Hello Forumosa, I recently had to leave Taiwan for a family emergency back home. I was anyway from Taiwan for 4 months and forgot to pay my Taiwanese gym membership for those 4 months. My gym membership is now cancelled and they are saying they are going to take legal action against me for not paying my bill. What should I do? Will this effect my life in taiwan in any serious way, or should I just ignore it? I had a 1 year contract signed with them, which is now broken?
They say it’s too late to pay them what I owe and now I’m in serious legal trouble. Can they somehow take the money they are fining me out of my bank account, garnish my wages or throw me in jail over this?
I guess I technically do owe them that since I signed the contract, but now since they “cancelled it” idk where I stand with them, other then just paying them the 7k plus 899x6 or just ignoring them, idk what to do.
Morally, you signed up for a service and then didn’t use it for 4 months and now want a refund. If you’d informed them beforehand then they’d have probably suspended your payments for 4 months.
Yep. I think you need a lawyer, but it going to cost a lot more than you are trying to claw back.
Yeah, I should probably just pay them the 7k plus the remainder of my contract and hope that satisfies them. Do you think they will send a collection agency after me for 7k?
It’s an extra 3.5k. It’s not worth the worry. They may not take action over a small amount, but if they do and you get a record it can affect your ability to work certain jobs, maybe also if you’re a student. Take it as a learning experience and go to a pay as you go gym.
Oh, I thought 7k was the total with the fees. Then I’d still pay the 10.5k.
I’m not in Taiwan to fight a losing battle against the multinational gym corporations and their predatory contracts in order to set an example. I don’t know when gyms turned evil, but there was an episode of Friends from the early/mid 90s where they couldn’t get out of a gym contract. Signing a contract with them doesn’t include an NDA; complaints about their practices are not hard to find. If anyone doesn’t know how these gyms are in 2019, they haven’t been paying attention. It’s not worth getting sued or in legal trouble to make a point. What they do is immoral. One would think it’s poor customer service but they fact that they have done it for years and continue says they keep enough customers using this business model to stay profitable. If they’re doing something that actually violates a law, pay the fines and join a class-action law suit with others. Or stage a protest, those a popular these days.
Me? I’m not the OP so I’m not going to do anything. I ride a bike and workout at home. If I want to go to a gym it will be one of those where you pay for the time you use.