There’s also tricks like requiring certified letters to cancel the membership. One I went to required two. You also paid a fee upfront that was like being there for half a year.
Moreover, why hasn’t anyone introduced a brand that doesn’t have all these awful features?
> why hasn’t anyone introduced a brand that doesn’t have all these awful features?
There are, at least in my part of the country, a lot of gyms that don't behave this way -- but you have to actually read the contract to know if that's the sort of gym you're in.
Contract was for a year and then after a year you can cancel each month or at the end of a year period.
But people want to quit after 3 months or 6 months and then they post on socials how they got scammed.
In my life I had now 3 or 4 contracts and I trained usually like 3 or 4 years at each. Never had any issues canceling, just go to front desk make last payment, cancel use last month and done.
Then you have the whole gym owner archetype which I won’t dive into but IMO exasperates the issue.
Smaller neighorhood gyms are so much better, let you cancel any time, and don't make you talk to a sales-bro when signing up.
The other thing about Equinox, and expensive gyms in general, is that a gym's price and amount of equipment doesn't closely correlate with fitness success. You can't outrun a poor diet, genetics explains the vast majority of a person's physique even if they get their body fat down to <13%, and only maybe 6 different exercises will work out all the major muscle groups. Setting aside the dirtiness or crowdedness of certain gyms, every extra dollar you spend at the gym is a diminishing return. As a regular guy, I simply can't justify paying that much for Equinox no matter how hot and motivated those gym goers will be because I already have the motivation to work out twice a weak at a cheap ass (yet clean and uncrowded) gym that's closer to me anyway.
I was a member of Gold’s Gym in Japan for more than a decade and worked out at many different branches, and other than occasional equipment hoggers none of that applied. The gyms were all clean and well maintained. I also used a Gold’s Gym for a while in Southern California, and it was fine, too. When it came time for me to cancel my memberships, there was no hassle whatsoever.
Another mega gym I used a few times in Southern California was pretty awful, though. I still remember the dirt under all of the machines and the caked dried sweat covering the handles of the ellipticals.
They have a sense of Quality that almost no other demographic does.
That must be the 24 Hour Fitness on Ocean Park Blvd in Santa Monica.
People who don't want to admit the cost is too high are perfect targets because they also don't want to admit they will want to cancel in the future. I, uh, am talking about a friend of mine, of course.
- Going to the gym sucks, and I don't want to go
- I should force myself to go to the gym anyway
- Gyms are expensive, and hard to cancel
- The pain and shame of canceling, combined with ongoing cost, will be a motivator for me to actually go to the gym
(But, hey, as the old Swedish saying goes: "Efter sig själv dömer man andra" -- ~"Your judgement of others is based on using yourself as a measure", so whatever you ascribe to others is a reflection of yourself. Freud may have invented the label "Projection", but Swedish folk wisdom had him beat to the concept by Idunno how many centuries.)
Why would they when our national paper of record adopts similar tactics?
https://social.kernel.org/notice/AWSTn6aOpeEvSKZ7Wy
Years ago I called NYT to cancel my subscription. After I repeated for the third or fourth time "I just want to cancel please" the representative finally relented but not before insulting me based on some assumption he formed based on my name.
Sorry to blunt, but if you think that's bizarre...I don't think you understand human behavior very well.
# Require certified mail (100% sure on these)
- LA Fitness
- Planet Fitness
- Gold's Gym
- Retro Fitness
# Let you cancel online / do not require in person or certified mail (From memory based on my research)
- Orange Theory Fitness
- Blink Fitness
- Equinox
- 24 hour fitness
(edit: formatting, clarification)
I guess it could take a lot of legwork to figure out what individual franchises allow.
https://memberservices20.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004...
Gym would not respond to emails asking for cancellation form, nor pick up the phone during office hours.
Then stood by their cancellation policy of 30 days despite the weeks of messages left. 30 days from time of signing the form.
Shady business.
I got into a giant fight with Lifetime Fitness and Amex over this. Amex 100% took the gyms side and allowed them to bill me even after I told them I refused any additional charges.
The chargeback system is consumer friendly until there is actual real money on the table. If you are a giant business you can block many chargebacks as matter of course. Your issuing bank will tell you to take it up in civil court while issuing you a bill.
As I looked into this further I realized chargebacks other than outright theft and fraud are basically done as a courtesy until your account is no longer worth it to the issuer.
I refuse to purchase a Planet Fitness membership because of this. Despite PF being both closer and cheaper, I will not play their BS cancellation games with my bank account.
It took more than one try to catch them during office hours. The problem of course is that their office hours numbered just 12 hours a week, and smack in the middle of the workday! 10:30 - 1:30, M-Th
You'd think that telling them that I had moved 20 hours away would have made them budge, but nope. I had multiple phone conversations with them before sending a legal threat, which finally prompted them to "make an exception for me." Ridiculous.
I never got around to sending the letter that LA Fitness wants you to send by certified mail. I spent around 6 months not mailing the letter, got to be my first customer.
At least washing our gym clothes got easier…
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165527249/ftc-rule-charges-c...
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/...