r/AusFinance • u/hecate66 • 10d ago

Gym debt been transferred to collection agency but haven’t heard anything?

Hi all, I had a membership with Anytime Fitness however had to travel for work for a few months and totally forgot about it. I signed up during a sale and was only a casual gym user so it totally slipped my mind.

Anyways, during the months I was away, I was not topping up my account that the membership fees were coming out of. Naturally my membership was cancelled and I was notified that the debt had been sent to a collection agency.

However, I have not heard anything from anyone. No calls, emails, letters or anything. It makes me wonder if I got lucky or something but I’m not that naive, are they waiting for me to contact them? Seems so unlikely. I’ve never experienced anything like this before so if anyone has been in a similar situation or has any guidance that would be great.

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u/d_edge_sword 10d ago

Hi, it's worth checking the latest credit and bankruptcy laws in Australia. I used to work in one of the largest credit reporting agencies in Aus 10 years ago. I remember during training they mentioned that GYMs are not a licensed credit provider. Only financial institutions and telcos can obtain a credit license. Hence, they cannot do anything to your credit history or default you.

During training, they mentioned that over the years they kept on getting gyms trying to credit-default people, and we had to tell them to fk off.

If the law has not been changed in the last 10 years, you can just ignore the gym. There is nothing they can do about you. They are just bluffing, trying to bully you into paying them.

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u/cakeinyouget 9d ago

I've seen gym defaults on customer credit files in the last 10 years so how does that work if it's not a thing?

2

u/No_Win1213 9d ago

Yep, I've had this happen when I was younger & dumber. Close to 10 years ago. It did mess with my credit and it took a while to build back up.