I just have to share my very long and very irritating story with you guys about my gym. I'm not sure I'm allowed to say their name, but I need to rant and rave anyway. This is going to be very long...
It starts about a year and a half ago when I joined my local gym. It was fairly small and the equipment was dated and worn (for the most part), but it was a very pleasant place to go. The owner was always there just chit-chatting with the customers, the prices were fair, and the atmosphere and rules were easy going. We even had a local policeman working there part-time, he loved to work out and was working at getting kids involved with fitness. It was decent. Well, everybody was getting excited, because the gym was being taken over by a large chain...new equipment was coming in, new programs, personal trainers, etc.
Finally, the day came when the place had been officialy taken over. We members were required to actually re-sign with the new owners and create new accounts. I walked in one day, and a new lady with tons of makeup and big hair asked me, "Are you a member?" "Yes" "Good, then your rates are going down." Ok, cool, I thought. Well, after a few minutes, I realized that not only did my rates not go down, they increased by 10 dollars a month!! Not only that, but I still had two months left on my current membership, but they made me pay again, saying that whatever deal I had with the previous owners didn't apply. Oh, and we could only sign up for a yearly contract, nothing less. You'd think I'd be smart enough to walk out right then, but I will never understand what kept me there. Then, when I tried to get them to reimburse me for that time, a big, overly tanned, no-necked man came over to me (the owner) and tried to strike a bunch of deals with me - one of them being that I had 3 months out of the year where I could put my account on hold, and not use the facilities. I thought, ok, I love working out at the gym, I'll do it. I paid my first and last month, signed the contract, was told that if I wanted to cancel I'd have to pay a $100 fee, I'd get a month of free tans, and that's that.
Ok, so for a couple of months I'm ok and using the gym about 4 times a week. Then, the place is becoming overly crowded because the business is using a bunch of (bogus, and I mean BOGUS) deals to reel people in. It gets to the point where you can't even use the machines because there are so many people. I was just sitting there waiting. Then, I am leaving for three weeks on a vacation to California in June, so I decide I will put my account on hold for that time, since it's summer and I'll be gone most of that month anyway. I go in, I take care of it, a receipt is put into my file saying that I put my account on hold...and I leave for vacation.
Well, I come back and find that in the beginning of July that they had charged my credit card for that month anyway. I wasn't too angry, I just figured it was a misunderstanding that could be taken care of. I call, and then they tell me that the account freeze thing ended in April (I made this deal at the end of may) and they would not honor my deal. It was not written on my contract, and here begins the list of bogus deals. I tried and tried to get this taken care of, and finally I managed to get that same no-neck owner to talk to me. I was not going to let this slide, ESPECIALLY since a receipt was in my file showing that my account was to be frozen (one of the girls there obviously wasn't in on their game yet, and showed me my file... it was probably the same one who dealt with me when I first went to put my account on hold). I fought with him for DAYS and the only thing he was willing to do for me was give me free tans (AGAIN!!!). That is three months of paying fees that he is trying to slime me out of.
I was angry, because of all of the excuses they were giving me and how uncooperative they were being. So, I decided that I would pay my $100 dollar cancellation fee and get out of the deal. Well, no, it's not that easy. Apparently you can only cancel if you are moving beyond 50+ miles of anyone of their locations in the country!!! It's in the contract, obscurely written, in tiny print. Of course, when you're signing up, they don't tell you that.
At one of the times I had gone in to try to get these things dealt with, I talked to a guy who was working there alone early in the morning. He could see I was very upset and he sat down to talk with me. He said that this day was his last day, because they were screwing him over, too. He was a member before he became an employee, and once he became an employee, his fees were waived. Well, for months the gym continued to take money out of his account anyway, and it took him awhile to notice (if checking was overdrawn, it drew from his savings). He also let me know a few things, including that all sales reps are told to tell the potential customers ANYTHING just to get them signed up, because once they're signed up, there's nothing to be done about it. It's all verbal, and most of us are trusting enough that we don't ask for it in writing.
So, I couldn't cancel, and now I was afraid that this stuff might go on my credit if I just stopped paying, so I decided to try to honor my 1 year contract.
I decided to read my contract and thought I understood. Another thing you have to do to cancel your account is send a certified letter to the coorporate office (out of town) to tell them you want to cancel, EVEN WHEN YOUR CONTRACT IS UP! Or you are still obligated to pay. Well, I decided that I would write my letter early, detailing everything, including the day my last payment was to be made, the exact date my contract was up. I told them to contact me if anything else needed to be done, and I included my phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and address. I included a copy of my contract, receipts and all correspondence. I sent the letter, got the certified receipts back. No problem.
Also, while I was on my June trip, I had lost my credit cards, so I had to switch over to some other payment method. They don't allow you to pay cash or to come in every month and pay yourself... you have to pay with credit cards or let them take money out of your checking monthly. By this time I was steaming mad and HIGHLY suspicious (it didn't take me until this point to become suspicious, this was just my confirmation). So, I let them get the money out of my account so I could watch every transaction and so that I could work with my bank if anything went wrong. I went in and signed the paperwork, and THEN was told that the payment was cleared through my credit card, even though it had been cancelled over a month before. I was really confused and called my credit card company. They said that no such thing was done and that they would let me know if they tried again. I signed the paperwork for the new payment method, and was on my way. Well, about 3 weeks letter I received a warning letter in the mail saying that I had not paid my dues because my credit card had been cancelled, and they had none of the paperwork I had signed changing my payment method.
I went to the office to get this taken care of now, and talked to one person in particular... she was brand new... we fixed the payment problem, AND THEN I asked her about terminating my membership when the contract was up. I was concerned that that they wouldn't do what they were supposed to. She showed me my file and showed me that the corporate office had sent the local branch a copy of the termination letter. Apparently, they had no problem with me sending my letter in early. She assured me that the they would no longer be charging me once my last payment (specified in my letter) was made. And if it was, to go back to her and she would fix it.
OK, well, here we are, two months after my contract expired. Over the entire last year, I am not exaggerating in the least bit, if you talk to somebody in town, either they or someone they know has had a terrible experience with this gym. Being slimed, lied to, and stolen from. There have been countless letters to the editor about their scumminess, I have several friends who have been screwed, and I thought I had taken every precaution to make sure it didn't happen to me after I honored my 1 year contract. This February, I went to the bank to put a stop-payment on the gym, JUST IN CASE they ended up trying to take money out of my account after they shouldn't have been. The bank said they would notify me if they tried. I received no word, so I thought I was fine.
This morning, I opened my bank statement for the month of March, and what do you know? They managed to get their money out of my account. I go to the bank, and they apologized, and said that they had changed their name to get through... apparently this is common (?) They had warned me before that if they changed their name or even a penny of the amount, that they could take it out still when I asked them about stop-payments months ago. So, my bank deposits the money back into my account, I decide that I will go to the gym, once again, try to take care of this, and then I am changing my bank account. I go to new accoutns and find out the gym had taken money out this month, too.
I go to the gym, and they tell me that I'm still active, that my termination letter was sent too early and that it didn't count. Can you believe that? Oh, and by the way, i was talking to the exact same girl I talked to before about the letter, the one who told me it was just fine. She was being a *&^%^ and refused to cooperate. She told me that she wasn't going to take care of this now, and I told her I wanted it taken care of immediately. She proceeded to get VERY rude and tell me she had better things to do and that if I wanted to sit and wait for 6 hours I could, but that she wasnt going to help me. I will not even begin to tell you how many nasty things I yelled. I have never done anything like that before in my life and left the place so angry that I was bawling and shaking!!!! I had to go home and relax for almost an hour before I could even breathe normally.
I called the cooperate office after that hour, but they just told me they'd call me back (after telling me that they did indeed have my original letter of termination there). They never did. I went to the bank, they were wonderful enough to deposit all of the money back into my account, and I changed it over to a new account. I continued calling the office, but they kept sending me to the lady's voice mail.
So now, I am worried that I may have to file a small claims suite against these people just to cancel a gym membership, after my contract is up!! Isn't that just ridiculous? I can't ruin my credit now that I am going to leave for college and will need to start applying for loans. Even if my letter was too early and I needed to let them know again that I wanted to terminate, they should have let me know. I left them plenty of numbers, addresses, and e-mail addresses so that they could contact me about it, but nobody ever told me. I am going to take that to mean that they considered my letter acceptable.
I don't think this story even begins to relay how upset I actually am, and the parts that you don't know are all of the other stories that people have. I do have friends however that did stop paying these people WAY before their contracts were up and they were never sent to collections, so I do hope that the same goes for me. I tried to do the right thing, and they still have to come up with ways to gouge me.
Does anybody have any advice for me? Or at least a "hang-in-there, there are worse things"
I mostly just had to get this off of my chest.
This was very very long, so if you made it to the end, thank you for reading. I hope you could understand it all... it's late and I'm upset... I hope none of you have to go through this, ever!!
Sara
http://community.webshots.com/scripts/editPhotos.fcgi?action=viewall&albumID=69281756
It starts about a year and a half ago when I joined my local gym. It was fairly small and the equipment was dated and worn (for the most part), but it was a very pleasant place to go. The owner was always there just chit-chatting with the customers, the prices were fair, and the atmosphere and rules were easy going. We even had a local policeman working there part-time, he loved to work out and was working at getting kids involved with fitness. It was decent. Well, everybody was getting excited, because the gym was being taken over by a large chain...new equipment was coming in, new programs, personal trainers, etc.
Finally, the day came when the place had been officialy taken over. We members were required to actually re-sign with the new owners and create new accounts. I walked in one day, and a new lady with tons of makeup and big hair asked me, "Are you a member?" "Yes" "Good, then your rates are going down." Ok, cool, I thought. Well, after a few minutes, I realized that not only did my rates not go down, they increased by 10 dollars a month!! Not only that, but I still had two months left on my current membership, but they made me pay again, saying that whatever deal I had with the previous owners didn't apply. Oh, and we could only sign up for a yearly contract, nothing less. You'd think I'd be smart enough to walk out right then, but I will never understand what kept me there. Then, when I tried to get them to reimburse me for that time, a big, overly tanned, no-necked man came over to me (the owner) and tried to strike a bunch of deals with me - one of them being that I had 3 months out of the year where I could put my account on hold, and not use the facilities. I thought, ok, I love working out at the gym, I'll do it. I paid my first and last month, signed the contract, was told that if I wanted to cancel I'd have to pay a $100 fee, I'd get a month of free tans, and that's that.
Ok, so for a couple of months I'm ok and using the gym about 4 times a week. Then, the place is becoming overly crowded because the business is using a bunch of (bogus, and I mean BOGUS) deals to reel people in. It gets to the point where you can't even use the machines because there are so many people. I was just sitting there waiting. Then, I am leaving for three weeks on a vacation to California in June, so I decide I will put my account on hold for that time, since it's summer and I'll be gone most of that month anyway. I go in, I take care of it, a receipt is put into my file saying that I put my account on hold...and I leave for vacation.
Well, I come back and find that in the beginning of July that they had charged my credit card for that month anyway. I wasn't too angry, I just figured it was a misunderstanding that could be taken care of. I call, and then they tell me that the account freeze thing ended in April (I made this deal at the end of may) and they would not honor my deal. It was not written on my contract, and here begins the list of bogus deals. I tried and tried to get this taken care of, and finally I managed to get that same no-neck owner to talk to me. I was not going to let this slide, ESPECIALLY since a receipt was in my file showing that my account was to be frozen (one of the girls there obviously wasn't in on their game yet, and showed me my file... it was probably the same one who dealt with me when I first went to put my account on hold). I fought with him for DAYS and the only thing he was willing to do for me was give me free tans (AGAIN!!!). That is three months of paying fees that he is trying to slime me out of.
I was angry, because of all of the excuses they were giving me and how uncooperative they were being. So, I decided that I would pay my $100 dollar cancellation fee and get out of the deal. Well, no, it's not that easy. Apparently you can only cancel if you are moving beyond 50+ miles of anyone of their locations in the country!!! It's in the contract, obscurely written, in tiny print. Of course, when you're signing up, they don't tell you that.
At one of the times I had gone in to try to get these things dealt with, I talked to a guy who was working there alone early in the morning. He could see I was very upset and he sat down to talk with me. He said that this day was his last day, because they were screwing him over, too. He was a member before he became an employee, and once he became an employee, his fees were waived. Well, for months the gym continued to take money out of his account anyway, and it took him awhile to notice (if checking was overdrawn, it drew from his savings). He also let me know a few things, including that all sales reps are told to tell the potential customers ANYTHING just to get them signed up, because once they're signed up, there's nothing to be done about it. It's all verbal, and most of us are trusting enough that we don't ask for it in writing.
So, I couldn't cancel, and now I was afraid that this stuff might go on my credit if I just stopped paying, so I decided to try to honor my 1 year contract.
I decided to read my contract and thought I understood. Another thing you have to do to cancel your account is send a certified letter to the coorporate office (out of town) to tell them you want to cancel, EVEN WHEN YOUR CONTRACT IS UP! Or you are still obligated to pay. Well, I decided that I would write my letter early, detailing everything, including the day my last payment was to be made, the exact date my contract was up. I told them to contact me if anything else needed to be done, and I included my phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and address. I included a copy of my contract, receipts and all correspondence. I sent the letter, got the certified receipts back. No problem.
Also, while I was on my June trip, I had lost my credit cards, so I had to switch over to some other payment method. They don't allow you to pay cash or to come in every month and pay yourself... you have to pay with credit cards or let them take money out of your checking monthly. By this time I was steaming mad and HIGHLY suspicious (it didn't take me until this point to become suspicious, this was just my confirmation). So, I let them get the money out of my account so I could watch every transaction and so that I could work with my bank if anything went wrong. I went in and signed the paperwork, and THEN was told that the payment was cleared through my credit card, even though it had been cancelled over a month before. I was really confused and called my credit card company. They said that no such thing was done and that they would let me know if they tried again. I signed the paperwork for the new payment method, and was on my way. Well, about 3 weeks letter I received a warning letter in the mail saying that I had not paid my dues because my credit card had been cancelled, and they had none of the paperwork I had signed changing my payment method.
I went to the office to get this taken care of now, and talked to one person in particular... she was brand new... we fixed the payment problem, AND THEN I asked her about terminating my membership when the contract was up. I was concerned that that they wouldn't do what they were supposed to. She showed me my file and showed me that the corporate office had sent the local branch a copy of the termination letter. Apparently, they had no problem with me sending my letter in early. She assured me that the they would no longer be charging me once my last payment (specified in my letter) was made. And if it was, to go back to her and she would fix it.
OK, well, here we are, two months after my contract expired. Over the entire last year, I am not exaggerating in the least bit, if you talk to somebody in town, either they or someone they know has had a terrible experience with this gym. Being slimed, lied to, and stolen from. There have been countless letters to the editor about their scumminess, I have several friends who have been screwed, and I thought I had taken every precaution to make sure it didn't happen to me after I honored my 1 year contract. This February, I went to the bank to put a stop-payment on the gym, JUST IN CASE they ended up trying to take money out of my account after they shouldn't have been. The bank said they would notify me if they tried. I received no word, so I thought I was fine.
This morning, I opened my bank statement for the month of March, and what do you know? They managed to get their money out of my account. I go to the bank, and they apologized, and said that they had changed their name to get through... apparently this is common (?) They had warned me before that if they changed their name or even a penny of the amount, that they could take it out still when I asked them about stop-payments months ago. So, my bank deposits the money back into my account, I decide that I will go to the gym, once again, try to take care of this, and then I am changing my bank account. I go to new accoutns and find out the gym had taken money out this month, too.
I go to the gym, and they tell me that I'm still active, that my termination letter was sent too early and that it didn't count. Can you believe that? Oh, and by the way, i was talking to the exact same girl I talked to before about the letter, the one who told me it was just fine. She was being a *&^%^ and refused to cooperate. She told me that she wasn't going to take care of this now, and I told her I wanted it taken care of immediately. She proceeded to get VERY rude and tell me she had better things to do and that if I wanted to sit and wait for 6 hours I could, but that she wasnt going to help me. I will not even begin to tell you how many nasty things I yelled. I have never done anything like that before in my life and left the place so angry that I was bawling and shaking!!!! I had to go home and relax for almost an hour before I could even breathe normally.
I called the cooperate office after that hour, but they just told me they'd call me back (after telling me that they did indeed have my original letter of termination there). They never did. I went to the bank, they were wonderful enough to deposit all of the money back into my account, and I changed it over to a new account. I continued calling the office, but they kept sending me to the lady's voice mail.
So now, I am worried that I may have to file a small claims suite against these people just to cancel a gym membership, after my contract is up!! Isn't that just ridiculous? I can't ruin my credit now that I am going to leave for college and will need to start applying for loans. Even if my letter was too early and I needed to let them know again that I wanted to terminate, they should have let me know. I left them plenty of numbers, addresses, and e-mail addresses so that they could contact me about it, but nobody ever told me. I am going to take that to mean that they considered my letter acceptable.
I don't think this story even begins to relay how upset I actually am, and the parts that you don't know are all of the other stories that people have. I do have friends however that did stop paying these people WAY before their contracts were up and they were never sent to collections, so I do hope that the same goes for me. I tried to do the right thing, and they still have to come up with ways to gouge me.
Does anybody have any advice for me? Or at least a "hang-in-there, there are worse things"
I mostly just had to get this off of my chest. This was very very long, so if you made it to the end, thank you for reading. I hope you could understand it all... it's late and I'm upset... I hope none of you have to go through this, ever!!
Sara
http://community.webshots.com/scripts/editPhotos.fcgi?action=viewall&albumID=69281756
