Writing on behalf of a friend who signed a contract for pay-as-you-go gym membership. They deduct about $10 a month from her checking and she decides after a couple years she doesn’t want to belong to this gym anymore. So NOW she reads her contract and NOW she finds out she can’t cancel except for death, doctor’s note, moving to the Amazon, etc. :eek: Anyone have any experience with this? I told her to call a lawyer!
That’s very, very strange and very, very shady. What “brand” of gym is it?
I don’t remember any of my law classes well enough to say if such a contract is even legal, but threatening to involve lawyers might get the gym to cave.
Or, why not just tell them you’re moving to France?
Well she could just close that account and open a new one up, except that most banks will just debit the new account for debits from the old. She’d probally have to switch banks for that to work.
Tell her to try looking for a local consumer protection bureau or call her the office of her state’s attorney-general.
I want to know where you find a gym for $10 a month.
Well apparently you can never leave. So The Eagles might be able to help you find such a gym.
Closing the account wouldn’t work anyway. Her account would go to a collections agency and her credit report be marked.
She can simply break the contract. Then they can sue for breach of contract. Not much consequence in doing so but contacting a lawyer before you do so is always best.
Can she talk her doctor into giving her a note?
Planet Fitness in Greensboro NC. After a $39 enrollment fee.
You can get pretty much the same deal in Daly City. Although I now see they are charging an annual fee as well, so it’s more like $13 a month. When I joined (in NC) it was $10 a month for life, with nothing else to pay.
Contracts with gyms generally specify a term; they don’t just go on forever without the possibility of ending it. She needs to do a careful reading of the contract again. (Moral: Read the contract *before *you sign it.) If there is no term specified then I agree it is shady. A lawyer would be helpful, although it would probably cost a couple of years’ worth of membership fees…
Seems that the problem in trying to break the contract is that the gym does direct debit from her checking so she can’t just stop paying them.
Can’t she cancel the direct debit instruction by telling her bank to stop paying it?
Of course she can. The bank has no obligation to the gym.
Sometimes they give you a 1 week period every year where you can cancel, if you miss that you are stuck for another year.
If that really is the case, it’s not a valid contract.
I’ve always known people stuck in those kinds of gym contracts to just tell the gym they’re moving.
This is not my experience.
I have just been dinged $39 by a credit card company because their attempt to collect from the old account was bounced, and the bank did NOT pay it from the new account. When I closed one account and opened the other, I had to tell the bank everyone that was authorized to debit the account so they would pay them from the new account. I forgot my (wife’s) credit card company.
There is no reason to go through special effort to break the contract. She can tell the bank not to pay. She can also call the gym and tell them you are canceling the membership whether they like it or not.
Yup, I’m actually a member there. Great gym for the price.
Agreed. This is not a valid contract, and she is free to ignore it.
In the unlikely event she does find herself in a courtroom, expect the gym’s lawyer to be laughed at a lot.
Is it more likely that she’s misreading this contract? Or did they have a 5-yr old write it? It’s utterly invalid; there is no such thing as a perpetual, uncancellable membership contract.
So it may be better to say it’s not that you are unable to leave, only that they require you fulfill one-year contracts?