Joining a Gym? Here's Why You Should Open a New Bank Account | Hacker News Reader

Joining a Gym? Here's Why You Should Open a New Bank Account

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31 pointspg_123446 comments

If I am advised to open a separate financial account just to safely do business with a vendor, maybe I simply shouldn’t do business with that vendor?

But why all this scamminess to begin with? Are there that many customers that are somehow bad actors? If so, why not just turn off the card key, and done: no more gym access? Simple greed? Or the only way to keep the membership to $X/month is to make it hard to cancel, otherwise it would be $X+y/month and no one would join?

IOW, there’s some dynamic I must be missing. Maybe it is simply greed. But gyms have employed dark patterns for decades (I’m old, and it has always been this way), what has kept someone from opening the “not scammy” gym?

(And if you live near Redmond, WA: someone has opened that gym, called Eastside Gym.)

It’s scammy because the gym business can very difficult unless you have people paying and not coming in.

https://medium.com/bull-market/sweaty-january-and-how-gyms-m...

Thanks for the link, the comparison to other retail shops was enlightening. I had not previously considered how much retail space a gym user uses in comparison to say, a grocery shopper.

Sure. But here's the thing: no-one is entitled to a profitable business. And dark patterns to make customers unwillingly subsidize your business is unacceptable.

Wrong, dark patterns are acceptable. They've been accepted for decades, as the OP said: these gym businesses have been like this as long as I've been alive too. Clearly, society accepts these business practices, or else an entire industry wouldn't employ them regularly.

That doesn’t make them acceptable, just not objectionable enough to get legal action. Those concepts aren’t equivalent outside of a direct democracy and it’s very easy to find things which a majority of Americans do not approve of but which have persisted because they’re not make-or-break issues for many voters but there’s a industry committed to maintaining the status quo.

This has also caused a fraction of the population to swear off gyms and make do whichever other way they can. That's the problem with businesses which become known for their slime and lack of added value. And makes starting a more honest / value-adding version of it that much harder: part of your audience is gone for good.

Reminds me of printers (especially ink-jets). I'll never even entertain the thought of owning one of those damn things again, no matter what some people might try to tell me about certain models.

I think something is "acceptable" when absolutely no one will lift a finger to change it. It's not just "just not objectionable enough": if this were the case, gyms wouldn't be hugely profitable, thriving businesses occupying lots of retail space. Clearly, gyms have little trouble getting lots of people to sign up for expensive memberships, in addition to not facing any scrutiny at all from the government.

Again, it’s not “absolute no one” - most people would. The question is whether it’s enough of priority for a much smaller group (legislators) to pass legislation and fund enforcement. Given that there are bigger evils in the world and most gym users are used to that sleaziness, the average legislator is probably not hearing that many complaints about this and almost certainly not hearing about it from donors other than the gym chains who are saying it’s great.

If the gym users are "used to that sleaziness" and are willing to give their money to these businesses (and apparently their bank account info too sometimes), then it's obviously "acceptable" to them.

If something is "unacceptable" to me, then I would not put up with it at all. A gym treating me this badly is unacceptable to me, so I would not sign up for membership with such a business. I may not be able to get much done legislatively, but I don't have to put up with those business practices myself: I can choose to not do business with them. A gym membership is not mandatory in life, the way buying food is for instance.

I feel like when people make bold statements about something being "unacceptable" as we see here, it's nothing more than grandstanding.

Rephrased: gyms have gotten used to dark patterns. (And city planning etc. - to be fair, any storefront space is still insanely expensive around here - at the same time when much of it is boarded up.) More gyms here are now using light industrial spaces - Still expensive but not as bad as storefronts.

Go to a local franchise (e.g. not LA Fitness) with a good reputation if you want a non-scammy gym. Somewhere where the owner is a part of the community and actually runs the day-to-day.

Recurring revenue for no services rendered is basically free money. Why would any business — in this day and age — give up free money?

I’ve been meaning to start a referral program for byebyefitness.com to help people find gyms like this. Thanks!

I enjoyed talking to Lonnie the owner when I was in the area.

My only complaint is the gym can become a bit crowded, quite often I had to wait for the power racks.

It baffles me how there’s no more strength gyms in the area, most places I saw offered instructor led classes only.

The fact that you need to go this far to stop a vendor from charging you should be a big red flag in and of itself.

Most people are not aware.

I went to a gym and moved further away. I had to send a certified letter to gym HQ to cancel my membership.

I don't understand why American gyms are set up in this way when in the UK almost everywhere lets you pay by the month with no cancellation fee.

One of our biggest chains Puregym has something like a 20 quid joining fee that you can usually get around with a promotion. That's it. Most of the gyms have day passes for about £7 as well, more expensive in bigger cities sure.

I don't understand how the "economics" can be so different. It's a box with some machines in it.

I dunno, my local (council-affiliated "Better" brand) gym claims exactly that in its advertising — that you pay by the month with no cancellation fee — but it turns out when you go to cancel that they have already laid claim to the next month's payment too and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. On that day I certainly wished I had it on its own special account that I could just close.

I noticed this too. That is pretty dodgy considering Better is council affiliated. I was able to avoid them taking the next months payment by cancelling my direct debit from my banking app.

I also recommend virtual cards https://monzo.com/help/monzo-plus/virtual-cards-what/ for making payments online, and Apple Pay for paying for things in person.

David Lloyd in the UK is like Hotel California: "You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!"

the 3-month contract is actually 4 months the 12-month contract is actually 15 months

Impossible to get out of the contract unless a you have doctor's letter for injury or you move further than 20 miles from a branch. There's no point signing up on a contract either as they raise prices mid-contract.

Understanding local and state laws is crucial when joining a gym, as these laws often provide additional consumer rights. For example, Washington State has specific laws that benefited me with a "cool-off" period after feeling pressured to sign up. While I'm not familiar with the regulations in other regions, it's likely that similar protections exist due to prevalent issues in the fitness industry.

Now I do have separate bank accounts for Venmo, and PayPal and my primary banking, in the event, those accounts are hacked they can send out large amounts of money unauthorized.

But in the case of a gym, I believe they could just send your debt to collections, you had an agreement with them Whether you pay by credit card or checking account?

Sure, but you can just ignore that, or tell them to sue you because the debt isn't valid.

They are not going to take you to court and if they put it in your credit report you can dispute that as well.

The only thing they can actually to do you is prevent you from going to the gym again

In my experience, at least, the "gyms are impossible to cancel" meme is overstated. LA Fitness required me to mail in a letter to cancel; I can see how someone would object since I could easily sign up online, but printing and mailing the letter took maybe 10 minutes tops, and the cancellation was processed within a week.

To me, that was good enough.

It took me several months to cancel. Once I found out it was a certified letter and I had to go wait at the post office I made https://byebyefitness.com

I like the concept, but the fact that you can't see the pricing until after you've put in your personal info seems shady.

I used to have the pricing up, then someone said I should take it down. Since then you’re the second person to mention it.

Any recommendation on where to display it?

That's not overstated. Your anecdote itself illustrates the steps and turnaround time one has to take to cancel.

That's super slow. Did it take you a week to sign up and have to print and mail?

Also, a lot of people don't have printers.

I had to send a certified letter.

You underestimate the friction writing a letter entails, and you could probably assign a dollar amount to it.

I can attest to the energy for mailing things here in the PNW. We have to drive 10-15 minutes to a mailbox, and I'm lucky to have a stamp. Our mail-driver will only take mail in-person (not from the box) due to excessive mail theft.

I have a bank account through cashapp for this very reason, easy to get an account and easy to burn it.

The fact that you need to be able to "burn" a bank account is insane and shows how broken ACH is.

Ha ha wait until you find out you'll be put on a banking blacklist by ChexSystems if GP comment actually becomes strategically useful.

There is an ACH return code for this:

> R07: Authorization Revoked by Customer (adjustment entries)

I'm continually amazed at how anyone can pull money from someone else's bank account in the US just from knowing their account and routing numbers — and they're on every check.

I'm continually amazed at how Americans still use checks...

That, and the whole "tipping" thing. Completely insane.

I guess as the reserve currency you can get away with it. Also the fact that they don't use IBAN which would make things so much easier when wiring money. Instead you have to go looking for SWIFT codes and have intermediaries taking a piece.

Gyms can send you to collections agencies if you don’t pay them for back-dues. I didn’t get referred to collections but I’ve had a couple final warnings

> Never give out your primary bank account information to any merchant.

This is pretty ridiculous advice, since every time you write a check, the recipient receives your bank account information. It's printed right at the bottom of the check!

How common is writing checks in America these days? In Denmark it is more or less completely phased out (with few exceptions). Nobody uses them anymore in practice. In Denmark I've had no issues cancelling my gym memberships directly online but haven't been to that many different ones.

A few situations apply for me. I write checks to churches when I show up in person, even for a $1.00 votive candle. I can toss it into the collection basket or the donations jar for donuts and coffee. However, more churches are improving their online donations, and I write fewer checks as a result.

I also cut checks as part of online bill payments. If the bank can't identify an electronic recipient, then the payment gets mailed out on a paper check. This happens for my landlord, and anything I can't set up for AutoPay from the other side. I can even send money to friends this way: anyone with a postal address, and I don't pay fees or postage for this Bill Pay service.

In fact, I make use of Bill Pay so much that I didn't reorder checks for one account. My father was mystified by that decision.

Billpay Checks are actually Cashier's Checks and are drawn from account numbers that aren't your account, btw. It's one of the reasons it's far more secure to pay any bill requiring a check this way.

Check fraud is massively on the rise. They don't even need a physical check, just the info. They're printing their own checks now and depositing them electronically. They also hire homeless right off the street to go in and cash the checks for them. Homeless keeps $100, the fraudsters make the rest.

If you're using checks the way you say you are, it's only a matter of time before you have to deal with swapping out bank account numbers.

> Billpay Checks are actually Cashier's Checks and are drawn from account numbers that aren't your account

They are most definitely not cashier's checks. I checked both institutions and both of them issue actual checks on my account. The only difference is their sequence numbers. The money doesn't leave my account until the recipient deposits them. I have, in the past, issued stop payment orders for them.

But a check is not the same as an account authorization.

Why only gyms ? I keep reading horror stories about people trying to terminate (for example) their cable service.

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