I'm thinking of the time I had a membership with Anytime Fitness. Entry into the gym entailed scanning a key fob, so it was readily possible to have a record of when I entered, and (relevantly) when I didn't.
This was an exact point I raised when they attempted to charge an expired card twice and then sent my bill to collections. The gym staff admitted to remembering that I attempted to cancel because I was moving to a place with no Anytime Fitness locations; they refused to let me cancel my contract early without me showing them my new lease, which I didn't have yet and wouldn't have until after I had already left my old city. They also surely had electronic records confirming that I had not set foot in an Anytime Fitness since that time - or else, no ability to prove that I had set foot in one since that time.
That they had the nerve to not only keep charging my card but send the progeny of their multiple degrees of utter failure to collections is exactly why they never got a dime out of me. If anything they owed me money, not the other way around. That hundred or so dollars has since rolled off my credit report, but until then I wore that delinquency as a badge of honor. That shithole of a company can shove it.
...anyway, that'd be the way to enforce it: by checking access logs to see if the customer actually used the service. Don't have access logs? Well then, you know the saying: customer's always right.
If anything like that happens again, or something like you purchase a second hand car but weren’t supplied the signed registration paper / no receipt… need a day off work due to illness but don’t want to pay to see a doctor / telehealth etc etc
You can statutory declaration, a written statement you declare to be true, many professionals can witness them, teachers, dentists, vets, engineers, mostly anyone who’s practice requires they be a member of a professional organisation.
If you were to serve such to Anytime Fitness, either before you intended to leave serviced area, or any time prior to them selling the dept to recovery, they are obliged to cancel from the date they were served or the date you state in the declaration.
A Process Server can hand them the declaration, or you can in person, or registered mail to head office.
This also tends to work for parking ticket fines issued by private car park operators whereby you make a reasonable offer for the time you were parked there—eg ten minutes prior to the first ticket, so one whole hour of parking as a reasonable counter offer to their punitive ticketed fee—though these all tend to be electronically gated these days so mostly moot.
I tend to do a higher than average level of minor civil disobedience type behaviour, and tend to find it quite enjoyable arguing my point knowing I’ll typically win the argument.
Yes, but that problem would've been moot if they were prohibited from charging me for months I didn't use it (i.e. every month after the one wherein I attempted to cancel).
Even if I'd simply "forgotten" to cancel, the prohibition on charging me for the months I didn't use it would've made this a non-issue. Hell, I'd probably still be a customer today, now that I've long ago moved back to a city with Anytime Fitness locations.
But you didn't. You clearly stated that the burden of cancelling was too high: " The gym staff admitted to remembering that I attempted to cancel because I was moving to a place with no Anytime Fitness locations; they refused to let me cancel my contract early without me showing them my new lease, which I didn't have yet"
This is the root of the problem. Not the "prohibition to charge for services you've subscribed to but don't use".
This was an exact point I raised when they attempted to charge an expired card twice and then sent my bill to collections. The gym staff admitted to remembering that I attempted to cancel because I was moving to a place with no Anytime Fitness locations; they refused to let me cancel my contract early without me showing them my new lease, which I didn't have yet and wouldn't have until after I had already left my old city. They also surely had electronic records confirming that I had not set foot in an Anytime Fitness since that time - or else, no ability to prove that I had set foot in one since that time.
That they had the nerve to not only keep charging my card but send the progeny of their multiple degrees of utter failure to collections is exactly why they never got a dime out of me. If anything they owed me money, not the other way around. That hundred or so dollars has since rolled off my credit report, but until then I wore that delinquency as a badge of honor. That shithole of a company can shove it.
...anyway, that'd be the way to enforce it: by checking access logs to see if the customer actually used the service. Don't have access logs? Well then, you know the saying: customer's always right.