CRS Gym membership issues, any help?

[jd.loki]

Hi all,

 

My partner received a letter from Credit Resolution Services today, and we could really do with some advice.

 

Bascially, we joined a gym nearly three years ago in London called the Bay Health Centre in London. When we moved out of the area six months later (landlord problems, different story...), we contacted the gym about the membership. They said it was fine to cancel if we provided proof that we were moving out of the area in order to cancel, which we duly did. Now we have a letter from CRS demanding £261 for the remaining six months membership plus a £35 charge from the agency, but apparently only for my partner. I checked with the credit agency and they don't seem to have an outstanding debt for me, so the apparently my membership was cancelled ok, but my partners wasn't, despite the fact it was the same letter sent for both of us.

 

The trouble is that this was ages ago; we don't still have the confirmation email etc because we assumed (obviously naiively) that this was all sorted. We tried contacting the health club to argue that it ridiculous that they had cancelled one and not the other from the same letter, but they have apparently shut down and must be dragging through the depths to get money back.

 

We did call CRS to see if they had details to contact the company, but they do not have the membership account details of the health club, and won't provide us with a way of contacting them. However, they said they would accept £95 to settle the debt (2 months membership plus a charge for tracing us). We complained that we were not contacted before it was passed to a debt agency either; apparently the gym "sent letters to our address", which was a wonderful idea as the reason we cancelled because we were moving!

 

What do we do? The big problem is that we can't prove that we cancelled it fairly now with anything we have, but it really rankles having to pay even the £95, especially as we have just both become postgrad students and moved house, so now is not a great time to have to pay out random money...

 

However, we would obviously rather pay the £95 than have to pay the full six months if we don't have proof of the cancellation. The question then becomes what documentation should we demand from the credit agency to prove that this debt is really theirs and cancelled once and for all and will never come back to haunt us again? We are both young, just starting out, and desperately don't want a bad credit rating as we have actually been very good with money.

[slick132]

Hi JD and welcome to CAG.

 

You should read some of the other threads here to see what others do when faced with similar problems.

 

Was your m/ship directly with the gym or was there an intermediary administration company acting for the gym.

 

Can you post up a copy of the m/ship agreement relating to the debt they're pursuing. See here for how to do this and hide your personal details on the document - http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/welcome-consumer-forums/107001-how-do-i-dummies.html

 

Gyms don't pay much attention to legal detail so it may well be that there is no enforceable contract. Even if the contract if half decent, the DCA may back off if you stand up to them properly.

 

8)