Hi,

I am looking for some further advise after following these post around the Harlands, CRS and trying to do it myself using your advice.

I think I have come to a point now where I’m fed up of playing email ping pong and need some further help.

I cancelled my DD a month too early for Harlands.

They said they have written to me but assume they have my old address.

I then received an email from CRS.

Will post below the emails to make it easier to read.

Re: CRS Ref No:

Xercise 4 Less Ref. No:

We regret that despite our attempts to reach an amicable resolution to your account, you remain in arrears to Xercise 4 Less.

We must therefore give notice that failing to reply to this letter within the next 10 days will result in your account balance being passed to Zinc Group Ltd, one of the UK's leading providers of debt recovery solutions.

WE WOULD STILL LIKE TO RESOLVE THIS MATTER

We're still happy to listen to your reasons for not paying and will do whatever we can to reach an acceptable resolution for both parties. All that is required is for you to call us on 01444 449 165 by no later than 29th October 17 so we can discuss your account further.

I replied using the email template from here.

Dear Sir or madam,

I refer to my membership at Xercise 4 Less gym, and to your demands for payment.

I joined the gym June 2016 in Bristol and entered into a direct debit immediately and started paying DD of 14.99 every month.

I cancelled my DD mandate June2017 because I had never used the gym facilities in the entire year.

This is adequate notice of my desire to cancel the gym agreement as per the High Court ruling in The OFT v Ashbourne Mgt Svs Ltd in 2011.

I will not pay you any admin or Cancellation Fees as these are penalties that are unlawful and unenforceable.

I now realise I should have given a month's notice and, to remedy this, I offer to pay you a final month's fee of £14.99 for July 2017.

If you confirm in writing that you'll accept this amount in settlement of all that I owe, I will pay you promptly.

If you fail to accept my offer within 14 days or you demand any other payment, I will pay you nothing and my offer will be withdrawn.

Yours faithfully,

They immediately sent back..

We wish to advise that cancelling your Direct Debit was not adequate notice of your intention to cancel.

The terms of your agreement specifically state that you must give notice in writing and complete minimum number of Direct Debit payments you committed to.

We believe you are mistaken with regards to Mr. Justice Kitchin's ruling in the case of the Office of Fair Trading versus Ashbourne Management Services Ltd. as such a statement does not appear anywhere in the judgement, a copy of which can be found at

[. If you can identify any passage in this ruling that supports your claim that cancelling your Direct Debit was sufficient, please tell us the paragraph number and we shall give consideration to your offer.

We should warn you than in the six and a half years since that case, no one has yet been able to show us where this statement has been made.

In the absence of this, we are unable to accept your offer of £9.99 as sufficient to settle this debt because more than one month has passed without payment and without completing the correct cancellation procedure.

As you did not complete the correct cancellation procedure, the club were bound by the contract to hold your membership open for you. A service has been provided during this time, at cost to the club, whether you attended or not.

As your payments were not honoured and you failed to rectify your breach of Agreement charges were applied to your account and your file was referred to ourselves for collection at which point you became responsible for our collection fees.

To be clear, the addition of these charges in such circumstances is stipulated in the terms of your agreement. It is our position that our charges are lawful and in line with all relevant guidance and thus are not unlawful.

These charges have been added to cover actual and necessary costs incurred because of your breach of contract and thus are not penalties.

We may be able to negotiate a reduction on these charges, but will not accept any offer of payment that gives no consideration to the costs these charges cover.

For the above reasons it must remain our position that the balance of £222.47 is correct and due. Payment can be made by Credit/Debit card by calling us on 01444 449165. A payment plan can also be set up if you are unable to settle in full, although we do charge a little extra for this.

Please ensure a payment or response is received within the next 7 days, so we can avoid further action being taken.

To which I replied using one of your templates

I refer to your email of 24th October 2017.

There is plenty of case law which confirms that your admin fees are, in fact, penalty charges which are unlawful. The fact that they are included in gym's T&C's does not alter that fact. If you decide to take action to enforce such penalties, I will produce the necessary evidence to the court.

If you believe that the case of The OFT v Ashbourne Mgt Services Ltd did not set precedents applicable to all gym (or other similar) cases, that is your prerogative. However, I will rely on this judgement if court action is taken.

I will make you one final offer to pay the month's notice fee of £14.99, as per my initial email (not the 9.99 which you quoted in the email) This is my final offer, valid for just 14 days. Accept it in writing and I will pay. Otherwise I will pay you nothing.

Further demands from you will be reported to Trading Standards.

They came back to me today with,

Further to our previous correspondence, please quote the case law you refer to, as these charges have been enforced in court numerous times and NEVER been deemed unfair or as penalties by any judge we have presented them to.

We do not dispute that the Ashbourne case set precedents relevant to our business, what we dispute is your claim that cancelling a Direct Debit was sufficient to cancel the membership was such a precedent. We have even presented you with the judgement you refer to so you can see this for yourself, and you have entirely failed to justify your claims.

As such you may rely on that judgement as much as you wish but neither we or our client are guilty of any of the issues discussed in that case and it does not support your position.

We have been operating in this manner for almost fourteen years and added our fees to over six hundred thousand debts and are confident that if we were guilty of any wrong doing we would be notified by one or more of the numerous bodies set up to protect consumer rights during this time.

The OFT, Trading Standards, the FCA and the Financial Ombudsman Service have sought to take action against us a grand total of zero times since CRS's inception in 2003. It is simply not plausible that we would still be trading if these fees were not lawful.

They have been enforced in court, proving that they are enforceable.

You can state you know them not to be, as can the adminsitrators of the Consumer Action Group forums and many other such websites; we know otherwise and apparently so does every district judge we have come across, the OFT, Trading Standards, the FCA and the Financial Ombudsman Service.

Your position is based on bad advice received for unqualified third paries with little or no understadning of the situation. We urge you to consider the actual evidence that has been presented to you as your dispute lacks any credibility. Your offer of £14.99 is not reasonable and is not accepted.

We have noted your comments and we have nothing further to add, you continue to have an account balance of £222.47. We will proceed with next actions to recover your balance.

If you wish to discuss the matter further, please contact us immediately on 01444 449165.

Our lines are open 08:30am - 6:00pm, Monday to Friday.

Yours sincerely,

David Castle

well this is why we say never converse by email nor phone.

you stated your case

you should have ignore the fools

if you never even went to the gym

i'd go reclaim the whole lot under the DD guarantee scheme.

let them prove you even went once.

Send that email directly to the CMA, and lodge a formal complaint with them (the CMA) and get onto social media and embarrass them gym and let everyone know how they treat their customers.

P.S. Make a very loud complaint to the gym in question too.

Hi Ekim and welcome to CAG

In your case, I suggest you do NOT reclaim any DD's paid during the m/ship.

Stop using email - this makes it too easy to simply fire a reply back to you making their demands.

Write to Harlands at their Haywards Heath address telling them simply :-

1. This is my current address to contact me.

2. You have failed to accept my offer to pay the final fee that I owed and will therefore pay you nothing more for gym fees or unlawful penalties.

3. Further demands must be in writing only and not by text or telephone.

4. I may ignore demands from Harlands/CRS but you may be reported to The CMA and Trading Standards if you continue to harass me.

Send by post and get a Free Certificate of Posting at the PO.

Send a copy of this letter to X4Less Head Office and tell them they should be ashamed for using Harlands/CRS to bully and harass gym members, and you'll soon be using Social Media to tell others to be aware how Xercise4Less allow their good members to be harassed by Harlands/CRS for months and years.

Many thanks for your replies. Will get this sent to them. No doubt I will get more letters but I will be sure to keep you in the loop when they come.

Hello again,

After sending the above letter a while ago now,

approx 4 months ago,

I am now starting to receive voicemails and phone calls from Zinc Group asking for me to ring.

I have received no written correspondence from the group.

Do I just continue to ignore the phone calls or should I call them back, and if so say what?

a DCA is NOT A BAILIFF

and has

ZERO LEGEL POWERS on ANY DEBT.

Block their number from your phone, keep a diary of events, report Zinc if you wish to the SRA for harassment, which is a criminal offence in itself.

How has embarrassing the gym, and the complaint to the CMA getting along?

Ignore Zinc completely and they'll back off quickly.

Keep a log of all types of contact if a complaint is needed.

Thanks guys

Block their number from your phone, keep a diary of events, report Zinc if you wish to the SRA for harassment, which is a criminal offence in itself.

 

How has embarrassing the gym, and the complaint to the CMA getting along?

Did a bit of social media bashing but didn’t seem to matter

oh it does!!

dx