Joining a 24/7 gym before it opens

What a gym may sell before it opens

Queensland allows a supplier to enter into a membership agreement with a client before the fitness centre opens. What changes is the clock. The cooling-off period, for a client entering into a membership agreement with a supplier, starts on the day the client enters into the agreement when the centre has opened, and on the day the centre opens if the client signed before that day. If the centre opens on a different day than the one first proposed, the new opening day is the day that counts.

Queensland also stops the money moving. If a supplier enters into a membership agreement with a client before the fitness centre opens, the client is not liable to pay any fee under the agreement until the centre opens, and the supplier must not collect any fee from the client until it opens. The Office of Fair Trading puts the rule the other way around: where a fitness provider has not started providing the agreed services but wants to accept prepaid fees, all of the prepaid fees go into a solicitor’s trust account. The code provides for a ban on new fitness centres collecting fees before they open for business.

The ACT holds presale money too, and longer. Where a supplier has not commenced providing the agreed fitness services but wants to accept pre-paid membership fees, the supplier must place them into a solicitor’s trust account, which must not be accessed until the facility is open, the member has used the gym, and the member has decided within 7 days of first using it whether to terminate the membership.

One presale, run forward

Take a membership sold on 1 June 2026 for a centre that opens on 1 August 2026, first used on 3 August. Each date below is arithmetic on the periods the codes set, nothing more.

1. 1 June 2026, the saleA supplier who has not commenced providing the agreed services must not sell a membership more than 3 months before they begin, so this sale is inside the limit in the ACT, and the same 3-month limit stands in Queensland. Qld and ACT
2. The months in betweenQueensland: no fee is payable by the client and none can be collected until the centre opens. ACT: the pre-paid fees sit in a solicitor’s trust account. Qld, ACT
3. 1 August 2026, the openingQueensland’s cooling-off period starts on this day and ends 48 hours after it starts. Western Australia’s runs 7 days after the day the centre opens. Qld, WA
4. 3 August 2026, first useThe ACT’s trust account condition is measured from here: the member has 7 days of first using the gym to decide whether to terminate. ACT
5. The same 3 AugustQueensland’s 48 hours end two days after the clock started, so in this example the member is out of the window by 3 August. Qld

One sale, three clocks: 48 hours from opening in Queensland, 7 days from opening in Western Australia, and 7 days from first use in the ACT. The agreement’s own dates decide which of them a buyer is standing in.

Inspect it before, or during

A presale buys a room nobody has trained in yet, and the codes put an inspection right beside the contract. Before a client enters into a membership agreement with a supplier in Queensland, the supplier must give the client a copy of the membership agreement, the rules of the fitness centre and other information to enable an informed decision, and must tell a client who enters into the agreement after the centre opens that the client may inspect the fitness centre. During the cooling-off period the supplier must allow the client to inspect the fitness centre. In the ACT, under the supplier’s duty to make sufficient information available for an informed decision, the supplier must allow prospective consumers to inspect the premises without any obligation to purchase a membership. In Western Australia, before a supplier enters into a membership agreement for a client in a fitness centre, the supplier must, if the centre is operating, allow the client the opportunity to inspect it.

What an inspection shows at midday is not what the first week of a 24/7 membership will show at 2am, so the times you will actually use the room are worth checking against the centre’s rules, which Queensland requires the supplier to have available at the centre for a client to read.

The lease underneath the presale

Three of the codes tie a membership term to the lease on the building. In Queensland, a fitness centre cannot sell or renew a prepaid membership if the lease on the premises expires before the membership period ends. In the ACT, a supplier must not sell a pre-paid or periodic billing membership where the lease has less than 12 months left to run, for a period that exceeds the unexpired part of the lease. In Western Australia, where the supplier requires a lease or permit to use the facility, the supplier must not enter into an agreement for a term that exceeds the unexpired period of the lease or permit. A membership sold 3 months before the doors open is a bet on a building; each code puts a floor under part of that bet.

What to ask, in writing

Ask for three dates before signing: the opening day, your first day of access, and the first day a debit can fall. In Queensland the agreement cannot start more than 3 months before the agreed services begin. Western Australia’s code requires an agreement summary at the beginning of the agreement, and the agreement summary must include whether the agreement is a fixed-term agreement and, if so, the end of the fixed term, or whether it is an ongoing agreement and, if so, the end of the initial term. If the gym’s promises are about a building that does not exist yet, hold them against the rules, the agreement and the code copies the supplier must hand you, and remember that a Queensland presale’s cooling-off period starts on the day the centre opens and the Western Australian one starts from the day the centre opens.

If the centre never opens, the membership is not the only thing to sort out: money paid towards services that were never supplied is a consumer guarantee question under the Australian Consumer Law, and the state fair trading office named in the sources list is the door in each state.