Hi all,

Looking for some advice - I've been reading through and there's lot of great advice here on the forum and I've kind of used some already but messed up in places to give the gym more than I should - so here's the story.

My wife and I are a member of the Sweat Union gym in Chelmsford, we are both on rolling monthly contracts. On 22nd August 2018 we both sent them an email saying we would like to cancel our memberships and she subsequently cancelled the DD (2 x 21.99 as she paid for both of ours).

We were then informed the next day that you had to cancel prior to the 15th of the month so we would have the pay the September gym fees. We were willing to pay and she called them to say the DD has been cancelled and they said this means we would need to pay the £21.99 for Sept and both incur a £15 admin fee because of the DD. She called the bank to try and reinstate it but they said Sweat would have to do it and they didn't seem willing.

The payment wasn't due until the 31/08 so we emailed and said we'll pay the outstanding £21.99 each but don't agree with the fee, the email was ignored. I ended up looking at my account on the site and could see the balance due (£21.99) and the option to pay online so we went ahead and both paid the September balance on the 29th August (before the due date).

I then emailed Sweat to say the balance was paid prior to the deadline and I assume this clears the matter, that the admin fee will be removed and that we can still use the gym through Sept as we are paid up. They emailed back to say no, we have to pay the £15 fee each, we cannot use the gym unless this is paid and on top of this, we cannot cancel our memberships with outstanding arrears on our accounts.

Now this is really galling - I know £15 is not a lot but I don't want to pay it out of principal. The gym have acknowledged we would like to cancel but refuse to let us do so without paying the £15 fee. They say that if we don't pay the £15 our accounts will be passed onto a third party finance agency.

Reading other threads, it seems like they don't have any legal right for the £15 fee Should I do anything else at this point or just ignore going forward?

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

You don't have to pay the admin fees. They can be considered unlawful penalty charges. Read the forums again. Plenty of other threads identical to yours

Thanks - didn't know if I should send a final cancellation letter or anything or can take the fact they have responded to my cancellation email as confirmation that they have received it. If the latter then I will just ignore them from now on.

You can send the letter and the final months membership. But you don't pay those charges

Hi Boulley and welcome to CAG

You gave notice to cancel a monthly rolling agreement and (eventually) paid the final month's fee that was due for the notice period. Nothing more you need to do in my opinion.

Is it the gym or an admin company that's looking for fees ?

In any event, I suggest you make no responses at all to demands and ignore for now.

Hi slick,

Thanks - it's just the gym asking for the fees and saying if we don't pay them, they won't accept cancellation and will eventually pass it on to a finance agency.

Just as an aside, if they pass your details onto a 3rd party, unless that third party has a legal grounds, could they be going against GDPR legislation?

Cheers

Hi Boulley,

I really don't think there's a valid GDPR angle you can use to your advantage.

Although you may have a theoretical complaint, I doubt it'll help your case with this gym.

Far better to tell the gym (in writing) that you paid all that you owed and, if they pass this on to a DCA, the gym will be held jointly responsible in any action that you take to stop being harassed.

Thanks, will do