Gym membership direct debit

Hello,

5 months ago i decided to join a local gym and signed a bank mandate form for the membership of 80 to come out monthly for 6 months. The first month i paid by cash,so i had five direct debits to pay.

After two months neither of the monthly direct debits came out so i informed the gym manager, on the third month nothing came out again so i did the same and informed the manager.he told me the finance department were aware of the problem.

I now owe them 4 months membership and two weeks ago i received a letter from them telling me that they had a problem with the bank and that they would be taken the money out next early next week for the 4 months that i owed them (and they said they would give me 10% discount if i rejoined for the inconvience). They promised it would come out early next week,which is 10 days gone and still no sign of money coming out.

I am getting sick of it and im thinking of going down to the bank and just cancelling the gym direct debit and keeping the money i owe,since there not tooo keen on taking the money out themselves. have i any right to do this or can they come looking for the money. The contract i signed was for the money to come out every month which hasnt happened.

any advice

daveh24 said:

I am getting sick of it and im thinking of going down to the bank and just cancelling the gym direct debit and keeping the money i owe,since there not tooo keen on taking the money out themselves. have i any right to do this

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I don't think so. If you have availed of the services then you are probably obliged to pay for them. Obviously the DD collection is annoying and there is no obvious reason why there is a problem but I don't think that this gets you off the hook of having to pay for a service presumably already availed of. If in doubt about your statutory rights then contact the NCA (www.consumerconnect.ie).