Holmes Place
Posted: Tue 3 October, 2006 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Getting Organised, Travel, Work-related |21 Comments »Back at the start of the year, we both joined the Holmes Place gym. Not cheap, but at the time it was convenient for where I worked, and easy enough for Herself to get to, so it meant we made good use of it.
Now, though, I’m working in Cambridge, and not going to the gym. Even more relevantly, I couldn’t go to a Holmes Place if I tried, as the nearest one is sixty-fucking-five miles away. So two months ago I tendered my resignation from the club, seeing as I was in an area where they couldn’t provide me with any service, and I refuse to pay £65 per month for something I’m not using. At the start of the membership we’d checked this out, and the guy we signed up through had said that if we did move to an area where they had no services, we’d be able to leave with no problem, even bearing in mind the minimum term of 12 months’ membership.
I got an email from them yesterday…
Holmes Place only offers the opportunity to cancel your members upon completion of the initial core period as outlined in your Membership Agreement, and provided that your membership is up-to-date with all membership subscription payments.
We appreciate that circumstances can change and at Holmes Place we endeavour to be as flexible as possible. Therefore, there are a number of alternative options available to you if you are finding it difficult to visit your club including, transferring your membership to another club to a friend or family member. You can also choose to link your membership to another Club through our Clublink option.
You can also freeze your membership it it is for business, medical, pregnancy or student purposes and if your request is accompanied by supporting documentation. We freeze for a maximum of 3 months.
If you would like to discuss any of these options, or discuss in details the reason why your membership has not been cancelled, please contact the Membership Service Team.
So in short, “you’re going to keep on paying, even though we can’t do anything for you.”
Needless to say, I’m going to be calling them and telling them just exactly how far they can shove their membership. And I’ve cancelled the Direct Debit with the bank too, so the fuckers can’t get any money out of me. Ha.
is it me or am i silly in thinking normal pregnancies last more than 3 months?
Be careful – don’t mean to be a scaremonger but unless you have the whole ‘you can cancel if you move’ bit in writing they’ll try and take you to the cleaners, regardless of cancelled direct debits. of course you can try to appeal to their better side but if you’ve signed up to a 12 month contract 9 times out of 10 they’ll hold you to it. There was a consumer program about this a while back; people cancelled their contracts, cancelled direct debits and then forgot all about it. The baliffs came knocking a couple of months later. Just my 2p’s worth.
Thanks, Joe. I know they can be scumbags about it all – and no, we don’t have the ‘leave if there’s no available services’ bit in writing – but I’m working on the vain hope that Holmes Place may have someone with a braincell working for them.
If we start getting snotty letters about debt recovery etc., I’ll just pay off the outstanding bits. But I’m aiming for the non-provision of service bit first.
I got to Holmes’ Place gym as well! When I was originally signing up I said: “What happens if I want to cancel my membership?”
and my previously very chipper saleslady said:
“Why would you want to do that?”
so I said:
“Well, y’know, what if you’re a substandard gym and I no longer want to come here?”
and she said: “We’re not substandard.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. What’s the procedure?”
“We don’t have a cancellation policy.”
“I’ll be off then.”
I signed up for a holmes place membership and I’m moving to the states with work – so obviously needed to cancel my membership too – using their ‘cancel if you relocate policy’ they had said if I brought in an offer letter I could cancel – which I did. So how come the one I go to is different to yours? Fishy… I was joined at Oxford street.
But I’m still a bit annoyed as I cancelled on the 2nd August – thinking a months notice fair enough.. but they made me pay for all of August and September, cancellation goes by calendar month, i.e. I had to have it in by 31st July – so I too cancelled my direct debit!
Don’t join Holmes place.
Hi.ive got a problem with holmes place as well..i tried to cancel the membership few days ago.they told me that i couldnt cancel, as i havent completed my 12 months contract..i got surprised, cos i didnt know i signed a contract for 12 months..if i knew that i would never sign that stupid document.its so silly, why should one commit to joint the gym for 12 months…its not a loan company, or Carphone warehouse, or employees contract..its just a bloody gym. If i dont want to go to gym, ill just wont go..
and i find silly to pay for nothing. when i dont go there , i dont make any expenses to them.no reason to pay then. I have never seen this in my country, thats why i wasnt suspiciou when i was signing the contract. And i even asked that guy(advisor) before i signed it, whether i could cancel anytime when i decide…and he said YES. now they say something different..
I JUST WANT TO CANCEL THE DIRECT DEBIT, but im scared that they take me to the court.i dont want to have any problems, neither to pay extra money…
PLEASE HELP ME SOMEONE…mikelndn@hotmail.co.uk
I cancelled my direct debit-and now the b*astards have referred me to some sort of Credit agency thing demanding i pay £411!
Dont really want to pay so ive asked them for a copy of the original contract-just in case theyve lost it -unlikely i know.
Otherwise ill prob end up paying -dont really want to go down the legal road.
I’ve finished my 12 month contract, and I want to cancel – it’s a good gym, but I now live too far away. They gave me the email address ‘cancel@holmesplace.com’ after coming after me for this months money and I’ve sent the mail, but knowing them and their customer service, I’ll still be a member in a few months and/or being shafted by them with some credit refferal agency. What steps should I take next?
I have also been having problems with Holmes Place.
The latest cancellation email address for them is cancel@virginactive.co.uk or cancel@virginactive.com
(They weren’t sure which, so I wrote to both.)
I have been a member for well over a year. Currently my membership is on hold until end of March 2007. When I wrote to them to give them the requested 30 days notice to cancel, they claimed I’d have to pay for a month’s membership to cover that 30 days.
I left them to go and find their boss to give me a call back. If he can’t do anything, then I guess I’ll have to speak to his boss. And so on until I get to Mr Branson.
I cancelled my direct debit with them ages ago, which prompted several phone calls when they re-started my on-hold membership without telling me.
They’re going to have to come and break my kneecaps to get money off me. I wouldn’t put it past them to try it.
Recommendation: Avoid Holmes Place like the plague.
If you live in London, the Mile End council leisure centre has a much better gym for a lot less money.
I tried to cancel my membership in December, I wrote them a letter which they say they did not receive.
Now I am told that cancellation is not effective unless I received a letter back – does anyone know if it actually says this in the contract?
HI Lucy, I just went through the same thing with Holmes Place, its rubbish what they are saying as long as you’ve posted it thats fine. There is legal precedent for this called the postal rule. I can make sure you donthave to pay a penny more to them. email me @ jemmafellows@hotmail.co.uk if you need some help
HI Lucy, I just went through the same thing with Holmes Place, its rubbish what they are saying as long as you’ve posted it thats fine. There is legal precedent for this called the postal rule. I can make sure you donthave to pay a penny more to them. tell them you’ve spoken to a lawyer at the citizen advice place and they told you dont need to pay it as you posted the letter and have a copy.
Holmes Place also told me that my email cancellation wasn’t valid unless I’d had a response from them – and then proceeded to charge me for the four following months while I disputed this. They’re crooks, and I would never join again. WIll they be better as Virgin Active? Who knows.
Holmes Place are a joke. I paid for a membership for 6 months up front with my creditcard. The 6 months was up in February 2007. In May 2007 I was called by ARC Europe Ltd saying that as I didn’t cancel my membership, I still owe them. I didn’t realise I had to cance my contract as all I wanted was 6 months. I have read their dodgy contract rules and I can’t find anywhere where it states that if I paid up front for 6 months that I would still have to pay for more. My contract states in writing that no future payments are due and it states the full contract value as £225 and paid. As far as I am concerned that is it! The saga continues. The penicl neck geek who rang me from ARC was rude and the staff at the club which is now Virgin Active can only say over and over, ‘I’m sorry thats the rules’. They couldn’t even be bothered to look for my contract. The killer is, the knob from ARC Eurpoe is quoting an old address I had from years ago (I was a member back then) and when I told him the information he had was wrong and he should take another look at his records, all he did was demand payment and say that he was now handing it over to the Solicitors. My advice – stay away from Holmes Place / Virgin Active. They could care less about you as a person or your wellbeing, all they care about is the money they can skank from you. The fight continues.
I am a Holmes Place member from Canary Wharf, now it is called Virgin Active. I used to access other Holmes Place clubs in continental Europe, Switzerland as I travel a lot for work. The guys in Switzerland said, that nothing has changed for me just the name. I´ll be in Switzerland next week and I really do hope that I can access the club there ( over there it is still called Holmes Place Club ). I never got a letter from Holmes Place Uk telling me that after it merged to Virgin active I cannot use the Holmes Place clubs in continental Europe, so I guess I can still access the clubs there. Does anyone know about this ? Thanks for your help.
Ok, so I’m one of many who paid for gym and never went… I mean I never entered the building other than the first guided tour! I joined Holmes Place over a year ago and I didn’t even know it. The guy gave me a contract to read over with “6 months get out clause” written by hand on it, luckily for me. I never signed this contract, yet they proceeded to take more than £80 a month from my account for the next four months until I stopped them. I managed to get that money back but not in cash, only in equivelant free months… but their over-riding mission was to get me to sign a new contract.
So, more fool me, I did sign a new contract and again insisted on the 6 mmonths get out clause. So for the next 6 months they happily took more of my money while I never attented. Finally I escaped the 6 months, then they changed to Virgin where I was told the whole 12 months contract was “scrapped” and only a rolling month to month contract in place now. Great I said, I’ll have some of that.
Enoughs enough, not going to the gym, time to resign myself to the idea that paying a ton of money isnt actually working for me, it’s not inspiring me to go there, so let’s get out of this month to month contract.
I rang them two days beforete 17th, being the next months deadline date to cancel, and was told the “computer systems are down, so cannot access my account right now”… hmmm, i thought, “all you need to is send a calcellation e-mail to cancel@virgin etc… which I promtly did. Unknown to me tho my previous months payment hadnt gone through at that time, so a few days later I received an e-mail saying firstly I need to complete my core period before I can cancel… ? What the fuck? and then secondly I cant cancel because I haven’t paid my previous months payment. So far it’s cost me more than a thousand pounds and don’t forget, never been in the building since the initial tour.
Bit mad really.
I know that the law says one thing and what we deem as fair are two very different things but come on, this is legalised robbery by the richest fucker in Britain.
Anyway, this illiterate moron sounding like he’s just been to the dentist from A R C (associated rogues & cunts I think it stands for) rang me at home saying that the debt has been passed to them, I now owe nearly £400 and have I got my debit card ready?
“Who are you” I said?
“We sent you a letter” he said.
“not got yor letter” I said
“have you got your debit card to pay now?” he demanded…
I laughed and told him to “fuck off” before I hung up.
Not the wisest thing with hindsight I’m sure, but it was certainly passionate 🙂
My gripe here is that I never signed a contract constraining me to any time scake other than a month, so they’re wrong about that, even if they’re not.
More importantly and the whole case will ride on this one thing, the previous months unpaid payment. If their systems were running as normal I would have learned about the missed payment, and futhermore the fact I cancelled with e-mail should be enough for them to realise that they are not entilted to extract more money from my account.
The only thing they can argue as far as I’m concerned is the one months payment.
What do you think? Should I fight them? Do I have a chance?
Pray for me?
I’ve less than a week to resolve this before they issue me with a court date.
I had a similar problem with Holmes Place/Virgin Active. Back in May I moved house to an area that didn’t have a local branch so I asked to cut my membership short. They said it wasn’t really possible but I could try putting it in writing. Having read lots of dodgy posts on the net about this sort of thing I thought it best to just suck it up and continue paying for the full 12 months – so I continued paying until July. I then cancelled my direct debit.
THREE MONTHS later I got a call saying that I hadn’t written them a letter giving one month’s (30 day’s) notice on ending my membership and saying that I would be liable for the extra ‘unpaid’ 3 months (at £83 per month that’s not cheap – I was paying for ‘clublink’ membership).
I explained that I had thought it was only a 12 month contract – obviously I’d not read the small print about it being some kind of ongoing – rest-of-your-life contract which you need to actively cancel beyond the ‘core’ period of 12 months.
I then didn’t hear anything again until today when I got a call from a debt collection agency; ARC saying that I owe £329?? They asked if I’d received their letters – sent to my old address despite the fact that I had told staff I had actually moved house. – So no, I hadn’t received them.
They threatened to put a ‘trace’ on me to find my new address which they also say I’m liable to pay for – but I’ve since taken legal advice saying that I am not liable for any costs unless a judge says so.
I really don’t feel it’s fair that I should have to pay for over 12 months when you sign a 12 month contract – am I being unreasonable?
I resent paying what I do not owe – I’m going to fight this!! But it’s scary – I don’t want a CCJ…
I too have found Holmes Place/Virgin Active to be scumbags. On two counts. The first was when I had an eye operation and could not go to the gym for a month. I told them before this and they said this was OK – I could freeze my membership for a month if I provided a letter from the clinic. I did this and they refused to refund me the month. It took me months of complaining to get it back. (I took it to head office and through sheer persistence did get it back.)
And now I have quit the bloody gym. My 12 month contract was up so should be straighforward – you’d think, but oh no, the fuckers keep on reinstating my direct debit (and I did cancel following the correct procedure). Anyone reading this – whatever you do, don’t join Virgin Active/Holmes place – they do your head in!
SOLUTION?
I also have a problem with Virgin Active in Glasgow, I had compelted 12 months, cancelled DD thinking thats ok. Got a letter stating my DD failed and to call to re-arrange it. I of course did not, thinking they would just close the account. Now I have received a figure of over £200 from ARC their DCA. I called the gym and i need to wait to speak to the general manager.
Does anyone have an actual solution to this? Going by this thread it seems their are a number of people have the same problem with their debt collection agency.
Who do you contact? ARC informs me it is them as they now have the account but wont listen to anything I have to say. Can Virgin clear this amount from the debt collection agency? I really could use some advice.
JL
hello, i have the same problem as you all. I cancelled my membership at holmes place in germany on end of june 2007 since i was moving from cities, and they sent me a letter saying that my membership was supposed to end on 01.01.2008, so I would have to pay until then. Of course I cancelled their direct debit. Now a collection agency is sending me letters saying that they will sue me in court if I do not pay 500 EUR. The interesting thing here is that on the contract it is stated that anyone moving city can leave the contract. Furthermore, it is stated on the contract that any member with more than 1 year membership can terminate the contract without any reason, and pay 2 months. So, the conclusion is that Holmes Place is a FUCKING MONEY SUCKER!!! DO NOT PAY!!! THEY ARE GETTING YOUR MONEY FOR NOTHING!!!
I also had a problem with Holmes Place. I bought 2-years period membership and payed for it. Next day, I was told that I’ve being kicked out of a club because they think that I am making personal trainings. it’s because I was working with my friend and showed him few exercices.