Hi everyone,

I can see this issue is really common and I've already read some excellent advice on here.

I just wanted to make my own thread just to double check I do everything correctly!

Hope this is okay

I've recently decided to cancel my gym membership at Lifestyle Fitness as I am now using a newly opened gym next to my work place.

My membership was just a monthly rolling, no contract, cancel at any time thing..

I followed the FAQ available on the Lifestyle Fitness website which states to email any cancellation request to Harlands.

I sent an email to cancel on 01/03/18.

The same evening I also cancelled my direct debit as I did not believe I owed them any further money.

My direct debit payments were paid on the fifth of each month.

On 06/03/18 I received an email from Harlands with the below letter attached as well as a text informing me that I had an important email:

re: Your membership to Lifestyle Fitness

Harlands administer the collection of all payments due under your membership agreement with Lifestyle Fitness.

Your bank have advised us that your March instalment has been returned unpaid "instruction cancelled".

You have therefore been charged a £ 25.00 administration fee which means you need to pay £ 46.99 to bring your account up to date.

Call LIFESTYLE FITNESS HELPLINE - 01444 449171 immediately so we can collect this by DEBIT / CREDIT card and reinstate your Direct Debit over the telephone. If you wish to pay by another method, you must still phone to discuss your options.

If you do not call us by 26 March 18 you will be charged a further £ 25.00 administration fee.

Our telephone lines are open 8.00am to 8.00pm Monday to Friday & 9.00am - 12.00pm Saturday.

They also left me 'helpful' information on what I had to do to cancel my membership

- pay the above figure as well as another months notice.

Despite this exceptionally prompt contact, my original cancellation email is still unanswered

- who woulda think it

Following advice on these forums my plan is to send the following letter:

Dear Harlands,

I refer to my membership at Lifestyle Fitness gym in XXX which was a rolling monthly agreement.

Following Lifestyle Fitness guidance I informed yourselves of my cancellation on 01/03/18.

I also cancelled the Direct Debit mandate.

I now realise that I did not provide 30 days notice.

I therefore offer to pay the outstanding £21.99 for the notice period.

I will pay you no administration or cancellation fees and no further membership amounts.

If you confirm in writing that you will accept the amount of £21.99 in full 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 higher amount, I will pay you nothing and my offer will be withdrawn.

Yours Sincerely,

My only real concern here is that they have my phone number.

Letters or emails would just amuse me but phone calls would be rather annoying.

Is there anything I can do at this stage to try to prevent that..

is contacting the gym themselves worth a shot?

Thank you all for any help!

Hi Dex and welcome to CAG

I've had a look at the Lifestyle Fitness T&C's and the requirement for a month's notice is clear. However, they require the notice to be given in writing to the address for Harlands and I suggest this requirement is not reasonable - you can give notice to the gym verbally and in writing. It doesn't have to be sent to Harlands.

The letter you suggest is fine but post it and get a free Certificate of Posting at the PO for proof.

If Harlands call you, block their number but keep a log of all forms of contact they make with you.

Hi slick - thanks for the response.

Yea when I dug out the Terms after reading Harlands email I did see the notice period.

Unfortunately I was just naïve and thought cancel any time / no contract meant exactly that. Live and learn I guess.

I'm not really opposed to paying the last months membership so that's fine

- but I certainly don't intend to pay anything else.

In regards to cancellation I followed the FAQ available which says you can also email harlands.

I'll keep the email and I've took a shot of the FAQ as well.

The terms I have say to contact their helpline which is a phone number / the email.

Unfortunately I can't link either as I am a new member.

I've still had no response to my cancellation email which means if I was following their terms and they process the cancellation at any point now, not taking it from date of email, I could be held eligible for another months cancellation period.

From everything I've read I'm not expecting to get a response to it at all but we'll see.

Regardless I'll get this letter sent as you suggest as soon as possible and see what happens.

I'm also thinking of sending a similar letter to the gyms HO in the hope they will accept the payment and call Harlands off.

It's a long shot I guess but maybe they will be more reasonable.

Thanks for the help

Great and keep us posted.

I've had a slight change of heart on this matter and have decided to offer them the Admin Fee as well.

Honestly - £25 is a minor amount for me in comparison to all the hassle I will receive.

I've spent ages debating this with myself as I don't like backing down but ultimately I just don't think it's worth it after seeing what they put people through on this forum. I will definitely not pay anything further however.

I've drafted a letter to Harlands as such:

Dear Harlands ,

I refer to my membership at Lifestyle Fitness gym in XXX, which was a rolling monthly agreement.

Following Lifestyle Fitness guidelines I informed you of my cancellation through e-mail on 01/03/18. I

also cancelled my direct debit as I believed I did not owe any more payments.

I now realise that I should have provided 30 days notice and apologise for this error.

I have since received contact from yourselves on 06/03/18 stating I have incurred an administration charge of £25 and that should I wish to cancel my membership I would need to pay an additional 30 days notice period – a total cost of £68.98.

This figure is incorrect as you had not yet processed my cancellation request.

As I notified you of my cancellation on the 01/03/18 my notice runs until 31/03/18.

I was due to make only one further membership payment of £21.99 within this period on 05/03/18.

Therefore I owe £21.99 for membership.

Although I believe your administration fee to be both unreasonable and unenforceable, in the interests of a quick and amicable resolution I will also offer to pay this amount of £25.

As such – if you will confirm in writing that you will accept the amount of £46.99 in full settlement of all that I owe, I will pay you promptly.

If you fail to accept my offer within 28 days or you demand any higher amount, I will pay you nothing and my offer will be withdrawn.

I believe I have been more than fair in relation to this matter and await your response,

Will aim to get this sent off tomorrow unless I've made any misstep in the letter.

I've given them a bit longer to accept the offer as my end goal here is to just have them accept it and leave things at that.

I wouldn't want them failing to process it in time and missing my offer

- as that isn't getting me where I want to be.

If they choose not to accept this I will fight them to the end.

Thanks

P.S. If your going to give in to the bullies, there's no need to tell them, just pay the money, and hope they don't bribe you for more.

Well my only way to pay them currently would be phone them and they will want the £68.98 quoted to me and I'm not paying that.

I wouldn't be happy paying if they corrected the figure over the phone until I had it in writing for obvious reasons.

It's been suggested to keep all contact to post so that's what I'm going to do.

While the admin fee isn't legally enforceable, as far as they are concerned and their employees would have been told, they are due it.

As witnessed in plenty of threads here they will not accept an offer of just the one months membership.

My letter *might* be dealt with by someone reasonable who will see I am offering to pay what I owe according to their terms.

Harlands as a company might be bullies but that doesn't mean every single member of staff is a horrible person.

If they can action my payment at that amount they *might* do it and that's the problem sorted for me.

Obviously they will categorically not be allowed to accept any offer that doesn't pay the admin fee but maybe in this case they can and it will probably come down to whatever individual deals with my letter on the day.

I'm aware this is probably a long shot but if they refuse it doesn't change my situation at all and if they accept then happy days for me

- I'll lose the extra £25 as a lesson of my own stupidity and get on with my life.

I have no intention of paying anything higher than that amount and if they attempt to get me to it isn't going to happen.

The fact I have offered to pay all due to them under their terms, even when those terms aren't legally binding, is more than reasonable and their refusal to accept that offer would just make me dig my heels in totally.

If they don't accept I'll fight them to then end including court for harassment when I can.

Hi Dex,

If you want to pay the admin fee on top, that's your prerogative.

Personally, I think Harlands are very wrong to say you can only cancel by contacting them and they use this to their advantage, telling folk they've not cancelled correctly and therefore incurred an admin fee.

I strongly suggest you stick to the letter you suggested in post #1 above and only give Harlands 14 days to accept your offer before it's withdrawn.

There is no-one "reasonable" at Harlands according to our experience here over the last 10+ years. They are bullies and you should stand up to them.

no please don't capitulate

what are you scared of?? there is nothing legally they can do to you!!

I'll lose the extra £25 as a lesson of my own stupidity and get on with my life.

This is how they continue to fund their racketeering, which in turn makes others lives a misery.

We really do need to stand up to bullies, it's not a case of a 'lesson in life', it's a case of who has the morale high ground and who has courage of their convictions, which these criminals have neither.

makes others lives a misery.

Thanks

Sorry for the delayed response was a hectic week for me. I went and sent the original letter today.

Thanks

 

Sorry for the delayed response was a hectic week for me. I went and sent the original letter today.

Excellent well done!

Hi Dexev,

Just so we know, please confirm the letter you actually sent .......

Hi Dexev,

 

Just so we know, please confirm the letter you actually sent .......

 

From post #1

Ok, great.

Let us know how they reply, if they actually reply to your specific letter.

Okay I'm currently in shock as I have received a direct response to my letter in only 2 days... and it seems they are accepting just the membership fee.

'Further to your recent letter to our offices,

Harlands can confirm that if you make your final payment for March 2018 for £21.99 we will be able to cancel the account.

You will have till the 5th April 2018 to bring the account up to date to be cancelled.

Yours sincerely,

Harlands'

I'm a bit concerned about the wording as it doesn't exactly state explicitly they are dropping any other charges. However having received this in direct response to my letter within just 2 days surely this would be a free win if this ever did progress to court? Not that they had a chance anyway - but even more so now.

What do people make of this?

Hi Dex,

Was their reply a letter or email ?

I'm happy that, by NOT referring to any admin fees, they are confirming they'll accept the £21.99 in F&F Settlement of the matter and close the account.

If they came back afterwards making any further demands, you have good grounds to challenge and/or ignore Harlands. Or even threaten them with court action to shut them up. However, I thenk they'll accept the fee and leave you alone.

Have they told you how you can pay. You need their a/c details and a reference to make a direct transfer from your bank.

I suggest you do NOT agree to pay by phone. Direct transfer by you or a cheque by post.

Their response was a letter.

I just find the whole thing really strange after the countless threads on here where they never back down.

Perhaps they are learning. Can't complain though!

They haven't mentioned how to pay.

I think I'll give them a ring tomorrow and see if they will provide me direct bank details.

If not I'll send a cheque.

Thanks

Hi Dex,

I strongly suggest you DO NOT phone Harlands/CRS, ever.

If you can send a cheque for the amount, do this with a letter saying you refer to their letter of xxdate and xxx reference. Confirm the gym and take a copy/scan of the cheque.

Send it to Harlands Haywards Heath address and get a free Certificate of Posting.

Job sorted !!

Paid my membership and haven't heard anything more, seems like this went well for me.

Just wanted to say thanks again for all the advice Cheers guys!

Hi Dex and thanks for the update.

How did you pay them off in the end.

Did you call to get the payment info, or get it some other way.

I went and forgot about it all and left the whole thing to the last day they'd given me.

I phoned them and asked how much I needed to pay and was told the correct amount of 21.99.

I asked if I could do a bank transfer but was told this wasn't possible so in the end I did just agree to pay on the phone.

After I'd agreed to pay the 21.99 she confirmed the account was all cancelled.

I can see all my pending transactions pretty much straight away so I checked and it matched.

I've been checking daily since just in case but so far no problems.

I figured if they did decide to do anything I could just take them to court as they wouldn't have a leg to stand on

- in general would be pretty stupid of them at this point.

Hi Dex and thanks for the info.

It's all helpful in dealing with the gyms and their admin companies.

Hi sorry if i posted in wrong place could i ask for some help with CRS/Harlands

https://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?491029-Harlands-CRS-gym-membership-issues