say you join a gym. say it’s called The 24 hour Gym and their website is www.weareopen24hoursaday.com or something along those lines. the point being they tout themselves as being the one and only local *all night gym.
*
say you join this specific gym for that specific reason because you work days and can only work out after midnight.
then say said gym changes their hours about a week after you sign your 1 year contract. they start closing at 12am.
you try to work with the new hours but can’t really get there in time and it starts to be less and less worth the money.
then say a bit later they cut back to closing at 10pm, thus making it 100% impossible for you to use their services at all.
unless explicitly stated in their contract, does the cut back of services constitute a breach on their end?
The companies that write gym contracts put in a lot of stuff favorable to them. (What a surprise.)
In our area there was a gym that closed, its customer contracts were sold to another gym that was quite a ways away for some customers. The customers thought they didn’t have to continue paying their gym fees since, hey, it’s closed!
Nope. The new gym went after all of them, collection agencies and all that.
So I would expect there would be fine print that covers this.
This sounds like a law school exam question. Two things come to mind and they are material breach and the second is unconscionability.
You can’t break a contract over something frivolous. So if they changed their hours so that they were closed 2-3 am one day per week, I doubt that would be a material breach. It would vary so much by the facts and the jurisdiction, but I would contend that the fact that they made such a big deal about being open 24 hours, so much so that they called their website that name, that the 24 hours (or at least close to it) is a material part of the contract.
If they are closed from 12am to 6am? Eeeeeh, maybe. If you could really show that you are hampered by that change so much that you can’t work out as much.
Second, the terms of their right to change hours are important. Was it prominently displayed in the contract? Was it buried in page 34, paragraph 114 in 6 point font? Were you protected somehow with a notice provision? That’s what I mean by unconscionability. Just because it’s in the contract doesn’t make it so, especially in a form contract.
They can’t say “oh, btw, we get to eat your children” and point to the fact that you signed the contract.
the situation is i signed a kind of hokey contract with them a year back (i say ‘hokey’ because it’s a local place and it was like real basic. some xeroxed, simple thing that–in light of all this, i will be needing a copy of).
i did join because, and explicitly for, the all night portion. it was the winning factor in why i picked that gym. they are not the nearest nor the cheapest, just the only all night gym i could find.
they have “24 hours” painted real big on the front of the building and their website is (for real) www.weightroom24hrs.com.
again, they really touted that part, they have nothing standoutish otherwise about them. heck, it’s still their web address even tho they are not an all night gym anymore.
so.
right after i joined, they changed their hours to closing at midnight.
that was how it was for a few weeks, then it went to 10pm.
i really tried to keep up, but it just wouldn’t work out. everyone bottlednecked on their schedules and the herds of college jocks would show up in their packs and take over machines amongst themselves. the last four times i worked out there i had to leave without completing my workouts because dudes would take over all the thing i needed until the gym closed. if you asked to mix in, they’d point to their ten pals and say “we all just have a few sets each, then you can have it.”
so before long, weeks pass and i can’t make it in by the closing time. i pay anyway.
a month passes and i can’t work out because they are not open when i’m free any longer.
i pay anyway.
i think i paid two full months without using it at all. after the third, i changed my account so the direct billing stopped. i got a call and a few letters, so i contacted their sales manager and explained the situation. i, in writing, requested that they just cancel the contract considering they changed the parameters of what i signed on for, so much so i can’t use the gym ever. at all.
i explained that i had paid in full beyond any use so it wasn’t as if any services were used without paying–
i also expressed how let down i was, how i chose them specifically for something they just POOF stopped doing.
the calls and letters stopped.
this has been over six months ago. i thought they did what i asked and that was the end of it.
but.
today i got a call threatening to send the bill to collections unless i pay for the previous six months of the contract that have gone unbilled.
i emailed the sales manager again, but i really want to know what my rights are and how to handle it best.
it’s not as if i just up and decided i didn’t want to go to the gym anymore.
i guess my particular beef isn’t so much that some place changed their hours as much as the fact is i signed a contract that had a place named “The Weight Room 24 Hours” at the top as the company’s name.
nearly immediately, they change their hours and put a notice up on their website that said they were changing their name to just “The Weight Room.” of course, they’ve not changed their website name, so whatever–the point is i basically signed a contract with a company who’s name implicitly guaranteed what i would constitute a major factor of services. and when it’s in their name, and in their web address, it would seem to indicate they in fact want that to be a particularly compelling factor of what they are selling.
and when you sign a contract with them under that name, and they up and go “oh wait we’re not that now–” i just don’t see how binding it all is.
i’m not a lawdog tho. so i’m here. asking. yeah i think “hours subject to change” is a pretty standard sprinkling into a contract, but changing the company’s whole name…because the name implies a certain service?
and then saying i’m bound to the new thing…? i just don’t know my rights.
Your rights depend on the jurisdiction you’re in. I see the gym is in Oklahoma; in this case I doubt you’re going to get much in the way of rights and advice from the government. Nonetheless you could try filing a consumer complaint with the Oklahoma Attorney General. Meanwhile I’d continue to correspond with the company, but always in writing. If you haven’t already written them, make sure your first letter details the background of your situation (i.e., you purchased a gym membership for such-and-such a length for so much money), the specific complaint you have about them (i.e., they reduced the availability of their service after you signed the contract, despite having previously led you to believe that it would not be), and the proposed remedy (i.e., early termination of the contract as of the date they reduced their hours, or the date you stopped paying).
Agreed with all of the above. And also check your credit report to make sure that they haven’t dinged your credit. Put in your letter that you demand that the “negative tradeline be removed from all credit reporting agencies” (if they have dinged you).
Uh, you realize that, as reported upthread, the gym’s page is now gone, and that you’ve linked to the service agreement of some domain name registrar…?
You can’t get a good answer to whether a contract was breached without showing the terms of the contract. But, you probably shouldn’t be discussing on the Internet something that could be a lawsuit in the real world.
it was up yesterday. it was up late last night when i posted last. i actually used their log in complaining about their website’s name–i have used their direct email (to their sales manager) and after posting my last post last night i used their online contact function to send the same message just to be sure *someone *reads it.
And since a link directly to it was posted here, their referer log will point them directly to this thread. I guess that’s why attorneys often recommend not discussing live disputes on public webpages.
but this isn’t some big deal…it’s the difference between paying half a contract (actually, maybe less–i think i paid more than half) or that portion of the bill going to collections.
it’s not like some big lawsuit hinges on anything.
it is pretty curious the site went down after i posted it on here…but it’s not like some major amount of money or liability or legal action is involved…why would that scare them enough to up and change their website 11 months after they changed their name?
and even if that’s the case, how (or why) would it matter at all to this current situation? changing their name now doesn’t retroactively make their current business the same i signed on with 12 months ago.
at any rate, my plan of action is to go in tomorrow and speak with a manager in person. if they won’t comply w releasing me without incident from the contract, i’ll be requesting copies of my contract and we’ll go from there. i can’t see how it’s in any company’s best interest to squabble over something so menial. esp when they can’t keep the hours claimed in their name because they can’t afford the extra overhead.
Seems coincidental. The domain was registered on April 24, 2008 and expired recently. It takes a period of time (normally hours to days) for name servers to remove cached results. So it likely started disappearing on the 24th or 25th and has timed out everywhere by now.
Either they intentionally let it expire or they’re a bunch of screwups.
Registrant:
Pending Renewal or Deletion
P.O. Box 430
Herndon, VA. US 20172-0447
Domain Name: WEIGHTROOM24HRS.COM
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Promote your business to millions of viewers for only $1 a month
Learn how you can get an Enhanced Business Listing here for your domain name.
Learn more at http://www.NetworkSolutions.com/
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Pending Renewal or Deletion pendingrenewalordeletion@networksolutions.com
P.O. Box 430
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
US
570-708-8786
Record expires on 24-Apr-2012.
Record created on 24-Apr-2008.
Database last updated on 26-Apr-2012 20:05:21 EDT.
Domain servers in listed order:
NS1.PENDINGRENEWALDELETION.COM 205.178.190.51
NS2.PENDINGRENEWALDELETION.COM 206.188.198.51
Fair enough. I have trouble with keeping quiet when I should.
But I still don’t think that anything I said was so earth shattering as to turn the heads of the bar association. I believe that such rules go too far, but as I said, your point is well taken and I should show more discretion. Thank you.
Bearing KG’s point in mind, I’ll just say this: if you want out of a services contract, cutting off payment and moving on is a really, really bad way to go about it.
Two things come to mind and they are material breach and the second is unconscionability.