Gym membership

My sister in law has been a member of a gym for roughly 3 years. She used to go regularly at 730 in the morning before work. Earlier this year she paid 400 euro to renew her membership. About a month later the gym closed for some time. She didn't mind this as it was going to re-open. It finally re-opened but now does not open til 9 am which does not suit her due to work and other committments. I thought this was awful and surely the gym should give her at least some of her membership back. Does anyone know what she could do.

First things first. Ask them for a refund at the desk, then to the manager, then in writing. Don't be offensive , just tell them it does not suit and you wish to move somewhere else and want a refund.

She should state to them that she joined and later renewed her membership based on their opening hours at the time. If a 9 am had been their opening time from the beginning, she more likely would not have joined the gym but based on their schedule at the time, which suited her schedule, she joined and renewed. They change their terms of business without warning which is not acceptable in this situation.

Have her check her membership application. I recently joined a gym and there is a section in the contract where it says I can cancel membership if they change their opening times significantly or if they reduce the amount of equipment. I know "significantly" is a bit of a grey area.

Haven't read this but you may find something useful in it:

http://www.nca.ie/nca/joining-a-gym

Taking a step back, what type of gym only opens at 9 AM? It is reasonable to assume that a lot of members sign up to work out either before work or after it, and generally you would assume the working day to be something along the lines of 9-5 or 9-6. So not being open an adequate amount of time either side of that window is not reasonable for an establishment in that industry. If they want to do that fine, but all existing members should be asked if that's ok with them, and if not then refunded a pro-rata amount of their fees.