Virgin Active's shocking business practices

As a gym, there's a reason there's a reason they are probably the most popular gym in the country. Well-stocked gyms, excellent equipment and the onsite staff is generally very helpful and nice

Sadly though, this is where the positives end.

Their accounts infrastructure is an absolute joke. To the point where it's ********. It's conveniently so easy to start a membership with them, get signed up, that all takes seconds.

The moment you need to do anything else regarding your membership, you're out of luck.

I immigrated a few years ago and needed to cancel my membership.

I went in several times, over a month before I left to handle this, but apparently they were not able to cancel my membership in the branch? (Even though, when I explicitly asked the sales rep about if I could do this, he said I could).

What then followed was months of back and forth of trying to contact them, which spilled over to me being overseas and still trying to cancel my account. They even overcharged my account.

I eventually was forced to block their debit orders via my bank as it was the only way to stop the payments from the membership.

About a year later though, I got an email from a company on behalf of them, trying to claim that I owed them money (the cancellation fee)

I'd received no emails from them, they never sent me a link to cancel my account, after requesting it several times, they never tried to contact me directly, they just sent debt collectors after me.

An absolute joke of a company. ********** business practices.