Section 75 and Gym Memberships: When You Can Claim a Refund via Your Credit Card
Your gym has shut without notice. A fitness studio sold you an annual membership and closed before you had used half of it. A personal training package you paid for upfront has gone unused because the trainer stopped responding.
Whether Section 75 can help depends heavily on how you paid. Most standard monthly gym memberships do not qualify — but annual memberships, class packs, and personal training packages often do.
Quick check: does this apply to you?
- ✓ You paid at least £1 of the total on a personal credit card
- ✓ The total amount paid in a single transaction was more than £100
- ✓ The gym has closed, failed to deliver what was agreed, or misrepresented the membership
- ✓ The problem arose within the last six years (England/Wales) or five years (Scotland)
Not sure? Use the free eligibility checker.
The monthly membership problem — read this first
Section 75 applies to a “transaction” — a single purchase on a credit card. The £100 threshold applies to each individual transaction, not the cumulative total you have paid over time.
If you pay £35 a month by direct debit, each monthly payment is a separate transaction worth £35. No single transaction meets the £100 threshold, so Section 75 does not apply — even if you have paid £420 over a year. This is a genuine limitation and it is worth being clear about it before you spend time building a claim.
Payments that are more likely to qualify:
- An annual membership paid in a single transaction (typically £200–£700)
- A joining fee and first year together, charged as one payment
- A class pack or block booking (e.g. 20 yoga classes, paid upfront)
- A personal training package (typically £300–£1,500 upfront)
- A specialist membership or programme sold as a single upfront fee
If you are unsure whether your payment qualifies, check your credit card statement. The question is whether any single transaction to the gym exceeded £100.
Your situation — and what you can claim
Gym closed mid-membership, annual fee paid upfront. You paid for a year and the gym has closed with months of your membership unused. The gym has failed to provide the service for the full period you paid for. Claim the proportionate value of the unused membership — for example, if you paid £480 for 12 months and the gym closed after 4 months, your loss is approximately £320.
Studio or gym never opened. A growing pattern: boutique fitness studios selling founding memberships before opening, then collapsing before the doors open. The full amount paid is claimable — the service was never delivered at all.
Personal training package unused. You paid upfront for a block of sessions. The trainer has stopped responding or the gym has closed. Claim for the sessions not delivered.
Membership sold on false terms. If the gym represented facilities, opening hours, classes, or services that did not exist or were materially different from what was advertised, that is a misrepresentation and may support a Section 75 claim even if the gym is still trading.
What to gather before you write to your bank
Collect these before writing to your bank
- ▪Membership agreement or receipt showing the total amount paid and what it covered
- ▪Credit card statement showing the payment — confirm it exceeds £100 as a single transaction
- ▪Evidence of the closure — email from the gym, a news article, or a screenshot of a closed website or social media post
- ▪Any communication where you asked the gym for a refund and were refused or received no reply
- ▪A calculation showing the unused portion — dates of membership paid for, versus date the gym closed
What to say if your bank pushes back
Your bank may say
”Each payment was under £100, so Section 75 does not apply.”
If you were paying monthly by direct debit, this objection is likely correct for those individual monthly payments. However, if any single transaction — an annual fee, a joining package, or a class pack — exceeded £100 on a credit card, that specific payment qualifies. Focus your claim on the qualifying transaction only.
Your bank may say
”You already used part of the membership.”
Partial use does not extinguish your claim for the unused portion. You are entitled to claim for the proportion of the membership that was not delivered. Calculate the unused period as a fraction of the total paid and claim that amount. The bank cannot refuse the entire claim simply because you used the gym for some of the period.
Your bank may say
”The gym offered a freeze or transfer of membership.”
An offer to freeze, transfer, or substitute a membership is not the same as fulfilling the original contract. If the gym has closed entirely, a freeze is worthless. If the alternative offer materially differs from what you paid for, you are entitled to reject it and pursue the refund. Section 75 covers failure to deliver what was contracted, not just total non-delivery.
If your bank still refuses
Issue a written rebuttal. If they maintain the refusal, refer the complaint to the Financial Ombudsman Service within six months of their final response. The FOS regularly considers proportionate refund calculations where a service was partially delivered, and takes a straightforward approach to cases where a business simply closed mid-contract.
See our Financial Ombudsman escalation guide for what to include.
What to do now
Check your statement for qualifying transactions — confirm that at least one credit card payment to the gym exceeded £100. If the qualifying payment was an annual fee or package, that is your claim basis.
Calculate your loss — work out the unused proportion of what you paid. For a 12-month membership that closed after 3 months, your loss is nine-twelfths of the annual fee.
Write to your card provider’s disputes team — by email or recorded post, citing Section 75(1) of the Consumer Credit Act 1974. Include your calculation and evidence of the closure. Do not phone.
Ready to write the claim?
The Section 75 Claim Pack is a plain-English PDF workbook with a template letter citing the correct legislation, an evidence checklist, rebuttal templates for the most common rejection reasons including the partial-use argument, and a Financial Ombudsman complaint letter. £6.99, no subscription.
Get the claim pack — £6.99Last updated: 2 May 2026. See also our complete Section 75 guide and our Section 75 vs chargeback guide.