My gym offers a membership - $30/month with credit card and a one year term, no initiation fee, or $50/month, $75 initiation fee on a month-by-month basis. When I sign up for the one year membership, I put my signature on a contract, indicating that I will oblige by all the conditions.
Should I be allowed to sign up for the one year term, and then cancel my credit card after a couple months?
Whenever you enter a contract, there are conditions that must be fulfilled to cancel that contract. Simply saying "I didn't read those conditions" or "I don't want the product anymore" is not a sufficient condition to terminate the contract. And thinking that you can get out of it by "canceling the credit card" is naive in my opinion.
Should I be allowed to sign up for the one year term, and then cancel my credit card after a couple months?
Yes, you should. Because it's not the credit card companies responsibility to worry about what outstanding contracts you may or may not still have ongoing.
It would be up to the merchant to pursue legal action if your attempt to defraud the contract was substantial enough for them to care. If this was an ongoing problem for them, they would have to debate if their "deal" is really valued by their consumers and worth continuing to offer.
But, it's not Visa's problem to worry about these things.
When a civil contract is broken the appropriate response is a trial in a court of law. Businesses are quite familiar with the debt collection process. A judge and possibly a jury are needed to resolve these types of disputes fairly.
Under no circumstances should a merchant be permitted to forcefully take funds from another person, outside the purview of the law.
Your contract is between yourself and your gym, the bank should have no part in either enforcing or stopping its fulfilment unless it is asked to by the courts.
There is a general perception that initiating a chargeback is a way of getting out of a credit card related charge for any reason, when in reality it's an opportunity for the merchant to prove to the bank that they provided a product/service to you.
I know someone that used to fight chargebacks as part of their job. If you'd been using that service to send pics of your junk to people and then became despondent when it turned out that women don't find unsolicited crotch photos an appropriate pick-up line, you can be sure those pics would get faxed over to your bank as part of the package to show you'd been using the site.
Should I be allowed to sign up for the one year term, and then cancel my credit card after a couple months?
Whenever you enter a contract, there are conditions that must be fulfilled to cancel that contract. Simply saying "I didn't read those conditions" or "I don't want the product anymore" is not a sufficient condition to terminate the contract. And thinking that you can get out of it by "canceling the credit card" is naive in my opinion.