Hey Dan

This is a dumb company of the day story. A couple of years ago I joined a heath club. This is something I doubt I will ever do again. I sign a one-year contract with a health club near my house in Fort Worth. Then last November I moved back to Dallas. Well, I had a couple of months left on my contract. It was cheaper to let it run out then to buy out the contract. Therefore, I paid the monthly fee until February went the contract expired. I called when I saw the March charge to my card and asked to cancel. They only let you cancel in person, so it was another month before I made it over to Fort Worth again to cancel my membership. In May, I got no charge from them, so I figured that was that.

In June, I got another charge on my credit card and another one in July. Therefore, I called in July to the company that runs the membership billing and ask them to please cancel my membership. They had not gotten the paper work from the club. I faxed and emailed my request to them. They said they would have to bill me one more cycle because I need to give them 30 days notice. Well, all right… at least it is done.

Today I get an email from the membership company asking me to call them. It seems I owe them $180 in late fees for 5 months of missed payments, plus 2 month of payments. How can this be? Well the truth is simple and stupid.

I had not change my billing address with them when I moved. In February, they got a declined from my credit card company because they have the wrong address. Then the charge sat around on someone’s desk until a couple of months latter some one else in the company put the charge though manually. The same thing happened monthly since then. This meant that all charges were two months late and they applied late fees to my account. Since you cannot cancel an account with a balance, my account remained unclosed.

After I walked them though the idea that they could have call or emailed me at any time to fix this, they agreed to waive the $180 and 2 month of payments. Now they just need one more payment to cover the next 30 days. After all, they need 30 days notice to close an account.