Avoid this sneaky gym membership trap

Trying to cancel an unwanted gym membership might not be as simple as you think.

It’s a common scenario: you need to get fit, you decide to join a gym and do so with beginner’s zeal and the lofty ambition of visiting at least four times a week. Yes, it’s expensive but if you visit often enough you will definitely be getting your money’s worth. Won’t you?

It’s all too easy for good intentions to fall by the wayside as a busy lifestyle, demanding job and family commitments whittle your gym visits down to once a week, then to ‘once a month if you’re lucky’. Not only do you feel guilty for not going, you also feel guilty about the hefty sums (gyms charge anything up to £90 a month, with the average being around £45) that are being extracted from your account each month.

So, you decide to bite the bullet, be realistic and cancel your contract to save money.

But you may find that there is just one more bitter pill to swallow as your gym tells you, politely but firmly, that you can’t cancel. They point you towards the small print which, in your initial enthusiasm to get on that treadmill, you overlooked. It is common for a gym to impose a 12 – 18 month minimum membership period, with no ‘break’ clause allowing you to cancel any earlier.

Do you have the right to cancel?

Cancellation rights are included in all manner of contracts, and the purpose of them is to provide consumers with a quick and effective means of legal redress, allowing them to end the contract and get their money back without having to go to court.

A large number of complaints are received each year about cancellation rights by organisations such as the Citizens Advice Bureau, and figures show that the highest proportion of complaints relate to health clubs and gyms, followed closely by Hire Purchase agreements.

With certain types of contract there is a ‘cooling off’ period, whereby you are given a set number of days to change your mind and cancel. How long you get varies – you could have seven days to cancel a contract you signed at home, for example with a double glazing salesman who turned up uninvited at your door (Doorstep Selling), or you could have 14 days in which to cancel a credit card you signed up for over the phone or internet (Distance Selling).

But there is not usually a cooling off period with gym contracts. The chances are you were pressured to sign up there and then in the gym, and contracts signed on business premises do not come with a cooling-off period attached. So, unless you signed up over the internet or phone, or a sales person came round to your house on an unsolicited visit, then you might have signed away your right to cancel if you change your mind straightaway.

Contract lengths

By the time most of us have admitted that our ‘health kick’ has not gone according to plan, even if a cooling-off period did exist, it would be long gone! You resign yourself to waiting until the end of the contract, and vow not to make the same mistake again. To your horror, you look at your contract and see that you have to endure the financial strain for a whole 12 months (or in some instances much longer!) But at least you can get out of it then, can’t you?

Make sure you don’t fall for this common mistake: you write to the gym to cancel after the 12 months have expired, and find that they are still reluctant to see the back of you. There will often be a clause stating that you must give prior notice of one month in order to cancel, so unless you cancelled at month 11 then you might find yourself tied in for another year!

If this is all in the small print, and you just haven’t read the contract properly, then you only have yourself to blame, and there is nothing you can do, right?

Well, actually, there might be.

Challenge your contract!

Earlier this year the High Court ruled that minimum contract length terms may be unfair and therefore unenforceable under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999.

This decision followed a case brought by the Office of Fair Trading against a company called Ashbourne Management Services Limited. The company dealt with membership applications and collected fees for approximately 700 small gyms around the country. Some of these gyms were tying customers into contracts for as long as three years and the High Court decided that lengthy contracts were creating a ‘significant imbalance’ in the parties’ rights and obligations, making them unfair under the 1999 Regulations.

The upshot of this is that consumers should now have the confidence to challenge the terms of their agreement with their gym if they feel that the contract is lengthy and unfair. So, if you are suffering from gym guilt, and can’t cancel for months to come, then stand your corner! Make an official complaint, in writing, to your gym outlining the findings of the High Court and see if that bears any fruit!

If you are passionate about your case there’s no reason why you can’t push your point by taking legal action yourself in the Small Claims Court. See my previous article Win in the small claims court to read about the pros and cons of making a claim.

More: Ditch the gym and get fit for free, The truth about small print, The frugal guide to gyms