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The next time you apply for anything that depends on your credit history, the collections history will show up on the credit report (assuming you’re in a countr
by jkaplowitz 3y ago
The next time you apply for anything that depends on your credit history, the collections history will show up on the credit report (assuming you’re in a country that has those - far more than just the US) and either cause your application to be refused or to be approved with bad terms. This will stay on the credit report for years.
It’s probably not worth anyone’s time to go after you more aggressively than that merely for the amount of a gym membership, but if they so choose they’re absolutely allowed to sue you to get a court judgment which appropriate authorities will enforce for them against your assets and income. For larger debts, this is in no way unlikely, if they think you can afford to pay.
To be clear, I support the proposed FTC rule and think it should be as easy to cancel as to sign up. But that procedural question is separate from what commitments may exist. for example, if they give you a discount for a 12-month commitment but still allow you to pay monthly, or if they only offer memberships with a minimum commitment of 12 months, canceling in month 3 would very reasonably still require you to pay the rest of the current 12-month term before your obligation ends.
For some contracts, I can imagine allowing the alternative of repaying the amount of the discount received so far due to the annual commitment, plus interest on that amount. But if you received and used any perks through the annual commitment which would otherwise not have been available to you, or if they incur significant upfront costs for new members which are amortized across the first 12 months of membership, allowing this would not produce a fair outcome.
- hotpotamus 3y agoIt never showed up on my credit report and I've not had any problem with any sort of application in the subsequent years.
- jkaplowitz 3y agoYou’re lucky then, in a way that doesn’t generalize to the broader question of collections being or not being worthless. Many debt collectors will routinely report longstanding uncollected debts to credit reporting agencies. Maybe you got a rare debt collection agency that doesn’t bother, or one which decides your debt was too small to be worth their bother for that, or maybe your debt collector is actually the accounts receivable department of the gym (which probably isn’t set up to submit credit reports) rather than an external collections agency (which usually would be set up for that).
- hotpotamus 3y agoThe thing about it is - fuck them - I'm not paying someone who scammed money out of me, no matter how they threaten me. If debt collection is part of that scam, then fuck them too.
- jkaplowitz 3y agoI respect your feelings, and as I said upthread I do want it to become mandatory for cancellation to be as easy as signing up. Gym membership cancellation hassles are an awfully common abusive scam that should be legislated or regulated away and turned to something that’s actually fair for both sides instead of predatory. My earlier replies to you were simply discussing the law as it is and the practices and consequences currently typical in debt collection, aside from when I agreed that changes in the legal rules would be a good thing. Neither your feelings nor my policy preferences change how the world currently works.
- hotpotamus 3y agoI think that my responses might perhaps provide you some insight that the way the world currently works is not necessarily bound by your legal rules.