Harlands direct debit - xcercise4less

[sarahn1992]

Hello,

 

I was wondering if anyone could possibly help me with an issue I'm having with Harlands.

 

I joined the xcercise4less Gym last year in around June 2014, ending my membership around August 2014

(not sure on exact dates at the moment however I'm sure I can retrieve these.

 

After getting into financial difficulties I cancelled my DD with xcercise4less in around August meaning they could not collect my monthly membership fee.

I fully accept that in hindsight, this was not the right thing to do and I should have given the 30 days notice as per the contract.

 

After cancelling the DD i received a letter from Harlands advising that I owed them a £25 administration fee for the DD cancellation

plus the monthly membership fee for xcercise4less which I think was around £19.99.

 

 

Following some online research I noticed a lot of complaints about Harlands and their so called administration fees.

I did eventually contact Harlands and paid the £19.99 and advised I would pay the fee the following week.

 

 

I also sent a letter to my gym confirming my membership cancellation,

that I'd paid the outstanding £19.99 to Harlands and that I should no longer be liable for any payments to xcercise4less.

 

The following week I attempted to call Harlands on three occasions to make the payment.

All times I was kept on hold for a ridiculous amount of time (I have screenshots of the call attempts I made).

 

 

After the last call I emailed them to advise that I would no longer be wasting my money to call them and they could contact me to collect the fee.

 

 

I also advised that I would only be paying £25 and no added charges as I had attempted to call them.

I received 2 automated replies from them stating something along the lines of call the following number to speak with us

(despite me clearly advising them I wouldn't be ringing again).

 

I have since received another letter from them advising that I owe them £44.99

(19.99 for my apparent missed installation for December plus 25 administration fees).

 

 

They've advised that in order to cancel my membership

I need to pay £64.98 (the above plus a further 19.99 to cancel) which is absolutely ridiculous.

 

Can they do this?

 

 

I'm starting to get quite worried and anxious about it all!

 

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

Regards,

 

Sarah.

[sarahn1992]

Sorry I've just found my letter that I sent to the gym with the dates on! I actually paid £44.99, so to my understanding I should only pay them the £19.99 which I missed in December however attempted to pay numerous times when I called them?

 

The letter was as follows:

 

29th November 2014

 

To Whom It May Concern,

 

I’m writing to inform you that I would like to cancel my gym membership at Xcercise4Less with immediate effect. Please consider this letter as your official 30 days notice of my intent to cancel, as per my contract terms.

 

A payment of £44.99 has been made today to Harlands to bring my account up to date, I will then be making a further payment of £19.99 on 1st December 2014 for the ‘Cancellation Period’ payment. The Harlands group customer advisor I spoke with confirmed this final fee of £19.99 will cancel my membership with immediate effect.

 

Thank you in advance for processing my membership cancellation in a timely manner.

 

Regards,

[dx100uk]

no they cant do that

 

 

just remember these people ARE NOT BAIIFFs

 

 

and have

 

 

NO SUCH LEGAL POWERS.

 

 

dx

[slick132]

Hi Sarah and welcome to CAG

 

When you joined, was it for a minimum period (normally 6 or12 months).

 

Or was it a rolling monthly agreement.

 

Don't worry about Harlands and their threats of mounting admin fees for now.

 

If your financial difficulties were due to redundancy or a serious drop in earnings, this may be relevant to your case, so please advise about this.

 

[sarahn1992]

Thankyou for the reply.

 

I joined on a rolling monthly agreement.

 

I had to leave my job whilst in my last month at university so was shortly unemployed which is why I cancelled the membership as soon as possible.

 

Thanks again,

 

Sarah.

[slick132]

Hi Sarah and thanks for the further info.

 

When you cancelled the DD in August, had they already taken the August payment. If so, then I suggest you owe them nothing beyond that.

 

If you cancelled the DD after the August payment was made, then the last payment you owe is for September. This is because you have to give a month's notice which is reasonable.

 

As far as any £25 cancellation admin fee, I don't think this is either fair or payable by you.

 

Just the same for any admin fees they want to charge you on top. We maintain these are penalty charges which are unlawful and unenforceable.

 

Please tell us exactly what payments you made on what dates in August and after.

 

Please also confirm the date the DD was normally paid each month.

 

[sarahn1992]

Sorry I've got my dates wrong, I acually cancelled it later than that!

 

They collect the DD on or around the 4th of every month. They last took a collection of 19.99 in October. I then cancelled it after this (which I admit I was wrong in doing so as I'd not given the 30 days notice). This meant they could not collect novembers payment. This is where the 44.99 that I paid comes into place, I paid the £25 admin fee for Novembers missed payment plus the 19.99 that I owed. I then confirmed with harlands that I had a final payment of 19.99 to pay the following Monday to cancel my gym membership and cover the 30 days notice.

 

This is when I attempted to call them (I have all the screenshots saved) and emailed them twice telling them id attempted to contact them and that I would not be paying anymore fees that they try to add on. So this is my argument, should I really be liable for anything more than the 19.99? I have proof of all the DD collections, the payment made, the attempted calls and the letter I gave to the gym in person confirming that following the last 19.99 payment to be made the following week, that I should no longer owe them or harlands anything.

 

Thank you again for the help.

[slick132]

Hi Sarah,

 

They took the October DD and you then cancelled the DD Mandate. That meant you just owed £19.99 for the Nov'r payment.

 

Any amount you paid beyond that was, in my opinion, unnecessary and I would not pay Harlands a penny more. Their Admin Fees are unlawful penalties and should not be paid.

 

Write to Harlands saying :-

 

I had to cancel the gym DD in October due to personal circumstances. The cancellation of the DD was adequate notice of my desire to cancel the gym agreement.

 

I now realise I only needed to pay you a further £19.99 for the November fee. Any amount paid in excess of this should be repaid to me within 14 days.

 

Accordingly, I look forward to your payment of £xx.xx shortly.

 

In all honesty, you won't get the money back from them unless you take court action and I'm not sure this is worth doing. Just take this as a lesson learned !

 

Let us know how they respond but we'll probably advise that you ignore Harlands. Send the letter by RM Signed For delivery or get a free Certificate of Posting from the PO when you send it.

 

Do not bother contacting the gym further as this will not help you in any way.

 

[sarahn1992]

Thank you so much for your help.

 

I'd not realised you'd replied unfortunately and rang Harlands today. They're claiming they will not waiver any fees and as far as they're concerned I owe 44.99 however they will half the administration fee to 12.49 making it around 32.49, I cant remember the exact figure she told me but I have it wrote. They're then claiming I then owe another 19.99 for January as the gym haven't notified them of any cancellation. I personally took the letter to the gym informing them of my gym cancellation. They haven't contact me since then to say they're disputing my cancellation in anyway so surely I would be safe to assume that the letter was enough to cancel my membership? Which means my membership ended in December. Surely if there was any problem they should've contacted me and said actually no, your membership is still running. Nor have I received any of their usual annoying promotional emails - which again, I'd take as a sign of my membership being cancelled? Or am I being naive here?

 

I said to the advisor at Harlands several times, so surely when I contact the gym and they confirm my membership cancelled in December, I should only owe 19.99, but she's claiming that I still owe the fees? I explained to her that I'd attempted to call several times, she looked this up on the system and said you only held for 3mins, around the time that you called there was a waiting time of 5 minutes. But surely that's not my problem?

 

Thank you so much for the help, I'm completely clueless on 'rights' and DDs and just want to make sure I'm right in what I'm arguing? I will speak with the gym and draft a letter with your comments above.

 

Again, thank you!

[renegadeimp]

Ignore harlands. They will say and try anything to get money off you. Stay off the phone and follow slicks advice. harlands dont record calls, so treat it as if it never happened. Dont go speaking to random companies. follow slicks advice and youll be set.

 

They do the same thing to everyone so dont worry.

[slick132]

Hi Sarah,

 

If Harlands or CRS (they are the same company) call again, tell them to put anything they have to say in writing, then hang up ! As Renegade says, they talk rubbish and are almost certainly LYING about knowing how long their "waiting time" was when you called.

 

Send the letter above and (again as Renegade says) forget the phone conversation ever took place.