Well, it’s finally my time. Posting this with a throwaway. Wasn’t sure which flair to use, so I’ll put it under money I guess.
First of all, before I explain the situation, no money has exchanged hands, so hopefully that makes things easier.
Now what happened is;
Got a call on January 30th asking if I was interested in getting more students. I said I was, so they set up a meeting the next day.
January 31st, I have the meeting- I was told it would be a 2 hour explanation/presentation.
During that meeting, I listened to everything, was interested in the opportunity but I’m strapped for cash right now- especially at what they were asking.
They asked if I would like to continue listening, I said sure- I want to hear it out till the end. At this point we were and hour and a half into it and I thought we still had another 30 minutes to go. Throughout this conversation, I asked 2 times that if I were to go through with this, would it be possible to break the contract early and both times they said yes but payment would still go through for the remainder as it would be treated as a one-time purchase type service. I also asked about any cancellation fees, they said no, there are none.
They read through a bunch of terms and explained I needed to have a confidentiality agreement about the details and asked again if I would like to continue. Sure, I don’t mind signing something saying I’ll keep my mouth shut about their terms. This was a big mistake on my part due to misunderstanding/lack of focus.
So they read through the boxes, I’m not paying that much attention because I think it’s just a regular NDA type thing (I know, stupid me) I check these boxes, sign a form with cloudsign online forms, send it off. Then they say “Okay, so about payment”- okay, wait, hang on, what? So apparently this was a contract form and I had completely missed that- again, stupid me.
I say I’ll need to confirm this with my wife and cut off the call.
I send a message to them later on that day saying I would like to call it all off, even if I have signed it, the cooling off period still applies, thank you for your time, yada yada.
But they’re saying I can’t cancel because it’s a 法人 contract and in order to cancel, I would first have to go through with submitting my card details, then go through the procedure to cancel which would include them keeping 20%. I asked more about that, I stated that I asked about cancellation fees and was told there was none. I also read through all the documentation that I (foolishly) signed and there’s nothing regarding a 20% fee/handling fee, etc.
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So, my question is- given that they’re saying it’s a 法人 contract (something I also wasn’t aware of), is it still possible to apply the cooling off period here to cancel?
Reading through the documentation regarding the contract period it says this;
【本契約期間について】
本契約は契約が成立した日から有効とし、本サービス期間の開始日及び終了日は下記のとおりとします。
＜契約期間１年＞
開始日：入金日の翌日から５営業日以内
終了日：開始日から３６５日後
＜契約期間２年＞
開始日：入金日の翌日から５営業日以内
終了日：開始日から７３０日後
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with it saying that the contract term period is 1 year starting from the date which I paid, I think I have a legal out here- seeing as I haven’t given my card information for payment yet.
However, one of the checkboxes I (again, absolute IDIOT I am) checked says this;
本サービスの性質上、本契約成立後に途中解約をすることはできません。
even though I asked about contract cancellation (解約) no less than 2 different times and was told I would be able to.
I’m going to the National Consumer Affairs center today as soon as it opens to see what they say, but I was just wondering if anyone here has an opinion on the situation. Am I screwed?