An open letter to folks who require 60 days notice

Dear health Club owners and Real Estate Owners:

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you.

Not to thank you for a level of service that you have provided to me, because you provide a no frills no service business model. Not to thank you for restoring the concept of a company doing somthing right just because it would be the right thing to do, but it is not required by law.

I would like to thank you for redifining a month to month service. When I pay for a service 30 days at a time, especially something that advertises “no obligation, no Contract”, I would not expect a 60 day notice be required to stop the billing. It is an interesting guaranteed business model for the business owners, but where is the protection for the consumer.

I don’t know when it was changed, but I do know when I had my real estate license, when a contract converted to a month to month contract, you were obligated to a 30 day notice.  The reason for that was simple:

30 days is a month.  When I am obligated to pay you for a month, and I tell you that I don’t want to pay you after that, then our mutual obligation is over.  When I pay you 30 days at a time, I could even understand that the only time that 30 days would start would be at the next payment.

I understand your confusion.  If you put it in the contract, we must have agreed to it. My confusion is that you have provided nothing in return for the extra month.  I agreed that we could renegotiate at any time prior to the expiring month for the next month or a longer time.

If you put into the contract that I was to dance naked on top of the building that I occupy two times each month, if I cannot strike thru it, it does not mean that I agree with that line of the contract.  Just as this 60 day notice thing is not something that I can agree to, or disagree with on a line by line consideration.

You have created another little salvo in the class warfare that is being perpetrated by our country’s leadership.  You, instead of creating good karma, have given ammo to the enemy.  You have once again required something of consumers that we cannot argue with.  We don’t have an option because you all work from the same contracts, we can’t go somewhere else to rent, or become members.  Your associations are strong.  You hold all of the cards.  If we don’t pay for the time that is unethically being charged for, we are reported as deadbeats, not moral objectors.  Our names are sent to credit bureaus so that we can be charged extra next time because we are higher risks.  You on the other hand, provide nothing more for our money.  It is a cash flow mechanism.

You are well within your legal bounds.  One question you might ask yourself :  If it is legal, is always the ethical thing to do?  I am not asking you to do something that is illegal, I am asking you to do something that is right.

With all of the negative feelings that exist in our country today, towards businesses, this is a small thing that could be made right.  It doesn’t cost you anything to not provide something.  You have to get a replacement customer anyway, why not advertise the 30 day notice?

Good luck.