Hi PGH7447 I have already requested a copy of the contract twice. Virgin only return the Transfer form. I have given up wasting my time on them. If they want my money they can take me to court. I don't even get angry about it anymore - I have already wasted too much of my energy on them. However, given that so many of us have such similar stories, they would have weight if we were to organise ourselves and submit them all to the relevant authorities: consumer protection, OFT, watchdog. It's too easy for the above to dismiss a singular complaint; if we were to all complain together they would need to take note, as surely we cannot all be stupid and liars.

Having been a member of Virgin Active on a monthly contract since August 2004 with a £50 fee, as my membership fee had increased in January 2005 to £55 and then to £56 in January 2006, in December 2005, after a lot of consideration, perusal of the contract and several conversation with Virgin Active's Sales representatives, I signed a new contract to transfer to the newly launched Diamond Membership which cost £51.95 per month, with an effective starting date of February 2006. [i can demonstrate the above using my bank statements.] In December 2005, before signing the new contract, I had clearly explained to the sales representative that I did not want to be tied into a 12 month contract, which is why I was reluctant to become a Diamond Member, which required an initial 12 month commitment; but the sales representative explained time and again that IT WOULD only be for an initial 12 months to show commitment, then it would go back to be a monthly contract with a one month notice as my previous contract. So "commit to 12 months then back to where you are now but with the advantage of paying a few pounds less a month and the guarantee that the price would not increase for life." I took a contract home with me prior to signing it (double sided A4 sheet), read it carefully and did not find anything to dispute what the sales representative had told me. So I signed up. As I was doing this they pulled out another single sided A4 sheet, a Transfer form, to process the £10 fee to transfer from my current membership to the Diamond one. I read this form carefully (which oddly had only 8 sentences on it, each of which required that I initialled it as acknowledgment), I clearly remember finding one sentence in particular unclear and going against what I had been told "Diamond Membership will automatically renew for a further twelve months at the end of the commitment period". I queried this and the sales representative explained that referred to the type of membership, i.e. Diamond, which had a fixed price for the life (i.e. the length of the membership) and unless I were to cancel my contract, I would continue being on a Diamond membership at the same monthly price. She laughed and again reassured me that it was definitely an initial 12 month commitment, after which it would return to a 30 days notice contract, like my old one, and that the contract was definitely NOT on a permanent 12 month basis. I was reassured and I signed (I would like to point out that two of us were actually signing up). In April 2007 we cancelled our membership and cancelled the Direct Debit mandate. We subsequently received an undated account overdue letter; as advised in it we contacted them: at that point it was explained to us that we had not completed our 12 month commitment . We understood from that that we must not have completed the initial 12 months we had committed to (no details of when the 12 months they were referring to started and finished were given to us, verbally or in writing). We therefore re-instated the direct debit. A few weeks later we received and undated letter stating "it has been a while now since you decided to cancel your membership with us here at Virgin Active [...] until 20th July all ex members can take advantage of our fantastic half price joining offers!" From a letter from Virgin Active dated 26th July 2007 it is clear that: 1) we must have contacted them to query why we had received that letter, since, although we had not used the facilities for months (certainly not between April and July or we would have noticed that our membership had in fact been cancelled) to the best of our knowledge we were still paying them as we had been previously told we had to since our contract had not terminated; 2) arrears for April to July and a continuation to our contract were demanded of us even though Virgin Active was clearly under the impression that we had cancelled our membership and up to the point when we contacted them they were not after any further payments from us or held us under any further contractual obligations; 3) we wrote to them explaining point 2 above and asking that the contract remain terminated and that no arrears were due as per point 2 above. The above mentioned letter dated 26th July, explains that we had in fact set up a direct debit mandate in May (as they had demanded of us in May) but that no moneys had actually been paid because of a problem with the type of account used. The letter which is long and confusing, and which never mentions any actual contractual start or end dates, states: "Unfortunately as you are diamond members you have a 12 month rolling commitment period to which you have only made 5 payments to your current commitment period including the arrears in question. This amount was owing to us and therefore there will be no refund". All we understood from that was that Virgin Active was refusing to waive the fees between May 2007 and July 2007 (explained in point 2 above) and that we were still obliged to make payments as somehow we had still not fulfilled our contractual requirements. As the whole situation seemed grossly unfair, and as the conversations we had had with the sales representatives prior to and whilst joining were so impressed in our minds, we completely missed and not understood the significance of the words "12-month rolling contract", which had never been used before, in paperwork or verbally, and we still remained of the understanding that our contract stipulated that after an initial 12 months period we would be on a monthly rolling contract. The whole situation was utterly confusing. We ended up remaining members even though we hardly ever used the service. [i would however like to point out that I now understand in retrospect that, given that Virgin Active had acknowledged that we wished to cancel our Diamond membership in April 2007, but told us we had only made five payments, Virgin Active should have stopped taking payments after a further seven payments, as we had terminated our contract according to the terms and conditions they stipulated, well within the 17th day of the last month – they’d had in fact had a full 10 months notice!!!!!!. The fact of the matter is that Virgin Active did not stop taking payments at the end of the contractual 12 month rolling period in early 2008, but just ignored our request to cancel our membership and once again renewed the contract by a further twelve months, once again without giving us any notice!] In May 2009 I once again cancelled my membership and stopped the Direct Payment Mandate with effect from June 2009 (I had been working about 90 hours a week for months and had not used the gym at least since November 2008 ) and this is when, as they demanded that I keep paying them moneys and I explained to them the terms of the contract I had agreed to back in December 2005, they started insisting that I had actually agreed to a 12 month contract which automatically renewed itself for another 12 months without any warning required from them. I explained several times (verbally and in writing) that those were most definitely not the terms of the contract that were described to me by Virgin Active’s Sales Representative nor the terms that I had agreed to when I had joined; I explained that if they had actually got me on a 12 month rolling contract they had mis-sold me said contract. I therefore requested they send me a copy of my contract (twice) as I remembered going through it meticulously prior to signing it, as well as having the various in depth discussions with their sales representative. All Virgin Active sent to me was a copy of the Transfer Form (twice). The form itself is confusing as it was signed on 27/12/05, but an effective date for the transfer is not stated; however the date 1/2/06 is hand-written at the top of the form. As I read this document for the first time in three years, in the light of what they were telling me now I could see that that paragraph (point 4) I had originally questioned before joining was what they were referring to (even though it does not actually use the words 12-month rolling contract, that is effectively what it is describing, whilst using the word “membership” instead of contract). I was utterly shocked and appalled and so very angry as I had been simply conned. It is indicative that Virgin Active will not send me a copy of the double sided A4 contract that I had originally perused and signed. Although it is clear that this contract must exist (as this is the bit of paper which actually contains all of the terms and conditions about behaviours, right to cancellation, right to freeze the membership and so on - none of these things are indicated in the Transfer Form-), in spite of having been asked for it twice (once in writing once verbally) Virgin Active insist in only providing me with the Transfer Form. It is also clear from the correspondence I received from Virgin Active that they themselves both in 2007 and more recently in 2009 are not clear about the terms of my contract and the effective dates of my contract: - a letter from Virgin Active dated 18th June 2009 states "So far you have completed 38 months membership and so you have a further 10 months to complete before your membership is cancelled." This would have been a liability of £519.50 and would place the start of the 12 month rolling period in April (the last payment made was in May 09; if 10 further payments are due to the end of the 12 months rolling period, this must mean that only two had been made). - However in a subsequent letter from Virgin Active dated 26th June 2009 they state "There are 7 months of your membership to complete before we cancel your contract"…This would have been a liability of £363.65 and would place the start of the 12 month rolling period in January. - further still a letter from ARC dated 14th August 2009 puts the total liability to end of contract to £445.60. Even accounting for a £30 collection administration fee (which is not mentioned in this letter, but is mentioned in yet a different letter sent from Virgin Active on 22nd June 2009) that would imply liability for 8 months at £51.95, thus placing the start of the 12 month rolling period in February. I am currently waiting for them to take me to a small claims court, but they haven't yet done so. It is worth pointing out that Virgin Active NEVER sent me any notification that the membership was due for renewal, or that it had been renewed; not even in January 2008 which was actually the legal end of the contract I had signed as I had given notice in April 2007 that I wished to cancel my contract, and had been obliged to fulfil payments in full for the entire contractual 12 month period. How could I be expected to remember when my contract was supposedly due for automatic renewal given that: I had signed this new contract several years before (a contract which I had been mis-sold in the first instance by Virgin Active’s Sales Representatives, and which ,I was therefore certain all along, had been a monthly one after an initial 12 month period, and was therefore not aware of an automatic renewal of the initial 12 month commitment [in fact what is the relevance of using the word initial at all?]; Virgin Active never sent out reminder notices of the contract being up for automatic renewal or any notifications whatsoever that they had in fact automatically renewed said contract for a further 12 months. Virgin Active generated confusion throughout my dealings with them; It is evident from their correspondence that they themselves are not clear on the term dates of my contract; The only shred of paperwork I have from Virgin Active does not state a clear effective start date of the Diamond Membership contract. In all of my years of membership with Virgin Active they never sent to me ANY correspondence which stated the date terms of my contract, their correspondence would simply quote how many months were still outstanding on the commitment, and in practically all instances current analysis reveals that these were incorrect. Investigations on the Web have revealed that I am not the only one to have had problems with Virgin Active and their Diamond Membership; complaints are varied and include several reported instances of mis-sold contracts just like mine was. Complaints are not limited to the UK, just today I came across an Italian group ( #http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/group.php?v=wall&ref=ts&gid=63246205928# ) incredibly similar experiences; the group is trying to guide individuals in dealing with Virgin Active and their techniques of persecution through various agencies, and advising they lodge formal complaints with [email protected] (consumer protection) Quite frankly I am stunned that it is legal in this country for a company to have a silent yearly renewal policy which does not require any notification or reminder of any kind.

Having been a member of Virgin Active on a monthly contract since August 2004 with a £50 fee, as my membership fee had increased in January 2005 to £55 and then to £56 in January 2006, in December 2005, after a lot of consideration, perusal of the contract and several conversation with Virgin Active's Sales representatives, I signed a new contract to transfer to the newly launched Diamond Membership which cost £51.95 per month, with an effective starting date of February 2006. [i can demonstrate the above using my bank statements.] In December 2005, before signing the new contract, I had clearly explained to the sales representative that I did not want to be tied into a 12 month contract, which is why I was reluctant to become a Diamond Member, which required an initial 12 month commitment; but the sales representative explained time and again that IT WOULD only be for an initial 12 months to show commitment, then it would go back to be a monthly contract with a one month notice as my previous contract. So "commit to 12 months then back to where you are now but with the advantage of paying a few pounds less a month and the guarantee that the price would not increase for life." I took a contract home with me prior to signing it (double sided A4 sheet), read it carefully and did not find anything to dispute what the sales representative had told me. So I signed up. As I was doing this they pulled out another single sided A4 sheet, a Transfer form, to process the £10 fee to transfer from my current membership to the Diamond one. I read this form carefully (which oddly had only 8 sentences on it, each of which required that I initialled it as acknowledgment), I clearly remember finding one sentence in particular unclear and going against what I had been told "Diamond Membership will automatically renew for a further twelve months at the end of the commitment period". I queried this and the sales representative explained that referred to the type of membership, i.e. Diamond, which had a fixed price for the life (i.e. the length of the membership) and unless I were to cancel my contract, I would continue being on a Diamond membership at the same monthly price. She laughed and again reassured me that it was definitely an initial 12 month commitment, after which it would return to a 30 days notice contract, like my old one, and that the contract was definitely NOT on a permanent 12 month basis. I was reassured and I signed (I would like to point out that two of us were actually signing up). In April 2007 we cancelled our membership and cancelled the Direct Debit mandate. We subsequently received an undated account overdue letter; as advised in it we contacted them: at that point it was explained to us that we had not completed our 12 month commitment . We understood from that that we must not have completed the initial 12 months we had committed to (no details of when the 12 months they were referring to started and finished were given to us, verbally or in writing). We therefore re-instated the direct debit. A few weeks later we received and undated letter stating "it has been a while now since you decided to cancel your membership with us here at Virgin Active [...] until 20th July all ex members can take advantage of our fantastic half price joining offers!" From a letter from Virgin Active dated 26th July 2007 it is clear that: 1) we must have contacted them to query why we had received that letter, since, although we had not used the facilities for months (certainly not between April and July or we would have noticed that our membership had in fact been cancelled) to the best of our knowledge we were still paying them as we had been previously told we had to since our contract had not terminated; 2) arrears for April to July and a continuation to our contract were demanded of us even though Virgin Active was clearly under the impression that we had cancelled our membership and up to the point when we contacted them they were not after any further payments from us or held us under any further contractual obligations; 3) we wrote to them explaining point 2 above and asking that the contract remain terminated and that no arrears were due as per point 2 above. The above mentioned letter dated 26th July, explains that we had in fact set up a direct debit mandate in May (as they had demanded of us in May) but that no moneys had actually been paid because of a problem with the type of account used. The letter which is long and confusing, and which never mentions any actual contractual start or end dates, states: "Unfortunately as you are diamond members you have a 12 month rolling commitment period to which you have only made 5 payments to your current commitment period including the arrears in question. This amount was owing to us and therefore there will be no refund". All we understood from that was that Virgin Active was refusing to waive the fees between May 2007 and July 2007 (explained in point 2 above) and that we were still obliged to make payments as somehow we had still not fulfilled our contractual requirements. As the whole situation seemed grossly unfair, and as the conversations we had had with the sales representatives prior to and whilst joining were so impressed in our minds, we completely missed and not understood the significance of the words "12-month rolling contract", which had never been used before, in paperwork or verbally, and we still remained of the understanding that our contract stipulated that after an initial 12 months period we would be on a monthly rolling contract. The whole situation was utterly confusing. We ended up remaining members even though we hardly ever used the service. [i would however like to point out that I now understand in retrospect that, given that Virgin Active had acknowledged that we wished to cancel our Diamond membership in April 2007, but told us we had only made five payments, Virgin Active should have stopped taking payments after a further seven payments, as we had terminated our contract according to the terms and conditions they stipulated, well within the 17th day of the last month – they’d had in fact had a full 10 months notice!!!!!!. The fact of the matter is that Virgin Active did not stop taking payments at the end of the contractual 12 month rolling period in early 2008, but just ignored our request to cancel our membership and once again renewed the contract by a further twelve months, once again without giving us any notice!] In May 2009 I once again cancelled my membership and stopped the Direct Payment Mandate with effect from June 2009 (I had been working about 90 hours a week for months and had not used the gym at least since November 2008 ) and this is when, as they demanded that I keep paying them moneys and I explained to them the terms of the contract I had agreed to back in December 2005, they started insisting that I had actually agreed to a 12 month contract which automatically renewed itself for another 12 months without any warning required from them. I explained several times (verbally and in writing) that those were most definitely not the terms of the contract that were described to me by Virgin Active’s Sales Representative nor the terms that I had agreed to when I had joined; I explained that if they had actually got me on a 12 month rolling contract they had mis-sold me said contract. I therefore requested they send me a copy of my contract (twice) as I remembered going through it meticulously prior to signing it, as well as having the various in depth discussions with their sales representative. All Virgin Active sent to me was a copy of the Transfer Form (twice). The form itself is confusing as it was signed on 27/12/05, but an effective date for the transfer is not stated; however the date 1/2/06 is hand-written at the top of the form. As I read this document for the first time in three years, in the light of what they were telling me now I could see that that paragraph (point 4) I had originally questioned before joining was what they were referring to (even though it does not actually use the words 12-month rolling contract, that is effectively what it is describing, whilst using the word “membership” instead of contract). I was utterly shocked and appalled and so very angry as I had been simply conned. It is indicative that Virgin Active will not send me a copy of the double sided A4 contract that I had originally perused and signed. Although it is clear that this contract must exist (as this is the bit of paper which actually contains all of the terms and conditions about behaviours, right to cancellation, right to freeze the membership and so on - none of these things are indicated in the Transfer Form-), in spite of having been asked for it twice (once in writing once verbally) Virgin Active insist in only providing me with the Transfer Form. It is also clear from the correspondence I received from Virgin Active that they themselves both in 2007 and more recently in 2009 are not clear about the terms of my contract and the effective dates of my contract: - a letter from Virgin Active dated 18th June 2009 states "So far you have completed 38 months membership and so you have a further 10 months to complete before your membership is cancelled." This would have been a liability of £519.50 and would place the start of the 12 month rolling period in April (the last payment made was in May 09; if 10 further payments are due to the end of the 12 months rolling period, this must mean that only two had been made). - However in a subsequent letter from Virgin Active dated 26th June 2009 they state "There are 7 months of your membership to complete before we cancel your contract"…This would have been a liability of £363.65 and would place the start of the 12 month rolling period in January. - further still a letter from ARC dated 14th August 2009 puts the total liability to end of contract to £445.60. Even accounting for a £30 collection administration fee (which is not mentioned in this letter, but is mentioned in yet a different letter sent from Virgin Active on 22nd June 2009) that would imply liability for 8 months at £51.95, thus placing the start of the 12 month rolling period in February. I am currently waiting for them to take me to a small claims court, but they haven't yet done so. It is worth pointing out that Virgin Active NEVER sent me any notification that the membership was due for renewal, or that it had been renewed; not even in January 2008 which was actually the legal end of the contract I had signed as I had given notice in April 2007 that I wished to cancel my contract, and had been obliged to fulfil payments in full for the entire contractual 12 month period. How could I be expected to remember when my contract was supposedly due for automatic renewal given that: I had signed this new contract several years before (a contract which I had been mis-sold in the first instance by Virgin Active’s Sales Representatives, and which ,I was therefore certain all along, had been a monthly one after an initial 12 month period, and was therefore not aware of an automatic renewal of the initial 12 month commitment [in fact what is the relevance of using the word initial at all?]; Virgin Active never sent out reminder notices of the contract being up for automatic renewal or any notifications whatsoever that they had in fact automatically renewed said contract for a further 12 months. Virgin Active generated confusion throughout my dealings with them; It is evident from their correspondence that they themselves are not clear on the term dates of my contract; The only shred of paperwork I have from Virgin Active does not state a clear effective start date of the Diamond Membership contract. In all of my years of membership with Virgin Active they never sent to me ANY correspondence which stated the date terms of my contract, their correspondence would simply quote how many months were still outstanding on the commitment, and in practically all instances current analysis reveals that these were incorrect. Investigations on the Web have revealed that I am not the only one to have had problems with Virgin Active and their Diamond Membership; complaints are varied and include several reported instances of mis-sold contracts just like mine was. Complaints are not limited to the UK, just today I came across an Italian group (#http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/group.php?v=wall&ref=ts&gid=63246205928# ) incredibly similar experiences; the group is trying to guide individuals in dealing with Virgin Active and their techniques of persecution through various agencies, and advising they lodge formal complaints with [email protected] (consumer protection) Quite frankly I am stunned that it is legal in this country for a company to have a silent yearly renewal policy which does not require any notification or reminder of any kind. Are there any groups of ex-customers who have united to complain about Virgin Active and their actions? I would be very grateful if anyone could forward me a copy of an original contract as Va are not providing me with a copy, anything would be a start ... however mine did date back to December 2005...