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This is good news. LA Fitness should be next. Is super-easy to become a member online. Enter CC ... click on agree ... done. Want to cancel your memebership??
by javier_e06 3y ago
This is good news. LA Fitness should be next. Is super-easy to become a member online. Enter CC ... click on agree ... done.
Want to cancel your memebership?? ... well, please drive to the nearest LA Fitness and try to find a manager ... not a rep taking new members but an actual manager, the reps can't help you to cancel. I went twice to my neighborhood LA Fitness to try to cancel my membership and the manager was 'not available at the moment'.
- jacquesm 3y agoChargeback time...
- AlotOfReading 3y agoGyms are notorious for sending unpaid dues to debt collection. Even if the designated cancellation process ought to be illegal, you still have to end the contract to end your legal obligations.
- akomtu 3y agoBut there is no contract to begin with. Anyone can enter your credit card number on a LA Fitness website.
- AlotOfReading 3y agoThere's still a contract between LA fitness and the person stealing your identity. The debt just happens to get incorrectly assigned to you for collections because we allow "identity theft" to exist. Separate issue.
- sangnoir 3y ago> There's still a contract between LA fitness and the person stealing your identity There's a contract between LA fitness and someone commiting fraud with my CC. My identity can't be stolen because I still have it - LA Fitness has been defrauded by a 3rd party and they shouldn't involve me in their mess.
- ceejayoz 3y agoIf it's real fraud, sure. If not, that might work in the first month or two. If you've been going for nine months, good luck. They'll pull up all the photos they automatically took of you entering the doors to check in.
- xg15 3y agoIf you sign up and immediately cancel, maybe. But if you actually visited the gym a few times and made use of their service, I doubt any judge would follow that logic.
- akomtu 3y agoLA Fitness won't stand a chance in a court. You'd show the judge a email demanding to cancel the subscription, and LAF will show a scammy "terms of service" implying you can't easily cancel. That's why scammy companies like this want binding arbitration and try to avoid any real scrutiny.
- xg15 3y agoI'm absolutely with you that their games around cancelling are beyond shitty and hopefully illegal - but my point was that those are two orthogonal legal matters and it's not a good idea to start playing games of your own if you suspect the other to do so. In this case, your argument was that you never had a contract with them in the first place. But this would be hard to believe if you actually used their services. Your cancellation email would undermine this argument even more, as you don't request cancellation if you don't have a contract. So a court could perfectly well decide that the gym acted in breach of the law by making it deliberately hard to cancel, but that you acted in breach of the law too by stopping payment without even trying to cancel. If you argue that you made your best effort to cancel, as documented by the email, that would be a more convincing argument I think (not a lawyer tho) but that's a different argument than claiming there never was a contract at all.
- akomtu 3y agoMy email would say that I'm no longer visiting the gym and they must stop charging my card, and to avoid confusion, I'm stopping the payments on my end. I actually did exactly this many years ago with another sleazy gym, and it worked. Obviously, nowhere in the communications with the gym I'd acknowledge there is any contract. It's no different than going to a grocery store: just because I've been using it for years doesn't mean there's any contract, even if the grocery stores believes so.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoThis is actually a very good reason to not tell them your real name, but go by an alias.
- gruez 3y agoCongratulations! Now you're committing fraud.
- Scoundreller 3y agoIt’s only fraud if the Feds care about it enough or for them to sue you. I’d know, I’ve won 17 Nobel prizes.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoThey'll get your name from your credit card. There's no way to pay with cash or an anonymous visa gift card.
- WirelessGigabit 3y agoAMEX does not require the name on your ID to match the name on your card.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Axien 3y agoPrivacy.com can have any name on the transaction.
- squeaky-clean 3y agoAs other people have mentioned in the thread, this doesn't protect you from a Force Post request by the merchant.
- jacquesm 3y agoI've been on the receiving end of a company that sent their unpaid bills on disputed invoices to debt collection and I just took it to court and won. Note that the debt collectors also don't like buying disputed debt so if enough people took them to court they'd stop doing this. But if enough people fold then it's worth it for them to try. So don't fold. Take it court and make it count for them.
- kaibee 3y agoThey can/will send you to collections.
- Modified3019 3y agoI’m a huge fan of privacy.com’s virtual cards. I create a new one for every service. I can place time based /absolute limits so nothing can be surprise overcharged, and can just kill the card anytime.
- gosub100 3y agosee my reply above, Planet Fitness requires a checking account.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- gosub100 3y agokind of a tangent, but about 3 years ago I was thinking of joining Planet Fitness (inb4 "they're the worst gym ever", perfect-enemy-good-etc) and thought "I know, I'll outsmart them and use one of those burner credit cards so if they block me from cancelling, I'll just shut off the card!". Well this must may as well be a class in Entomological Evolution because as soon as Consumerus Cardioworkii evolves a thicker exoskeleton against Gymnascus Financialus Capitalus, spc. Captialus evolves a defense against credit cards and goes checking-account only.
- striking 3y agoYou can send them a letter. Way more painful than it should be, but worked for me.
- toomuchtodo 3y agohttps://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/federal-trade-commission-proposes-rule-provision-making-it-easier-consumers-click-cancel-recurring https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/... https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/p064202_negative_option_-_informal_hearing.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/ftc_gov/pdf/p064202_negativ... https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2023/03/pros-and-cons-free-trials-auto-renewals-and-subscriptions https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2023/03/pros-and-co... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CWbc6pekd8&t=1310s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CWbc6pekd8&t=1310s ("We have a complaint database, we collect information, and are always eager for information" -- FTC Chair Lina Khan at Y Combinator)
- frankdenbow 3y agoSame with Planet Fitness, they got me for a year with this strategy
- Axien 3y agoMe too. They wanted me to cancel by going into the gym… during the COVID lockdowns.
- ecshafer 3y agoLA Fitness you just go to the website, click cancel, then print out the letter and mail it in.
- gnicholas 3y agoI feel like being forced to print a letter, find an envelope, and mail the letter is a bit much in this day and age. There have been times in my life when I did not have a printer, or any spare envelopes. Should people like me-back-then not be able to cancel their gym memberships? Should we have to track down office supplies to be able to do so?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- brewdad 3y agoMy public library will let you print for 10 cents. The post office will sell you an envelope or maybe even give you one for free depending on the level of service you are paying for. It's far from ideal, and the process should be easier but keeping the membership is costing you actual money and a solution is possible with a little extra effort. That effort shouldn't be necessary but we live in the world that exists not the world that should exist.
- plagiarist 3y agoI don't think we are trying to figure out how to print their letter, we are discussing why it should be illegal?
- ta988 3y agoThis is called creating friction.
- m463 3y agoWonder they don't do memberships in the same "easy" fashion (only) :)
- beretguy 3y agoReplace your payment card with privacy.com card and pause payments. Wait until gym will reach out to you for nonpayment. Then cancel.
- myself248 3y agoDoesn't work. I tried this with a NYTimes trial-rate subscription, to make sure it wouldn't renew at the $exorbitant rate. Apparently there's a thing called a "force post" that the merchant can do, which blasts right through Privacy.com's veil. I didn't understand this until they explained it to me: > From: Sigourney (Privacy) > Jun 1, 2022, 5:21 PM EDT > Hi, [Name] > I've been reviewing your dispute and wanted to touch base with you to explain what happened. > It appears that the disputed charge is a "force post" by the merchant. This happens when a merchant cannot collect funds for a transaction after repeated attempts and completes the transaction without an authorization — it's literally an unauthorized transaction that's against payment card network rules. It's a pretty sneaky move used by some merchants, and unfortunately, it's not something Privacy can block. > We are refunding the transaction to the original funding source used for this purchase. You should see this refund reflected in your bank statement in the next 5 business days. However, please note that since this merchant uses force posts, they will continue to do this monthly until the subscription is cancelled. Please contact them to have the subscription cancelled. > Let me know if you have any questions or concerns! Okay, so Privacy refunded it, and I'm not clear whether they ate that cost or if they pulled some lever to claw-back the money from the NYT, but the fact that this is even possible in the first place is alarming, and it completely shattered my idea of what Privacy.com is even good for.
- gruez 3y agoDid you deactivate/close the card or only pause/lock the card? If it's deactivated, I'm not sure how they can go after you. Sure, for a service like privacy.com the card itself is attached to someone, so there's theoretically someone to go after, but prepaid card exists as well. If you "force post" a transaction on those cards, who's going to be on the hook? The bank?
- 3y ago
- kgdiem 3y agoshameless plug, I made https://byebyefitness.com https://byebyefitness.com so you can send them the cancellation letter from home.
- darkwizard42 3y agoGreat site! Surprised it doesn't list the prices transparently. Are you charging differently per region? (I saw you charge less than a month's membership - which is great, but clearly that varies locale to locale as I'm sure your costs do as well)
- kgdiem 3y agoI showed the prices on the home page initially but got some feedback to remove it. More of a value-based pricing thing, LA fitness costs more per month than Planet Fitness and is also a much smaller market.
- chasd00 3y agoi got in a situation like this once with a saas company. I called my cc and told them what happened and to block all payments to the vendor. It took some convincing but they did it.
- jabroni_salad 3y agoyou can buy an airhorn for about $20 and your cancellation will definitely be processed in a single visit. $20 may seem like a lot but it can be reused for just about any disagreement you have at any business. It's an investment for the future, really.
- gruez 3y agoWhat are you going to do? Blast the airhorn until the manager shows up? Sounds like a great way to get ejected from the premises and possibly get charged with disorderly conduct or similar.
- hjvkbn 3y agoa great way to get banned from the business, you say?
- effingwewt 3y agoThey will continue to bill you ad infinitum though...
- OkayPhysicist 3y agoI had a similar experience with 24 Hour fitness. Serving them notice that I was taking them to small claims for ignoring my attempt at cancelling my membership turned out to be easier.
- plagiarist 3y agoProving they know full well what they are doing is illegal.
- gosub100 3y agoI hate to defend them, but I'm honestly sharing my experience: circa 2020, maybe '21, I called them (L.A. Fitness), said I lost my job as the reason, and they let me cancel. Maybe that was a fluke, maybe it's different now, I just want to share counterpoints to "X is impossible", because it's not always the case. Somewhat tangent, but everyone says "nvidia doesn't play nicely on Linux", I've never seen that! I've installed cuda, switched to cuda drivers/nvidia proprietary (non-cuda) drivers, FOSS Nouveau drivers, ran x11, wayland, never seen a bona fide issue. I'm not denying others' experiences, but dont make up your mind before you try. worst I've seen is laptops that have dual video cards (nvida + intel, for instance), but that's on par with any other Linux snafu you could have, it goes with the territory.
- LoganDark 3y agoNvidia drivers on Linux used to work flawlessly for me until I switched motherboards, then somehow that caused issues. Still confused to this day.
- gosub100 3y agoTry your bios settings. Maybe you need to enable max vram or some obscure pcie setting
- LoganDark 3y agoThat's the first place I looked, but googling all the weird settings doesn't seem to bring up anything except for the usual suspects like Resizable BAR, which I definitely have enabled. It's just suck. The reason why some people have issues and other people don't is because the issues are picky about the computer you use it with, I guess.
- tacheiordache 3y agoHow about changing the CC number? Or using throwaway CCs?
- ww520 3y agoCancellation on gym membership is definitely a pain in the ass. I usually just go with the annual prepaid packages and never give them my credit card.
- m463 3y agoI had a gym membership that i couldn't cancel over the phone, they required a certified letter to hq requesting cancellation.