I would just like to warn people about this gym. After becomming disillusioned with he services on offer for various reasons, I decided to leave (I had been assured that when I joined I could leave if I wanted to). To cut a long story short, I believed that the matter had been resolved and moved house. Now three months later, I received a phonecall from a debt collection agency saying I owed £345. I contacted the branch administrator at Sydenham Gymophobics to try and resolve this, who has been most unhelpful. I am currently waiting for her reply as to why Gymophobics did not call me to alert me, and to why they feel it is ok for their representative to write letters for 3 months, allowing debt to build up, before deciding to lift up the phone.
Gymophbics is a franchise operation. I would write to Donna Hubbard - founder of Gymophobics, tell her what's going on and that the people operating the local franchise are getting her venture a bad name - online and in the community!
One thought: did you cancel your membership in writing? If so, then I don't think you've anything to worry about.
I did cancel it in writing and had no contact from them to say there was a problem. They are saying that as I did not recieve their authorisation to cancel my credit agreement, I am legally in the wrong and will just have to pay the money back. This is because their primary finance company Debit Finance Collections (DFC), have now "sold" the debt on to The Zinc Group. After a phone call with the manager of Sydenham Gymophobics today, she confirmed that DFC do not phone people to check they have the correct address, rather will write and keep adding charges for a period of months before selling on the debt. Ironically, during a phone-call with the Zinc Group this morning when I asked them to send me a break-down of the charges/repayments asked for, they said they are a "phone only" company won't write to me. Bizarre!
Gymophobics are aware of this and see no problem with it either, so beware any potential cunstomers. Apparently I could have had a break clause in my agreement - I find it telling that this was never mentioned to me even when I asked the lady who signed me up if I could leave the gym if I needed to.
When I asked the Sydenham/Croydon Director on the phone why they did not think to call me she replied that she "pays someone else a lot of money to do that" (i.e. DFC).
The Zinc Group are calling me tonight to set up a repayment plan (I have had to do a breakdown of my monthly expenses) - they say if I don't do this it will be passed to the field division and I should expect a bailiff at my door.
The Sydenham/Croydon Manager had no qualms in giving me Donna Hubbard's email address, so I don't expect her to be too concerned.
Are you a member of any organization that offers free legal advice? Union or Insurance? Otherwise, I'd talk to the Citizen's Advice Bureau.
I know that the Courts tend to favour creditors rather than debtors when it comes to Court. You could always pay "under protest" and then try to recoup your money. (But I'm not a lawyer - so I'd check this out with Citizen's Advice before you do so.)
I also think they have behaved unfairly toward you, so I'd suggest talking to Trading Standards or Consumer Direct, as there may have been other complaints.
Also, before passing your details on to a debt recovery firm, I find it unreasonable that they didn't sent a recorded delivery letter. Then they would have known you had moved house, as the letter would have been returned to them.
Donna Hubbard could gain a lot of positive publicity if she steps up and deals with this promptly and considerately. Otherwise she needs to know she'll get a lot of negative publicity.
Totally unprofessional and non expert advice from me but in my experience debt collection agencies are useless and can be ran around the houses. They will never actually take you to court because of the cost and rely on just scaring people into paying. Just writing them a letter sends them into a spin.
The gym industry is on the back foot at the moment after the OFT got a court ruling that extended contracts were unfair and unenforceable: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2011/ma ... ules-court.
You should perhaps take some proper advice but I wouldn't give them a penny and I would tell Zinc group to get lost.
I used to go there too,
I must admit I quite enjoyed it until a group of young woman who were obviously very fit by the looks of them, were putting bits of their bodies on show that I really didnt want to see as they did their sessions, they didnt play by the rules which was to move on to the next machine/area when the buzzer sounded and caused people to have to go around them to be able to continue the route, they were very intimidating, and took away the relaxed atmosphere that it should have been.
This put me off going there, also when I was going on summer holidays, I told them I wouldnt be using the gym for a month and they wanted proof of the places I was going to, this I found a bit childlike,I just gave up the month in the end because I didnt want people to know my house would be empty for a month, after all I didnt know these people.
Good luck with your problem.
In my experience of debt collectors they wont take you to court as it costs too much, and they wont put anything on your file, they have only paid a small amount for the debt so maybe you could pay them one or two months money (then they wont feel so much like they lost out) and then cut of the direct debit and avoid them, dont answer there calls, if you do pick up tell them its not that persons phone anymore, return there letters to them as not known at this address, if they do happen to come to your house which i very much doubt they would just dont answer the door.
What has happened to you is not very nice, this happened to me with holmes gym where there system did not cancel it proberly, i made such a fuss and told them they better take me to court slammed down the phone and never heard from them again!
I also had another incident where i ordered sky, but when they came to install they could not because of trees the engineer told me he would cancel the order then 3 months later they bill me and said I must pay as I did not call them myself! not once did they contact me even tho it was on there file as not installed. they got such a mouthful from me my husband had to take the phone from me, they ended up appologising and getting of the phone as quick as.
