Learning to read the fine print
I recently moved from Chicago to Indianapolis for a three-month work-related project. Luckily, I didn’t have to bother with many of the typical moving hassles because of the short-term nature of the arrangement; the transition went seamlessly until I met the nightmare known as the health club membership.
When I was in Chicago, I had a membership at Life Time Fitness for $49.95 a month. (I got in on a promotional offer.) I know you don’t always need a gym to workout, but the main draw for me was the pool. Since I’m training for a triathlon, I desperately need a pool to practice my swimming considering my current attempts usually resemble a drowning elk. (In reality, a drowning elk is actually probably far more graceful than I am in water.)
In Chicago, there are three Life Time clubs within 15-20 minutes of where I live. In Indianapolis, there’s one. It’s 30 minutes away, and the main route there is under major construction. I quickly realized that the drive wasn’t going to be worth it, and decided it would be much easier for me to go to a nearby community club that not only was newer, but cost less ($35/month).
The Nightmare
I called Life Time to cancel my membership, and they told me I needed to cancel it in person. I drove 30 minutes to the club, where I explained the distance issue and that it wasn’t economical for me to spend that much time commuting each way. The general manager told me he understood and pulled up the cancellation agreement on his monitor as he asked me to cancel the contract by signing a little black box attached to the computer.
I asked to see exactly what I was signing, and he reluctantly turned the screen towards me. I was shocked to read that while I was canceling my membership this month, the cancellation wouldn’t be effective till the end of next month because there was a 30-day cancellation policy. This meant that even though I was canceling on the 14th of the month, I was not only responsible to pay for the rest of the month’s dues, but also the full dues for the following month.
The manager told me that the policy was standard procedure and that it was all in the membership agreement I had signed when enrolling. This agreement is what tripped me up. Essentially, member services had a computer screen with the contract facing them, and I had a black box where they asked me to sign. They didn’t offer to show me the actual wording up front, and they certainly didn’t point out any of the cancellation notices out beforehand.
After some discussion, the best-case scenario would mean that I would effectively be paying for eight weeks of gym access, even though I only used it for two weeks.
I wasn’t happy.
I tried to brainstorm a way that I could somehow get out of paying the second month’s membership, but they had my credit card on file (it’s in their policy), and they make automatic deductions from my account each month. Short of canceling my credit card, I didn’t have many options.
The Resolution
I cancelled the contract. They were going to charge me either way, so at least now I’m done with them. I’m getting a membership at the health club nearby (without obscure cancellation policies) and I’ll be taking my workouts and my drowning elk impressions there. The extra $35/month was a hard number to swallow at first, but I would have easily spent that much per month if I were to make the 30-minute drive, twice daily, six days a week until my membership was “officially cancelled”.
The Lesson
Whether this policy is ethical or not isn’t the point. The point is this: As a consumer, I always need to read the fine print to protect myself.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to sign another contract without scouring the fine print for a cancellation policy. Ultimately it’s my responsibility to protect myself from bad contracts. J.D. always says, “nobody cares more about your money than you do” and it’s true. If I had taken five minutes to ask for and read the contract, at the very least I would have known about the policy rather than being caught off guard. I’m not sure it would have made a difference in my situation, but at least I would have known.
In the grand scheme of things, I’m lucky. A $100 health club membership nightmare is a dirt-cheap way to learn this. If it had been a credit card, bank loan, or any other number of scenarios, failing to understand what I’d signed could be much, much more costly. Always know what you’re getting yourself into and always read anything you sign. It’s worth it.
Photo by [email protected].
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There are 63 comments to "Learning to read the fine print".
This seems a little deceptive but I know things like this happen. Yes you do have to read the fine print, but luckily you were not out a lot of money anyway.
However, one thing you might try is disputing the charge on your credit card as a unfair charge or over charge. You get a chance to make your case, and sometimes the merchant does not bother countering the dispute (not worth their time). So in affect the charge is removed from your card.
Same thing happened to me at Golds!
Good reminder! My parents taught me to read every contract I sign. When I was young, I would read every rental car contract – every word. You should have seen me standing there for half an hour with my friends behind me squirming as they waited. But it’s important to understand your end of every agreement. In some apartments you have to ask permission to put nails in the wall – it’s much better to know your responsibilities up front to avoid cost later.
Same thing happened to me with a cell phone contract (after the 2 yr ran out and it went to “month to month”). Learned my lesson, now I use pre-paid (under $10 a month).
Fine print at banks exists to confuse consumers as well. Be careful about filing claims; some banks charge per hour for every claim you file.
Good story and warning.
Yes – my gym is the same way. All the gyms I’ve been at require 60 days, my current one requires 45. I always ask ahead of time what is the cancellation policy. At my current place I signed on for a year no matter what (I was ok with this) and then after that it goes month to month, and requires 45 days to cancel.
Even knowing that, I recently moved and was considering canceling, planning the 45 days, and then decided not to. Now that I’ve moved I changed my mind and want to cancel, but I’ll have to pay for another month and a half.
I hate these e-sign things, and self credit card swipers too. But I’m pretty sure when you e-sign you’re supposed to get a paper copy of what you sign.
Same thing happened to me at 24hr Fitness years ago. Last week I got a notice that there is a lawsuit because of that same thing and that I can get a $20 check from them or 3 months of free membership.
That’s sounds like an “unfair business practice”. If not an outright fraud? I’m not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV. Everything I learned about law, I earned from Judge Judy. I’d gripe to the State AG in both states and the FTC and any other regulatory agency I could think of. I’d also keep nagging the folks at both locations. You never know but they may pay you off — even with an adder for your trouble — rather than you taking up a Quixotic “quest” against them. imho?
That’s pretty standard practice for the big chain gyms, in my experience. I had a hell of a time getting out of a gym contract last year; I had moved 1200km away and they would not cancel it until I provided proof that I had moved (I had to send a copy of my new driver’s licence, which of course drew out the process so I was paying for the extra time!), and I also had to pay $150 cancellation fee. It was all in the contract that I had signed… but I still felt that they made the process as difficult and lengthy as possible!
Good reminder… and a good argument for why the YMCA is such a great deal.
A lesson learned very inexpensively, I’d say!
I’m a lawyer’s daughter, and I’ve always read every contract I’ve ever signed. I didn’t/don’t want to have the conversation with my dad about how I was too lazy and didn’t read a contract that let someone else take advantage of me. 🙂
Also, a lot of the folks selling you things haven’t read the contracts themselves, so it gives you negotiating power to point out terms you aren’t willing to sign.
And you have no idea how many errors and issues I found in my mortgage documents! Scary stuff when you’re talking about lots of money.
You know, it’s easy to SAY “Read every contract before you sign!” but sometimes it can be hard to do.
–An apartment manager threw me out for insisting that her verbal agreement (you have 30 days to cancel your lease, no strings attached) actually be written down in the lease.
–We had to listen to a title company employee and OUR realtor sigh and roll their eyes while my husband and I read every single line of the contract to buy our house.
–We have been pressured by fitness and spa companies with the threat that we will lose “opportunities” if we read the contract or take it home to look it over.
On the other hand, I watched a friend’s son lose $40K in loan paybacks from the military because he “trusted” his recruiter and didn’t read his entire contract. I had another friend lose a $120,000 piece of property because of a contract issue.
So yes, read the fine print, but know that people will throw fits, yell, throw you out, make rude remarks, and do other extremely non-professional things when you do. Is it worth it? Hell, yeah. We’ve saved thousands of dollars over the last ten years simply by reading the fine print.
I don’t understand why anyone would not read every paper they ever sign. A contract is an agreement and you should know what kind of agreement you enter.
In my honest opinion people who don’t read what they sign deserve to pay whatever they have signed for.
If a salesman sighs and rolls his eyes it’s a good indication that there is something fishy about the contract. So more the better reason to read it through or completely cancel the deal.
I would have canceled the credit card and refused payment. I’ve done it to Sprint, and although there is a temporary blemish on my credit and I had to send a letter telling them to stop contacting me, I also didn’t have to pay them for the privilege of not doing business with them anymore. I had been a customer of theirs for five years, and there is currently legislation pending to prevent phone companies from doing what they did to me. That’s because they are unethical. It’s why I don’t honor their “contract” out of principle, and nobody should.
If you don’t read the fine print on things you sign, proceed at your own peril.
That’s why they call it “fine”.
If possible, you should consider searching for a local gym membership at a city center or local university. A local city gym has all I need in terms of treadmills, free weights, and benches to do virtually all the exercises I need. Best part is the $40 a year annual fee.
Not sure where you are from but if you live near a big city, there might be a city gym that you can benefit from. The bigger gyms like 24 Hour Fitness operate under a sales model (nothing wrong but that is why their contracts are tighter than a rental lease agreement).
I agree with Lindsay.
The last time I went into an AT&T store to renew a phone contract I got the same “screen hustle” the person writing this gym story got…where I can’t even see what I’m signing because it’s on the salespersons computer screen…I also got “attitude” when I asked him to flip the screen around to see what I was signing. I think they embed a lot of fees in there…
I’ve had to cancel phone company contracts before they expired and deal with the dings on my credit but it saved me a lot of money. Totally worth it! Also, the competitors are always happy to take my business even though the company I’m cancelling with always says “this will hurt your credit and you might not be able to get service with another company”. Yeah, right, dude. Your competition is not going to take my cash??? Get real.
This practice of charging consumers a $200-$300 “cancellation fee” for ending phone contracts “early” has been investigated by consumer groups for years in California and possibly in other states.
Eventually I think it will be illegal but it takes forever to get your rights through the system and these companies know that. That’s why, if they are going to play like hard asses, I will too.
Most people could save a ton of money (and have more privacy) using pre-paid registered phones to a fake name and address but certain phones you can’t use that way yet – like the iphone.
I’ve had sales folks say “that section is boilerplate legal, and doesn’t mean anything” on something I didn’t like in a contract.
So I’ve crossed through the paragraph, and had them initial it. (this was on a lease for an apartment).
They didn’t want to change the contract, but I wouldn’t sign otherwise.
The only time you have power over a contract is /before/ you sign it.
Just Block them on the creditcard… ask bank to discard transaction… I doubt they will ever come back to mess around… (That advice was given to me but to be honest I did not use it)
We had lost 217 USD when we canceled our membership in the beginning of march … 30 day advance notice bla bla we were paying for March in full and April… (April was 217 USD)
When I was signing up manager told me “This is not any long term commitment… once you do not need it you just call us and we can cancel your membership”.
I have tried to make it a practice to read every contract I sign thoroughly unless its something I’m familiar with – in which case I skim to make sure there aren’t any major changes.
I too have had people who want me to hurry through a contract… but I don’t really care what the other person thinks. Their personal opinion rarely matters. Not that I’m advocating being a jerk… just that I don’t feel the need to yield to the “hurry up” pressure.
For those who advocate reneging on contracts they’ve signed by canceling credit cards, I have to say that I think that’s pretty low. You signed the contract… you had options for other contracts, and you had the opportunity to dispute up front, but you didn’t. Sure, the types of practices that charge huge cancellation fees aren’t good or fair. However, weaseling your way out of it isn’t right (or even legal, even if they don’t go after you) either. Yeah, you save a couple hundred bucks… but at what cost to yourself?
Unfortunately, it’s standard operation procedure re gym memberships. Is it right? Heck no. When people join gyms, they are gung-ho to lose weight and/or get in shape, and the last thing they think to ask is the specifics about the cancellation policy, unless they’ve been burned once before at another gym. Should the gym tell you before you sign? Heck yes. That would be the honorable thing to do. I have a gym membership now where I pay 3 months in advance, (every 3 months), so no automatic check payments. Why? Because just like you, and many others, I was “burned” with their ridiculous “let’s get another monthly payment out of this person” too. If I were you, I would not beat myself up over this for longer than 5 minutes. I won’t speak for other contracts, but gym memberships tend to catch people by surprise just like they did you and me. It happened once to me, but it won’t happen again. You live and learn. You win some and you lose some, but you can’t win them all! Swim your laps and enjoy yourself!
Same exact thing happened to me at a Shapes!
#9
amberskies says:
16 May 2010 at 8:12 am
That’s pretty standard practice for the big chain gyms, in my experience. I had a hell of a time getting out of a gym contract last year; I had moved 1200km away and they would not cancel it until I provided proof that I had moved (I had to send a copy of my new driver’s licence, which of course drew out the process so I was paying for the extra time!), and I also had to pay $150 cancellation fee. It was all in the contract that I had signed… but I still felt that they made the process as difficult and lengthy as possible!
I paid for 3 months, and then moved in the middle of the second. I asked for my 3rd month money back and they said only if I could prove I moved with a changed driver’s license and bills. Well, those things don’t come with the keys to the new house, so it took time. I got them in the middle of the 3rd month, mailed them immediately, and then got a letter saying the 3 months were already over so I couldn’t have anything back.
I called multiple times and talked to the woman forever. I said – “so you’re saying that I need proof of moving. I moved. I got proof. I sent proof. You said it was too late. I couldn’t cancel my membership when I didn’t have proof because I didn’t have proof, and I can’t cancel now that I have proof because I had to wait for proof.” Her response “…yes.”
NEVER AGAIN.
I had this problem also, but worse. They continued to deduct the fee for six months, and this was after the one year was up. they said it was a problem with whoever services the payments. Each time I called that company, they agreed to stop it. Finally I cancelled the credit card. there was no other way. It soured me on gym memberships forever. I also have a prepaid phone. and if I am ever a renter again, I will look for a month-to-month.
Ugh. Hate the anti-customer practices that some firms use. Even if you ‘win’ an argument with the company, you’ve lost some precious time and peace of mind just arguing about the darn issue.
Great advice in the comments, esp. to read the fine print (make ’em print it out for you if the screen is hard to read) or even to strike through the language you don’t like. The same sales people who get impatient and roll their eyeballs when you take time to read are likely to ignore (not object) when you strike through unfavorable language (and remember to initial what you struck). It’s not the neatest (and sometimes not the most enforceable) way to avoid legal terms – but it might make the company and its lawyers think twice b4 enforcing unfavorable terms against you.
Also – basicmoneytips #1 makes a good suggestion to try disputing via your credit card company – who may provide some additional weight to your complaint. Also – sending a complaint/objection to the gym’s CEO or legal department could net you a break – esp if you point out any unfair business practices that the company is perpetrating (your state’s consumer protection agency or attorney general’s office may have staff who can help with this – if you really want to spend the time). Again, it’s all a matter of how much time and brain power you want to spend to resolve the matter.
Or you could just chalk it up to a (somewhat pricey) life lesson learned.
I have a question that I’m hoping someone can help me with…
I had a contract with Rogers (a Canadian provider) for internet, television, and telephone. My lease ends mid-summer, and my roommate would be moving out before I would, so I decided to cancel the television and telephone subscription, but keep the internet.
I called Rogers and asked what the protocol was. I was told that in order for me to successfully cancel those services, I had to bring any related equipment into a Rogers store before a specified date (April 16th) in order to not be charged for any additional months.
So, on April 15th, I bundled up the telephone and television cables and boxes, and brought them to my nearest Rogers store. The employee printed off a receipt effectively stating that I fulfilled my end of the cancellation contract, and would not be faced with any further charges.
Imagine my surprise, then, when the following month, I got a charge for the television (not the telephone). I called Rogers and was told that the cancellation took longer on their end, so I was to pay the money now and Rogers would credit my account the following month.
With all due respect: WTF??
I said there was no way I am going to front a multi-million dollar corporation $40 simply because someone on its end failed to move quickly enough. The sales person said that “this is how the system works”.
How can Rogers get away with that?? I did not pay the $40 and I will not pay any interest it might put on my account as a result of the non-payment. I am so angry!
It would be a good idea to insist that every contract on a computer be given to you as a printout to take home in any case, with all changes documented.
Hey Everyone,
I wanted to say thanks for the support. I’m also surprised at how standard of a practice this seems to be industry-wide.
A few things I heard in the comments I wanted to address.
My biggest overall issue with how they handled things was the “screen hustle” that @Too Big To Fail mentioned. By having you sign the box rather than an actual contract, they make it even more difficult for you to see what you’re signing.
A few of you mentioned why wouldn’t I just charge back the credit card? I contemplated charging the credit back and maybe I should have simply based on the principle of things, but I was just too mad and upset that the situation had ALREADY taken so much of my time and energy, I didn’t feel it was worth it to drag it out any longer than it already had gone. I just wanted to be DONE with them.
I think everyone agrees that this policy sucks. I understand WHY the gyms do it. [The big sign-up times are New Years & Right Before Summer. People get all worked up to get into shape and then usually lose the passion. Keeping members on the hook for dues even when they don’t come is great residual income for the gyms.] Just because they CAN do something, doesn’t mean they should. The opportunity cost of having me as a member for life after the short 3 months I was in Indy is MUCH greater than the $100 or so bucks they got from me when I canceled lost me as a customer for life.
Thanks for all the comments! Keep them coming =)
-Joel
“We had to listen to a title company employee and OUR realtor sigh and roll their eyes while my husband and I read every single line of the contract to buy our house.”
Heh. They did that at the closing for our house, too. But that was nothing compared to the noises they made when we wouldn’t sign until one section was modified to match what we’d actually agreed to. I don’t think they would have if it hadn’t been made absolutely clear that no home sale would be happening that day otherwise …
I also had a bad experience canceling a gym membership. Many contracts have an auto-renew which they also don’t tell you about!
Also, if you cancel your credit card so the gym cannot charge it, the gym may have the right to send your “delinquent account” to collections because they do have a contract.
So frustrating! We have had that too! You’d think with social networking being what it was companies would bend over backwards to have a good track record!
Regarding your swimming: My husband is training for his first triathlon too. He has never been a swimmer until recently – he read Total Immersion and watched the DVD and he loved it. It totally retaught him how to swim and he’s really good at swimming now. Highly recommend it!
LA Fitness is the same way. Pretty annoying…
I had the same thing happen to me at Gb3 in Fresno ca. They had the sort of contract/ (standard in the industry i’m sure.) Anyways even though I gave them a 20 day warning I would still have to pay an additional month. I warned the woman that I would be disputing the charge on my credit card. She didn’t seem to care and sort of smugly said I wouldn’t win the dispute. I did win the dispute and even was awarded several months that I didn’t ask for because the credit card company found the agreement to be invalid with their service terms (Amex). So not only did I win the dispute I got several months of free gym use and they got a big fat reversal charge.
@Dotty dot dot I’ve heard that stuff like that is pretty common practice for cable companies. Here, we have Comcast and Charter who both operate that way. I read a post somewhere about someone who took in the box and they said they never got it they got charged like $3k or something! I’m not really sure what to do about it though. Do you have something like the Better Business Bureau in Canada? I might start there before the fees add up.
Although this seems more like a site to complain at, maybe there is something about Rogers there?
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/cable_tv/charter.html
@Jessica-
Thanks for the tip! I’ll check it out!
Thanks Chickybeth! I’ll look into that 🙂
Part of the reason that cell companies charge large cancellation fees is that they subsidize the phones. Though they do charge far more than what they are paying for the phones.
When my husband and I bought our house, we asked the lawyer handling the sale to provide us with a copy of the contract several days before the closing so we could read it thoroughly, and ask any questions ahead of time. He was happy to comply, but said no one had every made such a request before. We’re middle aged, so by this point in life, we have had an experience or two like Joel, and know to read everything. Experience can be a great teacher — better yet, learn from someone else’s experience!
Oh man. Is this ever true. Hardly anyone reads the fine print.
In fact, a company called GameStation tried out a little April Fool’s experiment this year. They put a clause in their fine print that THEY WOULD OWN THE CUSTOMER’S SOUL. You could ‘opt out’ (and even get a money voucher for doing so!), but since no one ever reads the fine print, 88 percent of the customers didn’t bother. GameStation did give everyone back their souls (ok, silly), but the point is, no one reads the fine print, and they SHOULD.
http://newslite.tv/2010/04/06/7500-shoppers-unknowingly-sold.html
That’s how it worked for me at Gold’s – and the kicker was that we were in the gym, in person, and we couldn’t cancel it there! We had to send a LETTER to the corporate headquarters in the midwest, which of course created further delay. I think we ended up paying for two more months after we had “canceled.” Yes, it was in the contract which we had read, but it was our only choice of nearby gym and so there wasn’t much we could do!
y’know, some places even do this sort of crap on receipts. I guess, yeah, I should have read the details on the receipt before signing. But I got talked into a $700 pedorthic system called neovita once. I followed the directions and tried to work with the system. A week later and I was in tons of pain, so I took it back to return it. The manager said “well, the guy sold you the wrong stuff, so I’ll return $200 worth. But the other $500 is medical stuff, so you have to pay a 50% restocking fee.” This was in tiny print on the receipt I had signed. I was 21 at the time and just not schooled enough to think of reading through all that.
I still wish that I had just returned the damn stuff and eaten the fee. Or argued more. I finally threw the rest of the stuff in the trash a few months ago (6 years after the fact).
I now read every receipt, every lease, every everything. I too have had lots of sighing landlords. But, happily, I did once have a landlord that insisted on going through all the details with me. Turns out he used to work in tenants’ rights and was super gung-ho that all his tenants be well-informed.
@Nicole – we had the same experience wtih our homeowners insurance right after we moved in. We kept getting these scary-sounding letters (“if this is not repaired in 30 days we will drop your coverage”) on things that were just impossible – like repairing cracks in the sidewalk, in January, in Minnesota (I don’t believe they saw any cracks anyway, since we had about 2 feet of snow and no amount of shoveling would make the concrete visible.)
We’d call our agent’s office and be told, oh, that comes from corporate I can’t tell you what it means or what to do about it…no, you can’t call them, you have to send them a letter.
We ended up talking to the regional general manager, got a lot of gladhanding and assurances, but the letters kept coming…we just ignored them. If they’d dropped our coverage I would have gone to the state attorney general, though.
Yep, gyms are infamous for really bad conditions.
I will confess that a friend in Canada had me send a letter supposedly from her so the postmark proved she had moved – or they would not let her out of the contact. I’m in Australia. That was far enough for them 😉
But what gets me about this story isn’t that they passed you the paperwork and didn’t comment that you signed it without reading – they actively attempted to stop you reading the conditions by failing to present them.
Surely their are local consumer laws against that sort of thing?
Don’t they HAVE to give you a copy of what you signed??
I’d definitely be doing a chargeback and I think a letter to Better Business (or local equivalent) is in order!
I used to work at LA Fitness and we had a 60 day cancellation policy. Sales people were pretty upfront about it though, and every new member got a paper copy of their contract to take home. It may be different now – wouldn’t surprise me if they use the “sign the black box” approach. They do have a nice membership freeze policy which would have worked well in your situation. You can freeze your membership and pay only $10 a month for an unlimited time. Great if you’re away temporarily or injured or on a big project at work – and no need to pay the upfront fee to rejoin, just unfreeze and pay the regular monthly fee again.
Sometimes reading the contract doesn’t even save you.
At a different gym they had the 30 day cancellation policy as well, it was somewhat ambiguous as to whether or not the 30 days was to stop service or stop billing. I saw it and asked questions about what it meant. They assured that 30 day cancellation was for service, and if I went to cancel, I wouldn’t have to pay for another month. When I finally went to cancel, and they swore up and down the wording was for billing and that they would never say it was for service.
While I miss the gym, don’t miss the salesmen and the managers there.
-MBirchmeier
Not only should you read the contract but when you give your 30 days notice you should get something in writing then, at very least get the persons name that you gave notification to!
Most gyms WILL continue to bill you and say it is a “mistake” when you catch on. Then it will take 60-90 days to sort out the refund while they bank on you again forgetting about it etc…
Same thing with cell phones and any other contract driven service. It takes getting burned once for everyone to learn this lesson.
This is a very important post because most service contracts will have something catchy in them.
I am still confused why if you are only moving for 3 months, that you are cancelling the (Chicago) gym membership. Won’t you have the same problem 3 months from now? What I would have asked for, is simply if they could suspend your membership for 3 months while in another city, and tack those 3 months on the end. They may have preferred to do that than lose you as a customer.
Chicago has plenty of public pools for lap swimming, triathlon training, etc. You could just use one of those facilities and skip the gym expense entirely.
Why did you choose to join a gym just for a pool?
Some contracts have terms in them that are not legal. I bet this isn’t one of them, but people should know that even if you sign a contract, you are not 100% stuck with it. For example, a contract for indentured servitude would never hold up. Even if you agree to it, and sign it, it still needs to be legal.
Your cancellation policy is probably legal, but it’s a bit predatory, and there may be some wiggle room. For this reason, you can sometimes still haggle over these fines.
Another good example is a waiver of liability. I sign these all the time, but if I did get injured, and I thought the business was responsible, you can bet I would look into getting justified compensation. You can’t sign away all your rights…
Oh boy have I been here?!
I worked for a company once upon a time which offered a seriously discounted cell phone contract for their employees. When you left you either cancelled the contract or moved it across into your own name and then paid for a standard tariff.
People were used to my number so I decided to keep it when I left.
Then a bill came through for around $600. What?!
Turns out that the fine print said that if you left you also had to pay the full price for the handset they had given you! No mention of this when we all signed up, no mention when I left, no mention when I spoke to them to change it all over.
I’m afraid it *was* in the fine print so I had to pay it but it was an excellent lesson in paying more attention to the fine print (and on how cell phone providers rip you off!)
Am I the only one bothered by signing a black box with a contract on a completely different machine? I understand that there have probably been all sorts of tests on these sort of things and forgery/fraud happen on paper copies, but this practice of “Of COURSE that is what you’re really signing” without some indication on the signature pad has always made me quite nervous.
@partgypsy
I tried that route. They said they could only suspend my membership AFTER they had charged me for the month and a half that I wasn’t going to use the gym but still had to pay for. When I go back to Chicago I’ll find another gym. My new gym membership here doesn’t have any of the fine print policies.
@questioner
I picked THIS gym just for the pool. I work out quite a bit, but I needed a gym WITH a pool. It was between Lifetime & another local gym and I went with Lifetime because of the promotional offer – big mistake =)
@Nicole (#10)
I had the same thing happen to me when I cancelled my YMCA membership. They charged me for the next 30 days.
When I was looking to buy a house in SF Bay Area, I liked my realtor for the advice she gave. But what made me love her was that at the closing, she insisted that I read each and every single line in the HUGE contract and ask the escrow agent any question I have. When she felt that I might balk at that, she said “It is a ton of money you are spending. The escrow agent is getting a HUGE fee from you. Don’t act cool and then later regret that you did not ask questions or correct things”. The realtor sat with me and make sure I saw every little detail (my name was mangled in a couple of places) and the entire process took over 2 hours but I am so glad that I understood the contract so clearly…
Great way to get a tough cheap lesson in finance before you were forced to get an expensive one down the road!
http://thisiswhyubroke.wordpress.com
“Because credit crack is wack”
@ #25 Dotty Dot Dot
I worked for a Canadian retailer dealing phones for a couple of years. Your scenario is pretty standard when it comes to dealing with Rogers. I had one customer who moved to the U.S. and bought the first generation I-Phone while there. He ended up moving back to Canada, and brought his phone. Because the phone was SIM card activated and un-locked, he could only use Rogers in Canada (as they were the only ones using that technology other than Virgin and Fido – neither had local numbers in our rural area). I told him that he could use the phone as a PHONE, but would not be able to use it for internet access unless he was using it with Wi-Fi (I’d had previous experience TRYING to set up the original I-Phone – this was before it was brought into Canada under Canadian carriers). He asked me to double-check, because what’s the point of using an I-Phone without internet. We called customer service and the dealer help-lines, and were told by 4 different people that it would work (the techs said the problems had been worked out), and 1 person that it wouldn’t. We set the phone up, we picked a plan, we entered all his personal information, he paid the deposit of $400 with his credit card – direct to Rogers (bad credit means a deposit with them), and signed his 3 year contract. He was all ready to go. We turned the phone on with his new SIM card. No internet. This might not have been a big issue for him, had we lived in a town/city that actually uses Wi-Fi or has it readily available. We don’t. So, we called Rogers back. We told them the situation. They said he can cancel the contract within the first 24 hours as long as the phone hasn’t been used. The issue? They refused to refund his $400 deposit right away. Also, they had charged his card automatically for his first month of usage. They would have to send him a cheque. It took a month for him to get his money back, at which time he came back into the store to thank me for trying to warn him. He also bought a prepaid Bell phone from me. Lesson learned.
I got my mortgage papers ahead of time to read, which was really great. I had several questions ready when I arrived and I think I even had to make an alteration or two.
I did once have a gym contract that promised my fees would never go up. Then they got bought out by another company. The other company said they would honor that contract. Then they started adding wording that they could raise the rates next time, and I kept making them cross it out. Finally, one year they wouldn’t cross it out, and that was my last year with them. My two friends I was going with just paid the extra for a while before they quit.
I would like to say I always read the contract. For short things on receipts, I make a little joke out of it, “You mean I have to promise to PAY for this?” On some of these internet things where you have to read pages and pages of crap about promising not to spam everyone or use cuss words or change the programming to make money for yourself, etc., I just can’t stand to do it. I have the same problem with a lot of user manuals where they tell you OVER and OVER not to plug it in while you are in the shower and not to eat it while it is on fire and whatever wacky stuff some imbecile has sued them over.
I’ve never had to deal with the black box thing–I think I might just turn around and leave.
I have an even more frustrating gym membership experience. I signed up with a location that was near to my work–got a great deal on a year’s membership by paying in advance.
Then the gym closed down.
Fortunately, I ended up moving and there was another location near my new residence. Hurrah!
Then THAT location closed down.
Sigh…
Thanks for the reminder to disregard any sense of awkwardness about reading contacts carefully before signing. If someone is asking for my money, I need to give it on my terms.
Joel,
Great job of explaining your story. Your cautionary tale is something everyone should remember. There is a lot more that people sign automatically without thinking. This includes services on the internet.
What if the contract is in Chinese and you have a “translator” read it for you? Would you still sign it?
@ DK –
If possible, get it in both languages. If that’s not possible, I’d try to get either an independent translator you hire and pay or a friend who is good at translation to go over it.
Either way, I wouldn’t worry about it quite as much with a contract in China (I’m assuming that’s where you are?). Contracts there don’t tend to carry the same amount of weight as they do here – especially business contracts. Sure, someone might still try to take more of your money (or deliver less for it) than you wanted, but chances are they’re not going to use the fine print to do so.
Joel-
You are awesome. I’m glad you’re a good sport about this. I would still be royally pissed off. Great blog!
Gym memberships are the absolute worst and I will never join another commercial gym ever! We had a similar situation with Ballys. We moved from Dallas to Phoenix, where the nearest one was about 40 miles away, but the contract said it had to be 50 miles to get out of it! We were having the dues deducted directly from our bank account, which we closed when we moved. It’s been over 10 years now and we still get collection letter from them!
We have joined our local Y and unjoined a couple of times based upon our financial situation and it has never been a problem.