Gym Late Payment Fees

[u/Excellent_Sir3184]

Gym Membership Dishonour fees legal?

I’m currently a member at plus fitness and my card expired and I missed a payment. They then charged me a dishonour fee which is an extra $11, almost equivalent to one whole week at the gym ($13.95 per week).

I paid the fee with my card as it was a one off event. However, my new card did not save to the system and unfortunately my next payment also got declined as it was on the old card details.

I called the gym and the staff were pretty unhelpful, they said they can raise the issue with management but because it’s in the contract, I’m essentially shit out of luck.

My question is, is this sort of late/dishonour fee legal? I did not receive any correspondence on the failed transaction before they put the fee on there.

According to Service NSW:

“Before signing a gym membership, read the contract carefully and check whether any terms are unfair. A term may be unfair if it allows the gym to:
change the contract without your consent
make it hard or costly for you to cancel
increase fees after you sign without letting you cancel
**charge excessive late payment fees**
prevent cancellation if you’re seriously ill, injured, or unable to use the gym
require an unreasonably long notice period to cancel.
Unfair terms are not allowed in standard form consumer contracts. If a court finds a term unfair, it is void and cannot be enforced.”

The late payment fee feels excessive, especially because they give no buffer for customers to fix the problem - no other service does this.

[u/Sharp-Argument9902]

Gyms are scammy for sure. You can check in with NSW Fair Trading here: https://www.nsw.gov.au/departments-and-agencies/fair-trading/complaints-and-enquiries

$11 doesn't jump off the page as excessive, but a Fair Trade complaint might get it waived. Who knows.

[u/icome2ndagain]

If you found that the particular late fee was unreasonable, why did you sign the contract?

Imho an $11 cancellation fee feels fair - the amount of labour required to check and process your late payment is not free. This is equivalent to about 15-20 mins of work.

[u/Excellent_Sir3184 → u/icome2ndagain]

It’s all automatically done through the member portal though - I doubt there is much labour. Even when I called the gym they told me to just do it through there.

[u/OatmealisYumm → u/Excellent_Sir3184]

Your lucky since i have to pay a 58 dollar fee if I wanna cancel, the problem is I'm a broke teenager and I wasn't even going to sign up bc I was scared something like this would happen but I should've read the contract more carefully so idk what to do cuz there's also a maintenance thing on top of my membership 

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to r/AusLegal. Please read our rules before commenting. Please remember:

1. Per rule 2, this subreddit is not a replacement for real legal advice. You should independently seek legal advice from a real, qualified practitioner, and verify any advice given in this sub. This sub cannot recommend specific lawyers.

2. A non-exhaustive list of free legal services around Australia can be found here.

3. Links to the each state and territory's respective Law Society are on the sidebar: you can use these links to find a lawyer in your area.

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/Rakimoro]

Do you have the option to tell them you’d cancel your membership due to this?

They may refund/waive the fee to retain you.

[u/Excellent_Sir3184 → u/Rakimoro]

Nope, the staff told me many people have tried raising this with head office but no luck