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Comment by tanseydavid | Hacker News Reader

From the article: "There are many commercial gyms that won’t let you in on a ‘pay-as- you-go’ basis at all, even if you beg."

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Pay as you go in general is not popular. It creates an incentive to not use the product or service and makes people feel bad about using it. Meanwhile upfront payments make you feel good about using the service. You already paid for it, using it is getting your monies worth.

And if you can’t build a habit around using their service, you won’t stay a customer for long.

The ideal customer is someone who pays but doesn’t use it. But these people tend to not renew their subscriptions. So realistically you want someone who habitually uses it and will remain a customer forever.

I think the Planet Fitness model is to appeal to non-gym-goers, and to also be cheap enough where people carry the membership year to year, because it’s not a big enough charge to hurt, while making the customer feel like they have some good intentions by having the membership.

They pay a guilt tax.

People love to bag on Planet Fitness. I suppose they brought it on themselves, but things have moved on. I have multiple gym memberships: one to a world renowned powerlifting gym, another to an athletic training facility popular with professional athletes, and my local planet fitness. I have that because it’s closest to my son’s mother’s house (we meet there a couple of times per week) and it’s my “travel gym membership” since 24 Hour Fitness closed in our town.

All that lead up to say: the numerous PFs I visit are regularly busy and people work out there quite regularly. I see a lot of familiar faces at each of the locations. Their clientele is no worse or less dedicated than those of the other gyms.

Also, having visited their gyms in a number of coastal metro cities I’ll say that they do a really great job of maintaining their equipment.

I'd be curious to see the numbers on Planet Fitness. At $10/month, what is their percentage of members who regularly show vs never showing up. $10/month is easy to forget about, like a steaming service. A gym charging $50 or $100+/month is harder to ignore and I assume would have a higher percentage of members actually showing up. Not because people who pay more will be more likely to turn into gym rats, but because there would be fewer people brushing off the monthly charge as a rounding error in their budget over time.

I've been to a Planet Fitness once as a guest of someone while on vacation. It as well kept, I was able to find some equipment for a good workout, and it was pretty crowded (in August), and I'm sure there are a lot of regulars. The question is, what percentage of the overall membership are those regulars?

I'm not sure if they still do the pizza thing, but that always struck me as odd and what gave them a bad image in my book. I never wanted to be a member of a gym that appeared to be sabotaging its members. It makes it seem like the gym isn't invested in the success of its members. I felt the same way about the dentist giving me candy after a cleaning when I was a kid.

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