Summary: We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint about a leisure centre membership cancellation. From the information available, we consider an investigation would not achieve a worthwhile outcome.

The complaint

1. Miss X complains she correctly cancelled a leisure centre membership but was told there is no record of her cancellation. She says the leisure centre did not follow its own procedures and tried to blame her instead.
2. She said the leisure centre’s poor customer service has caused her distress. She would like the leisure centre to cancel the outstanding balance on the membership account.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’, which we call ‘fault’. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint, which we call ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We do not start or continue an investigation if we decide there is no worthwhile outcome achievable by our investigation. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended, section 34(B))

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How I considered this complaint

4. I considered information provided by Miss X and the Council.
5. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

6. Miss X said she cancelled the membership in person at the leisure centre and via email. She said she also cancelled her direct debit.
7. The Council said there is no record of Miss X cancelling the membership in person or via email. It said if Miss X had cancelled in person, she would have been asked to fill in a cancellation form. Miss X said she was not asked to fill in a form.
8. The Council also said if Miss X had cancelled via email, she would have received an autoreply email. However, Miss X said she does not keep old emails.
9. The Council said as there was no cancellation request received from Miss X, the membership remained active and there is now an outstanding balance on the account.
10. There are no records to show whether Miss X cancelled either in person or via email. Where it is one party’s word against the other, we cannot make a finding on what happened and this means we are unlikely to carry out an effective investigation.
11. Therefore, we will not investigate her complaint because an investigation would not achieve anything worthwhile.

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Final decision

12. We will not investigate Miss X’s complaint because we consider further investigation would not achieve a worthwhile outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman