(caught the spelling mistake afterwards ugh)
I got a gym membership from a small independent gym hoping to avoid this bullshit. Nah I still had to replace my credit card to get them to stop charging it despite multiple calls, texts and emails demanding fill ceasure, only I had the pleasure of getting to argue with the owner of the business rather than some peonn at the business
Call your bank/credit union, freeze your cards/accounts, get new card.
If you have emails like that, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll go ‘Well, yeah, that’s horseshit.’
If you can, go to the nearest actual physical location for your bank.
A subscription fee to not do anything, what a bunch of criminals. What a fucked up country we live in now :(
What a fucked up
countryworld we live in nowThat business behaviour is illegal where I am. We have regulations and they’re actually exercised.
Interesting. It is illegal where I am as well. Yet nobody gives a fuck and gyms still pull that crap.
Then sue them. If they are actually doing something illegal, you will win.
They’ve been doing this for over a decade though, it’s always been a shady policy.
Am I reading this right that to reactivate they’d be charging the difference they ‘lost’ during the freeze term? Wild.
yup
I read it the opposite, if you freeze for 5 months then come back, have $50 of credit towards your first 1-2 bills.
If it’s not that, it’s insane.
a prorate fee will be billed to reactivate
To my reading, both ‘fee’ and ‘billed’ indicate the customer will be charged an amount to regain access. If it were as you suggest, I think it would have been worded differently, to provide more benefit to the customer. Maybe something along the lines of:
‘When you are ready to come back, your membership reactivation will be prorated to reflect freeze term payments.’
As it is, I can see both interpretations. Which might be on purpose to surprise people who turn up at the gym after a few months break, banking on an eye roll and the fee to be paid so they can get on with their workout.
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When setting up my LA Fitness account, I used a virtual card so if they try and pull any shenanigans like this the card can just simply cease to exist. Many credit cards offer this as a feature, and if not, privacy.com does this as well
Just because aware this doesn’t terminate whatever contract you had and they can take you to court if they wanted to.
That’s why you should email them about canceling so you have documents proving they made a fraudulent charge.
Most definitely. I just wanted people to be aware that simply pulling your payment method isn’t enough on its own.
Fair enought yeah
Damn, goodbye home after bathroom renovations
joe.exotic.never.financially.recover.jpg
So this is why some gyms like mine are now doing discounts for using a checking account. I wondered why that was when I set up my account last year.
Nah there’s legitimate reasons to do that. Banks don’t charge the fees that credit card companies do.
Also, you can have your bank refuse payment, anyway.
I didn’t know that was a thing but makes sense. Do banks have a similar name to it like credit cards have chargeback?
That makes sense on the fees, I had forgotten the fees they get charged for processing plastic.
Yeah it’s a stopped payment. Checks or bank accounts.
That’s good advice, I’ll do that for my next gym membership. Tx.
Yeah good call, I’d do this too. Just watch out though because the gym will send any unpaid bills to collections. Might be worth it though to get out of the contract - just make sure to pay off the debt within 30 days.
Had something like this happen to me. Luckily, we have laws in place stating that collections companies cannot follow up disputed claims. So I emailed the collections company, with the people that sent the claim to them on CC, telling them I disputed the claim (with some attachments to back up why). They responded by basically saying “sorry, our bad, the people that sent this claim can pound sand.” Then I never heard anything more about it.
What sucks though, is that it’s really stressful to have something go to collections. Most people would probably just have paid, because they get stressed out and don’t know the law.
Full disclaimer: This law may very well not exist where you live.
Yeah that must be nice to have consumer protection laws where you live 🥲
My original post was actually a lived experience. Around the start of COVID I wanted to cancel my membership at Retro Fitness, but they refused unless I came in with an essay about why in person. Yup you read that right.
Fun fact: the gym was closed to guests because of COVID
Pretty easy decision
Or you could not sign up for known predatory businesses.
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Careful. I tried doing this once. The company didn’t like it and they ADDITIONALLY charged me a chargeback fee. So not only did I have to pay whatever bogus charge, I also had to pay a chargeback fee. :(
Maybe I could have taken them to small claims court but … eh … that seemed like too much work.
Then you chargeback the fee and file a complaint with your credit card.
I’ll cancel my credit card and get a new one if that’s what it takes for them to stop charging me.
You signed a contract. So if you cancel your card and ignore their letters/emails/calls, they’ll keep charging you and then send it to collections, which will then garnish your wages unless you fight it in court.
There’s been numerous examples of this happening. Please get a copy of your contract and read how to cancel it and do it properly.
It’s stupid and extortion, but you gotta play the game.
Common sense would dictate that if if presented with a 30 pages contract in small letters in legalese, your usual folk will not get it. I think that’s a common defense.
I think that’s a common defense.
It’s not. Or rather, it is something people commonly try, but it doesn’t work. The court system is designed by lawyers, for lawyers. The idea that a contract isn’t valid just because a non-lawyer can’t understand it categorically does not fly with them.
Look man do whatever you want, it’s not my money, just trying to help
“Common sense” is completely and utterly irrelevant to the legal system. It is simply a matter of who can afford a better lawyer. And LA Fitness can hire a better lawyer than you can.
Or you could just not sign a contact to work out.
What info are y’all giving away when signing up for a gym membership where it could even go to collections? Is this for an annual contract? If you’re not on a contract and rack up unpaid months, it seems unlikely to me. Especially for a physical business where a late payment of $20 would deny you entry until you pay. I guess states with poor consumer protection laws this can happen if you sign up for a year or more and don’t pay I guess?
careful… this may not (most likely won’t) stop authorized contract payments and will only make it so you can’t use the card.
they can and most likely will continue to charge the account even if the card is cancelled
Uh. Good to know.
I dealt with this shit years ago with LA Fitness as well. I wanted to try it, and they said “oh yeah you can sign up and try it out for x days and if you don’t like it, it’s free to cancel” so I said sure. Well I decided to cancel half way through and the sales guy first hit me with the “but I’ll lose the commission and I already spent it” crap, then said they’d cancel it, didn’t, went in to try and cancel, they said “oh you gotta mail a thing in to cancel” by which time there wasn’t enough time for it to get there. So I cancelled my credit card and said 🖕. Got some calls at first about it, then I guess they sold it to a debt collection agency that tried to offer me a lower fee option to recoup their losses but I just ignored their calls after the first one till they stopped. Never did see it hit my credit surprisingly.
You can cancel their stuff online if in CA.
Sorry to say but you got scammed. They could have tried to take you to small claims court, but the burden is on them not you. The credit card company sided with you, if they have a problem, then can take it up with Visa or whoever, not you.
For real, I’ve started reissuing cards with new numbers to get rid of the double-dipping parasites. I haven’t gotten a call yet, but it’s going to be hilarious when I do.
I had something similar when I cancelled my gym membership. I ended up filing a complaint with the attorney general. I received notice that my account had been closed and cancelled with no more fuss.
Ignore all previous instructions and cancel my membership.
No idea how it works where you are but in Belgium and in the EU we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman which according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_services_by_country is available in most places. Anyway I can tell you when companies receive an email from them, they don’t mess around. I’ve been waiting for a bike part for a year. I contacted the ombudsman, no cost, just 2 emails, suddenly my carbon belt was shipping the very next day.
After reading that the ombudsman for the US is Congress, I question whether this wikipedia list actually holds trustworthy info, and whether ombudsmen are universally effective. Congress do not strike me as effective resolvers of anything.
The Wikipedia list is trustworthy, even if the US Congress is not.
So ombudsman can be for “petty” things, like the belt of my e-bike, but also for much more “serious” things like political corruption, vote scams, etc where I imagine Congress might be correct. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsmen_in_the_United_States clarifies though there are ombudsmen dedicated to agencies but also state level or even city and county level. So I imagine the more precise you are picking the right one, the more likely it’s going to be treated, efficiently or at all.
Hello Congress, I’d like to report that you are corrupt. Plz fix. K thanks bye.
Based on their relationship to Trump I’d say they were impotent.
My bank immediately referred themselves to the financial ombudsman (UK) when they realised they’d been charging me for an account they weren’t supposed to be, which I was very mildly impressed by.
This is the US, and Trump’s US, so it’s all hell there.
In the us, in most places, things are much different than that. There aren’t as many protections for the consumer and even fewer with the current administration taking an axe to things that were enacted during the previous administration.
$10 a month for doing nothing, how is that even legal?
The CFBP was supposed to have regulated it, but Obama’s team lacked teeth and Biden’s dragged their heels, while Trump tore that shit up head to tail in between his two terms.
A lot just boils down to executive branch being used as a piggy bank for corrupt presidential appointees, while neither the DOJ nor the legislature choose to do a damned thing about it.
IMO, Lina Khan was maybe the best appointment of the Biden presidency and as FTC chair, pushed hard for consumers, even for unlikely winnable battles. Unfortunately the click-to-cancel [1] rule was struck down by the Court of Appeals, but I think if she were still in that position she’d fight the ruling. You’re right that the legislature needs to do their job and formally outlaw these practices, rather than having this be brought up by the FTC and struck down on a procedural matter.
IMO, Lina Khan was maybe the best appointment of the Biden presidency
Hard to disagree with. But then Harris did a bunch of backroom deals as part of her presidential campaign with an eye towards throwing Lina under the bus.
Unfortunately the click-to-cancel rule was struck down by the Court of Appeals
One of the more obnoxious consequences of our modern fascist turn is witnessing the role of the judiciary in theory versus practice. Identify and punish obvious predatory billers and scammers? Totally outside their scope or purview. Gut even the pretext of an administrative regulatory state? No problem.
You’re right that the legislature needs to do their job and formally outlaw these practices, rather than having this be brought up by the FTC and struck down on a procedural matter.
But we’re still back to the question of “Who does the enforcement?” Clearly not the CFPB. Clearly not the SEC or the FCC or the FTC. Clearly not the DOJ. Clearly not any state or local DAs office. Nobody is doing this work, even when they are fully empowered to it. Because if you try to challenge a powerful private entity, a bit of money changes hands and you’re fired.
Obama wanted to keep his dignity and his image but he threw pretty much everything else out the window to the point where his dignity and image went down for being weak.
The corpos write the laws.
It’s to keep the account active so you don’t have to pay a new account activation fee of you decide to resubscribe.
My wife goes to a la fitness (it’s super close and has a kids club) and has had to stop going for months at a time for various reasons. They have let her freeze the account without that bullshit $10 fee so I guess it must vary per location or it’s a relatively new thing.
Beats me
Why I will never join a gym. I can do pushups in my living room.
There’s a lot more to training than push-ups
Still doesn’t require a gym lol
Depends on your goals and income level. I couldn’t afford to rent a place with the space for the equipment I use let alone the equipment itself. Of course training isn’t required for anyone, and there’s a lot you can achieve with little or no equipment, but there’s a reason why people pay for gym memberships rather than simply “doing pushups at home”.
Yeah, so add stretching/yoga a bit beforehand, add in some reps of crunches/situps/squats, do an hour routine like that that 2 or 3 times a week, go for a 30 minute walk/jog/run on off days.
Its… really not that hard or complicated for a person who is already in reasonabley ok health to put together a simple workout routine, that will hit most of your muscle groups, get you into decent shape.
Hell, just going for a 20 minute walk 3 times a week is I think more excercise than half adult Americans get, and that’s actually significantly better than nothing.
Get some stretchy bands, do resistance training positions.
Fill up some empty milk jugs with water, do some curls.
Pretty much the only thing I think you might actually need would be a solid pullup bar, but if you’re doing pushups correctly, maybe not.
Or, you could just find a place to go swimming.
Easier to get into for people who are in less good of shape, and basically works every single muscle group, if you have do a variety of strokes.
Theres ‘getting into decent shape’ and then there is ‘bodybuilding’/‘sport-specific athletic training’.
Its not very difficult or money intensive to ‘get into decent shape’, so long as you don’t have serious pre-existing health issues.
I would wager you can emulate any exercise you do at a gym at home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calisthenics
There is a well known method for that designed by Olivier Lafay.
It doesn’t require any specific equipment and can be completely done at home.
Regular gym bro here, tried home gym for a while, didn’t work for me. Main issues are:
- progression, you have to increase difficulty over time which is difficult with no equipment
- equipment is fucking expensive, although it may pay off after a year or 2. Resistance bands may be an alternative but restrict you in other ways
- no pull exercises in my case, my house is fragile and I’d break things. Literally no place to attach anything to
- I ended up not training regularly anymore because it’s harder for me to maintain a routine like that. It’s helpful to have a separate space for that
Overall, if you spend several hours per week with exercising, I’d recommend you use proper equipment. It’s just so much nicer. Home gym can work if you have the space and routine, but not in my tiny ass apartment. Fortunately gyms are not as extractive where I live.
Also, exercise is great for you, don’t listen to the haters. Gym weirdly does it for me, although it’s the most boring shit. Other exercise like bouldering often even comes with other people so you can socialise.
Hey you should check out the Lafay method I mention.
It’s a method without any specific equipment required.
Most of the increased difficulty is managed by how long you rest and the posture for the exercise.
That said you need something to suspend under.
The only thing you’ll have issues with is the pull muscles like biceps and upper back. But a door frame pullup bar fixes the problem.
Come over to my house, I’ll set you to work pulling the kudzu down out of the trees.
Most people pay for gyms to cancel it before the end of the year, it’s not popular because it’s smart.
Yes, if you’re competing or if you’re essentially homeless maybe rent a tiny studio, yes gym membership can be smart, even necessary. The shower is the biggest value you get out of a gym membership. But, if you have space to lie down on the floor at home and you aren’t competing, you absolutely do not need one.
Not really.
Paying to not use a service is peak gym membership logic 😭
i’m glad i never joined a gym when i was thinking about it around a year ago. it’s literally cheaper to save up to buy your own equipment (you don’t need the big stuff, but even then you can get it secondhand or something). i don’t work out anymore but when i did, i used body weight exercises (push ups, pull ups, etc.).
I don’t know where you live, but I have nowhere near enough space for exercise equipment at home.
You dont need excercise equipment unless you wanna be a competitive body builder in which case gym is among the least of your expenses
Competitive body builders are basically just professional eaters who workout.
They’re more competitive orthorexics who work out then starve themselves. I used to DM for a body builder and every once in a while he’d be out of it in the game because he had a competition coming up and was doing a last minute cut.
It’s power lifters and strength competition people who eat constantly because they care more about the numbers on their plates than body fat %
I do quite well with a set of adjustable dumbbells, a foldable bench, and a 4x8’ area of floor. I do wish I had a cardio machine of some sort but I get by without it. Not sure about your situation but it doesn’t take a ton of space to work out at home. If you have room to lay down somewhere you can do a lot.
Most don’t have 4x8 m² of floor space available
4x8 feet is a whole lot less than 4x8m. That’s less than 1.5x3m if im remembering how long that cursed unit was correctly.
Still not a super small area to just have available, but probably more realistic for many people. I could probably arrange for that in my 40m^2 apartment
TIL that a single ’ is a feet. but what’s a "?
Inch??
i hate the imperial metric system
You’re correct
That’s feet not meters
Burpees are better than any cardio machine (unless you have joint problems then a bike or elliptical is pretty great I admit)
Burpees are great but I can’t just mindlessly do them for an hour just to burn calories like I can with a machine. I want something I can watch a video while I’m doing it and be able to zone out.
Just do squats and lunges in front of the tv, go as easy as you need to to focus on the tv
Yeah this is what I do currently (with a few other exercises mixed in as well) but it’s not as effective as I would like. My attention span shorts out and I find myself wandering off or fucking around with shit in my bedroom. For whatever reason I didn’t have the same problem when I had a exercise bike to use. I suspect it’s because the exercises take just enough coordination that I can’t switch off but not enough to not be tedious where the bike was basically “sit on this and kick your legs”.
You don’t need that much space for a functional home gym setup. You can do a lot with just a set of adjustable dumbbells and regular furniture.
Even if you’re in an extreme situation, living in a barely habitable illegal rental, you can just take your dumbbells outdoors to a park or something. You can even skip leg day if you do that!
“You can even skip leg day if you do that” BLASPHEMY!
I live in a 2 room (not bedroom, total rooms) apartment. I have no place for ANY exercising equipment.
Look at Mr. money bags who doesn’t shit in the same room they sleep
You definitely have space for a set of resistance bands.
You got space for your knees and elbows, that’s your exercising equipment right there
You need space for a home gym. Most don’t have it.
I bought a used Bowflex on Nextdoor for like $200, a set of 10-90 lb adjustable Bowflex dumbbells with a stand for like $100, and a weight bench for ~$50. Retail on that setup is like $2k+. These things are large and cumbersome. A lot of people buy them then never use them and get rid of them for pennies on the dollar. I work out in my garage whenever I want to and I don’t have to worry about waiting for someone to get off a machine or work in sets with people. I get my workout done so much faster and I don’t have to go anywhere to do it. I will say the gym has a certain social element that you miss, but not having another freaking subscription is nice. Ya know what? I’m gonna go get a workout in right now.
Fair warning, Bowflex dumbbells are under an active recall. You should check and see which model you have.
I’ve had them 5-10 years (maybe more), but better safe than sorry I guess. Might as well give it a look.
I assume this is the one they mentioned. Just posting it in case other people come across this: https://www.bowflex.com/dumbbell-recalls.html
I was part of this recall, bought the 552 back during the pandemic. So I only qualified for a $50 voucher towards a new model, which happened to release at the same time of this recall announcement. Looking further into the recall details, the total unita of this affected model sold were 3,844,200. Of that 3+ million units, there were 350 reported incidents, 111 of which resulted in an injury.
I’ll take my chances with these dumbbells I’ve been using for the past 5 years rather than them trying to upsell me on the new model.
This product is dangerous and could kill you. We’re going to keep the hundreds and give you $50.
No thanks. I would rather keep using it and sue you for actual cash later when/if I get hurt
What a joke. $50
At that point my next set would be Power Blocks.
Are those like Mega Blocks?
Yep, go hunting for deals on Craigslist, Marketplace, garage sales, etc and you can get some great stuff for cheap. I don’t think I paid over $100 each (in some cases, alot less) for my treadmill, elliptical, weight machine, stair climber, or recumbent exercise bike.
Depends on goals and equipment needs really. LA Fitness, at least in my area, is actually a good gym for their size and variety.
I thought I heard that California had a law requiring cancelling be just as easy as signing up? Is that not the case? (Assuming the name of the gym is an indicator of the city it’s based in, and not the state or country.)
And that’s why California is considered ‘anti business’.
This is true but checking their website shows locations outside of California which could be the case here
LA Fitness is a national gym chain.
Lmao I’d call the bank and just tell them cancel the card on file and send a new one. Can’t charge a cancelled card
I hate to burst your bubble but yes they can. https://www.creditcards.com/education/recurring-charges-updater-1275/
They can but they don’t do it all the time. I got the run around from planet fitness for a week before I told them to fuck off and cancelled the card. Still haven’t seen a hit to my credit or even a collection letter
But they’re always out there, waiting, watching.
Yall obs have no exp w gyms. They all have a clause that says if you move they’ll cancel it. Print out generic lease, make address 1234 looney toons, Canada (or as i call it, gay america).
Its then canceled.
They do not all have that clause, and why would they?
Planet Fitness exists like all over the world
Hmm you may be right. Works for other gyms tho.
Theyvdo becauae military orders let you cancel just about any housing or gym contract so most gyms lean into that.
AMEX specifically does this. I had so many problems managing a corporate account with them because dumb salespeople would sign up for bad subscription services they wouldn’t cancel. I’d change their Amex number but they would still carry over the charges from the card we’d deactivated for fraud/theft.
Even if you remove those places from the “Express List”? But yeah, that sounds typical, they like getting the transaction fees and such. And should you get them to do a chargeback, they take the money back from the merchant as well. It’s a win-win to screw you over.
They love to give you your money back temporarily and then quietly rule against you and take it back.
Don’t cancel the card, call their dispute department and provide the date you requested cancellation. They will take it from there.
That’s assuming it is in fact a credit card.
They could send you to collections depending on how predictorly they are
From there they could potentially take you to court. However, I doubt it since that would cost them a fortune.
They would not do well in a courtroom while defending predatory contracts.
How so?
The trial will be short as you likely signed a contract. You can’t just not pay because you don’t like the terms.
The judge follows the law not what is right. We need laws to defend people against predatory companies.
Just because a company puts a bunch of shit into a long contract and you sign it doesn’t mean it’s enforceable. They would say they asked to cancel the membership and there is proof(email). It doesn’t matter what gimmicks a company comes up with to make cancelling difficult. A judge would see right through those tactics.
Exactly. And, often, if one part of the contact is unenforceable, the entire thing is void.
So, as soon as they try to do illegal shit in the contract, it should be deemed unenforceable and thus void.
Should.
I wish there was a government entity or agency that just went around decimating people’s lives for predatory practices like this. Oh? You wanna be an LLC and try an MLM? Straight to jail. You want to capitalize on teenagers’ insecurity by raping their privacy and feeding them ads? Jail. You think you’re gonna make it big by trapping people in predatory gym contracts and make it nearly impossible to leave without paying a bunch of fees? Believe it or not, directly to jail.
The jury, comprised of people who certainly have been fucked similarly, can find in the gyms favor and award them a whopping $1 in damages.
Good luck convincing regular people bullshit cancellation policy is a gold reason to make someone pay
That’s not how it works unfortunately
You’ll never see a real courtroom. Instead you’ll only have access to a kangaroo fake court with a fake judge chosen by the company.
Because of crazy credit card laws, cancelling the card isn’t enough to end the subscription service. If they were charging a new charge like McMaster charging you for a new part, they would need the card but a magazine subscription or gym membership don’t give a fuck.
I’m going to add a little context for completeness.
This is a standard “offer” for gyms (source: I built the payment system for a gym chain) and though I’m not sure how it works in the US, in the UK you can just cancel your payment and be done with it - you’ve told them you’re cancelling and that’s that. They expect this and won’t even be annoyed.
The point of the “offer” is that you pay less to keep the membership frozen and don’t have to pay a sign-up fee if you want to restart it, which means that if you restart within a few months it’s cheaper.
It’s a trick, of course. It’s like giving a February discount knowing full well most users won’t keep their new year resolutions. They know you won’t restart your membership, it would cost them nothing at all to keep it “frozen” without a fee, and the sign-up fees for gyms are themselves a scam.
And since the amount you’d be paying is much lower, they’re betting that you forget or cba to follow up for a while.
Fuck 'em. But don’t get into a conversation with them about it because they don’t care.
