How a gym member got stuck on Virgin's treadmill

How a gym member got stuck on Virgin's treadmill

Health clubs are touchingly attached to their members. Doubtless they fear that, once liberated from their regimes, customers will veer into decadence and obesity. There was, a while ago on these pages, the case of a reader who was not allowed to terminate her membership early after slipping on the club floor and breaking a limb.

Now along comes Ms S McKinnon who was rescued from her blazing house in the middle of the night and lost all her possessions in the fire. Not surprisingly, she had neither the heart nor the money to continue her membership of the Virgin Active gym in Oxford Street in central London, and so she went to the effort of hand-delivering a letter giving due notice of her decision to quit.

She also cancelled her direct debit payments once the notice period was up. Since then she has been tormented by a debt collection agency demanding hundreds of pounds for breach of contract. Virgin told her that it would rein in the hounds if she paid a month's fee of £70. "I have tried unsuccessfully to talk to the club," says McKinnon, "but when I call they are constantly engaged or I get cut off. If I had the money I would pay the £70, but I'm worried that I would be admitting I was in the wrong and could still be pursued by the debt collectors. As it is, I'm terrified I'll be dragged to court."

Virgin Active declares that it never received McKinnon's letter of termination, but its squishy-hearted press office concedes that McKinnon's.....continued below

Advertisement starts

---

---

Advertisement ends

peace of mind should take priority over the body beautiful and decides "under the circumstances" to waive all fees and cancel her membership forthwith.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2008