying to find a solution several times.

Please help!!

Did you sign up for annual membership (but then agree to pay the fees monthly?) Or just monthly membership? If annual membership then there must be something in your contract that actually says what happens if you want to cancel, ie whether you have to give notice or whether you're committed to a full year.

Don't understand the bit where you say he told you that you can't cancel because you've already cancelled the direct debit - either you have the right to end the arrangement at the end of the year, or you don't? Are they saying you didn't give adequate notice or follow the right process in the contract? And that therefore you're committed for another full year? If so, they would need to rely on something in the contract that gave them that right.

Gyms are pretty notorious for this sort of thing. I'd just document everything, explain that they misrepresented the skills and qualifications that you specifically stated you required, and that you made your intention to cancel clear some months ago. It's up to them to take action to recover the money, but if you can forestall it by showing the above points then you'll at least be protecting your position.

Thanks vgl, contractually I was able to give notice as it was due to a medical reason and them not having the staff they said they did.

Thankfully someone has called me from the head office and she actually seems to know her arse from her elbow and seems like she might genuinely assist me in getting this resolved.

It just makes me SO SO angry that they can treat people so badly, no decent levels of service and then make me seem like the bad guy!

Good luck with it, also with the separation - I had a really bad one after ds1, had months of physio - and interestingly was told under no circumstances to do any exercise unless the physio had OK-d it as it could make things much worse!