Charter Fitness Fraudulent charges beyond agreed upon period. Forged signature on contract. "Debt" submitted to collections Valparaiso Indiana

 I went into Charter Fitness in Valparaiso to sign up for a year long gym membership. It was a cheap membership, only $10 a month. I really wanted to get into better shape and I used my membership somewhat frequently for about 10 months. After 10 months, I moved out of town and didn't bother trying to cancel the membership early because it would be about $20 and not really worth the effort. Plus, I figured I agreed to a year so I's pay for a year. 3 months after the year was over, I noticed they were still charging me. I had bought a house and money was tight so I noticed the $10 come out of my credit card. I called the gym to ask why they were still charging me. When they answered, I explained the situation and asked why I was still being charged. The manager told me that memberships automatically rolled over and that it was all in the contract I had signed. I thought this was odd because I hadn't signed a contract. I said I'd like to cancel my membership and he told me I had to do it in person in writing with 1 month notice. So it would cost me a trip back to the gym from out of town and another two months of charges to cancel my membership. I told him I wanted the $30 back and he refused. I informed him I would issue and charge back on my credit card. His response was to "do what you gotta do."

I issued a charge back and got a call from the financial institution they partner with, ABC Financial. They told me that I owed them $140. I asked them how they figured that. They said that I had missed 3 payments and owed them for late fees. I asked the service representative where I had agreed to pay for more than a year or for late fees and she said it was all in the contract. At this point I was really curious about this contract I had supposedly signed. I hadn't remembered signing a contract or ever seeing one. I remember going into the store and giving them my information and swiping my credit card on a standard credit card machine and then signing on the credit card machine. I requested a copy of the contract with my signature on it. The contract I received had all the wording in it that would cause a membership to roll over and allow them to charge me late fees. What it didn't have was my actual signature. They had copy and pasted my signature from the credit card machine onto the contract that they had never showed me or provided to me. I knew it was from the credit card machine because it was pixelated. It was obviously not a physical signature on a piece of paper. I looked up some laws about E-signatures and a contract isn't legally binding with an E-signature if the document can not be viewed when signing, or if you don't set up an e-signature with a secure pin, or if the document isn't stored securely after being signed in a way that it can't be changed and that contract has to be accessible for viewing by both parties at anytime.

They had not followed any of these guidelines. I informed the financial institution that I owed them nothing. They sent the $140 into collections. One collection agency called me and I explained what had happened. They promptly sold the debt to another collection agency. That agency left me messages for quite a while from an automated machine. They quit calling a while back. It's left me in s sort of limbo. Who owns my "debt"? Will it ever hit my credit score? Will some thug come knock on my door demanding $140? It's a rip off and they probably get away with it because most people would probably rather pay for a few e tea months than fight them over it.