SA Gym wouldn't update my payment method and continued to charge late fees.

[Citrusmorph]

Hi all,
I started a gym membership that spiraled into hell. I started it December last year and from the start I have had issues. I had to wait for the first payment to come through before I gained access. When I checked my membership account, It said the payment, a direct debit had failed and I was charged a $17 fee. I thought it was a mistake, payed it with another card instead. Then I decided to update the information to charged to the card I successfully made the payment to, It seemed to work at the time, however It didn't. the second bill came around and it attempted to charge the first account, failed and I was stuck with another late fee. My bank has no record of attempted charges, but I still had this fee. I paid again, but this time tried to get into contact with the gym to fix, they scuttled around and were no help stating their financing is handled by a 3rd party. from now till then I have contacted the finance group a few times to update the payment method and such but It wont work. Unless I pay the day before and pre deposit the amount required, I will continue to get the late fee. This is impossible as I get paid the morning my debt is due to come out (In and out of the same account). Now since I was unable to continually pay the late fee, I was unable to pay my membership and now I'm being threatened with debt collection and such. I really don't know what to do and I cant afford it, The $35 per fortnight membership was the last of my money in my pay that I thought I could use to get healthier and fit, the late fees were paid using my savings and now I'm just too far behind. Legally what can they do, and what can I do? During this whole process I was trying to get the gym to freeze my account or work with me but they stated I needed to be up to date and a week before the next payment to freeze. Which with my finances I was clearly unable to do with a bunch of late and failed direct debit fees.

 

[@thelawbundle]

Hi @Citrusmorph

In terms of what you can do / they will do, you can start by reading the contract that you signed with them.

You say they are asking you to be “up to date” with payments before you can freeze any further payments - is this in the contract? Perhaps the contract actually gives you flexibility to freeze while you’re in arrears? What does the contract say about your termination rights?

If you don’t have a copy of the contract - ask the gym for one.

Likely worst case is that they will take you to court / tribunals to recover the debt owed. As part of this, you may be asked to enter into a payment plan. So, you’ll have to think about what you can afford.

Trouble is, the longer this goes on, the more you’ll owe and the more they could claim from you (for interest, etc). The quicker you can figure out how to terminate the contract, and negotiate a payment plan, the better (my personal view).

 

[Citrusmorph]

Hi @thelawbundle
So I went over the contract which I will attach, along with this there was a period I managed to reply with my account up to date and messaged on the 22nd, the club replied on the 23rd and payment was to come out on late 24th. So there was a period I was up to date and asked to freeze my account however they did not look at/ reply to me in time to help me. This was after waiting a whole fortnight for my bank/card provider to pull my account info and check if there was attempted charged (there were not). After this email exchange, I was charged for the late fee and was never able to catch up since. So from this point if i was able to freeze my account there would have been 0 issues unfortunately. Does this help my case? Or would this just be an unfortunate timing of events?
Thanks.