True to their reputation, New York Sports Club didn’t cancel my membership when I asked them to and I have been receiving credit card charges for months. It was on auto-pay and a maxed card so I never looked at it. I’ve gone to Visa to dispute the last 3 months but am looking to get back 9 months.
I went to the club to cancel and the manager (who no longer works there) told me I needed the request to cancel in writing. I went home printed and signed a letter and brought it back to her. She was busy so she said “just give it to me, I’ll take care of it.”
I was never told about a receipt.
When I called them about the charges they said I needed to show a receipt (which in itself is ridiculous) and that anyway it says in my contract that I should send a registered letter directly to the company. Conveniently, they can’t find my written request for cancellation.
My question is, even if it says that in my contract, shouldn’t the word of a manager that “that is all I need to do” be some sort of error on their part?
I’m not going to give you specific legal advice here, but I will point out that it’s not as clear cut as you’d hoped: This question raises issues of agency and waiver law, and may implicate some consumer statutes. Oddly enough I just had a co-worker ask me how to cancel his health club membership. The best bet is to read the contract and comply with it to the letter.
IANAL, but it sounds to me as if it comes down to a question of evidence rather than a question of contract law. In other words, if it came before a court, would the court believe your assertion that you gave the letter to the manager? And in order to disprove your assertion, they would have to call the (former) manager as a witness, or find some other employee who could give credible evidence that you did not give the letter, or disprove your assertion in some other way (e.g., by proving you were somewhere else when you say you delivered the letter).
IANAL, either, but even if the question is one of fact (did you hand-deliver a letter?), there’s an additional question of law regarding who has the burden of proof. They may not need to disprove your assertion, but merely have you fail to prove it.
I can’t really comment on the complexities of your situation, but it indeed seems to come down to whether you followed proper termination procedures and whether you can prove it. As it stands, we don’t know what the contract says and everything you said about how this all went down is a bunch of “he said she said.”
Something to keep in mind is that if you ever need to prove someone got a letter, use certified mail return receipt requested (“CMRRR”) and put you CMRRR number on the face of the letter.