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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

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.

voisin 3y ago
It’s bizarre that consumers collectively agree to these terms. If I started a business that was this anti-customer, I would assume there would be zero customers willing to take that deal. Moreover, why hasn’t anyone introduced a brand that doesn’t have all these awful features?
- idontpost 3y ago
  [dead]
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I think that most people simply don't read contracts before signing them. They go by what the sales pitch says, and sales pitches are almost never honest and complete. > 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.
  - ozim 3y ago
    Usually what I understood from people was - they just didn’t read the contract. 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.
- ben_jones 3y ago
  Popularity is an anti feature at the gym. Working adults have limited windows to workout and so once a gym gets affordable like 24hr fitness where seasonal sales at Costco make it VERY cheap it becomes a gym you might not actually want to work out in. Then you have the whole gym owner archetype which I won’t dive into but IMO exasperates the issue.
  - ravenstine 3y ago
    Mega-gyms are pretty terrible. I've never been to a 24 Hour Fitness, LA Fitness, or Gold's Gym that wasn't a sea of equipment hoggers, broken machines, random dirty towels, occupied lockers, and screens with CNN or daytime TV on. What's even more strange is how willing people are to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for an Equinox membership. The rationale is that paying that much upfront keeps you motivated to make your payment worthwhile, but both people I know who've made this mistake ended up going only a few times before giving up. 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.
    - kevinmchugh 3y ago
      I assume part of the attraction of an equinox is that everyone else there is paying hundreds of dollars per month for a gym membership
      - ravenstine 3y ago
        Yeah, that's probably the unsaid motivation. I just haven't seen it actually turn out that way with the small sample size I've people I've known who signed up for Equinox. 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.
- amanj41 3y ago
  Probably because gym density isn't super high in some areas, so consumers may not have a ton of choices. And opening a gym that can compete with a big gym chain is not as easy as opening a sandwich shop to compete with subway.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rconti 3y ago
  Because vanishingly few people want to pay the true per-visit costs of a gym. Most of them would rather be lured in by a low price and be subsidized by the 'suckers' locked into paying for a year.
  - theragra 3y ago
    This works for for people who live somewhere and go to the gym constantly. But God forbid you travel. I live in Europe, and in my town gym does not work in the way described in article. But when I went to the USA for two months, I had to sign a yearly contract with a trial and cancel it before the end of the trial.
- EarthLaunch 3y ago
  I think it's because the scammy techniques allow lower apparent princes. People who shop by price will end up at the scammy gym. Maybe people are sensitive to price when it comes to gyms, and/or the true cost of a gym membership is too high for almost anyone. 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.
- taftster 3y ago
  Because you are ready to purchase and presumably make your life better? It's not like you're going to read the contract, see that the only way out is to send a certified letter or cancel in person, and think, "Nah, I'm going to take my business down the street."
- rebeccaskinner 3y ago
  I think a significant number of people at least enter into the agreement thinking it's a feature. Roughly: - 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 In short, I think a lot of people erroneously believe that locking themselves into the contract will motivate them. Instead, they end up still not going and also paying because of the contract.
  - malfist 3y ago
    I don't think I've heard of anyone thinking gyms being hard to cancel being a good thing
    - CRConrad 3y ago
      I agree with rebeccaskinner: People think that way in their heart of hearts, but it's a bit shamey to admit that they see themselves as so weak, so nobody adnmits it openly. (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.)
- aragonite 3y ago
  > Moreover, why hasn’t anyone introduced a brand that doesn’t have all these awful features? Why would they when our national paper of record adopts similar tactics? https://social.kernel.org/notice/AWSTn6aOpeEvSKZ7Wy 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.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  Just like any ToS, if you want to use it you don't have much of a choice
- paulddraper 3y ago
  > It’s bizarre that consumers collectively agree to these terms. Sorry to blunt, but if you think that's bizarre...I don't think you understand human behavior very well.
- kgdiem 3y ago
  There are a few gyms that let you cancel online. If you know of any other chains that require certified mail/hard to cancel requirements let me know. I recently had to add a signature feature to my app for Retro Fitness! # 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)
  - topkai22 3y ago
    Orange theory requires in person (at least my franchise does.)
    - kgdiem 3y ago
      Huh. Their website says you can send them an email. I guess it could take a lot of legwork to figure out what individual franchises allow. https://memberservices20.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042095911-HOW-DO-I-CANCEL-MY-MEMBERSHIP- https://memberservices20.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004...
toddmorey 3y ago
Ryan Hamilton's comedy bit about canceling gym contracts is hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnKJiixfa00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnKJiixfa00
- nickpsecurity 3y ago
  That man said Civil War lol. Yeah, there’s something wrong if the level of difficulty in canceling is the same between two eras. At least washing our gym clothes got easier…
quickthrower2 3y ago
FFs :-)
bob1029 3y ago
I prepay my membership up front so I don't get stuck in some recurring system. 6 month terms are the way to go.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I prepay as well, I pay for a year as it's the best deal but there's no contract/automatic renewal. Independent gym.
danielvaughn 3y ago
I had a membership in NYC. When I moved to Florida, I forgot to cancel before I left. So I called them up to cancel, and they said I had to be there in person. 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.
- kgdiem 3y ago
  That's why I made https://byebyefitness.com https://byebyefitness.com -- they all accept certified mail to cancel. 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.
- medler 3y ago
  Since 2020, gyms in NY state are required to offer an easy means of cancellation
RajT88 3y ago
Just recently dealt with this. 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.
- klipt 3y ago
  If you paid by credit card just dispute the extra charges. Credit card company will side with you if you have evidence of trying to cancel earlier.
  - phil21 3y ago
    They do not. The major gyms somehow have basically blocked chargebacks from most major issuers and additionally even cancelling your card for a new one won’t help. 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.
  - SkyPuncher 3y ago
    The major chains don't accept credit cards. 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.
- shostack 3y ago
  Had you tried going in physically and demanding a form?
  - RajT88 3y ago
omeze 3y ago
I once forged an offer letter to get out of my Equinox membership, the requirements are ridiculous
petesergeant 3y ago
About twenty years ago I had a gym structure their yearly fee as a credit agreement, where I paid the year upfront, and then was paying off an interest free loan to them every month as my dues.
RankingMember 3y ago
The current FTC leadership sounds amenable to killing this nonsense. Hopefully they got hammered with support during the public comment period: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165527249/ftc-rule-charges-cancel-online-subscriptions https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165527249/ftc-rule-charges-c... 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/...
al_borland 3y ago
One I went to required you quit in person, which I had experienced before, but then the guy running it asked if we could talk about why I was quitting, since it was his first day taking over and he didn't want to lose anyone the first day. I was there for 3 hours talking to him and his buddy that got him into fitness. I ended up agreeing to 3 month free and a personal training session with him just to get out of there. I did the training session, it was very bad, and then went back again later to quit when he wasn't there.

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.

voisin 3y ago

It’s bizarre that consumers collectively agree to these terms. If I started a business that was this anti-customer, I would assume there would be zero customers willing to take that deal. Moreover, why hasn’t anyone introduced a brand that doesn’t have all these awful features?

idontpost 3y ago
[dead]
JohnFen 3y ago
I think that most people simply don't read contracts before signing them. They go by what the sales pitch says, and sales pitches are almost never honest and complete. > 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.
- ozim 3y ago
  Usually what I understood from people was - they just didn’t read the contract. 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.
ben_jones 3y ago
Popularity is an anti feature at the gym. Working adults have limited windows to workout and so once a gym gets affordable like 24hr fitness where seasonal sales at Costco make it VERY cheap it becomes a gym you might not actually want to work out in. Then you have the whole gym owner archetype which I won’t dive into but IMO exasperates the issue.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  Mega-gyms are pretty terrible. I've never been to a 24 Hour Fitness, LA Fitness, or Gold's Gym that wasn't a sea of equipment hoggers, broken machines, random dirty towels, occupied lockers, and screens with CNN or daytime TV on. What's even more strange is how willing people are to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for an Equinox membership. The rationale is that paying that much upfront keeps you motivated to make your payment worthwhile, but both people I know who've made this mistake ended up going only a few times before giving up. 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.
  - kevinmchugh 3y ago
    I assume part of the attraction of an equinox is that everyone else there is paying hundreds of dollars per month for a gym membership
    - ravenstine 3y ago
      Yeah, that's probably the unsaid motivation. I just haven't seen it actually turn out that way with the small sample size I've people I've known who signed up for Equinox. 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.
amanj41 3y ago
Probably because gym density isn't super high in some areas, so consumers may not have a ton of choices. And opening a gym that can compete with a big gym chain is not as easy as opening a sandwich shop to compete with subway.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rconti 3y ago
Because vanishingly few people want to pay the true per-visit costs of a gym. Most of them would rather be lured in by a low price and be subsidized by the 'suckers' locked into paying for a year.
- theragra 3y ago
  This works for for people who live somewhere and go to the gym constantly. But God forbid you travel. I live in Europe, and in my town gym does not work in the way described in article. But when I went to the USA for two months, I had to sign a yearly contract with a trial and cancel it before the end of the trial.
EarthLaunch 3y ago
I think it's because the scammy techniques allow lower apparent princes. People who shop by price will end up at the scammy gym. Maybe people are sensitive to price when it comes to gyms, and/or the true cost of a gym membership is too high for almost anyone. 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.
taftster 3y ago
Because you are ready to purchase and presumably make your life better? It's not like you're going to read the contract, see that the only way out is to send a certified letter or cancel in person, and think, "Nah, I'm going to take my business down the street."
rebeccaskinner 3y ago
I think a significant number of people at least enter into the agreement thinking it's a feature. Roughly: - 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 In short, I think a lot of people erroneously believe that locking themselves into the contract will motivate them. Instead, they end up still not going and also paying because of the contract.
- malfist 3y ago
  I don't think I've heard of anyone thinking gyms being hard to cancel being a good thing
  - CRConrad 3y ago
    I agree with rebeccaskinner: People think that way in their heart of hearts, but it's a bit shamey to admit that they see themselves as so weak, so nobody adnmits it openly. (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.)
aragonite 3y ago
> Moreover, why hasn’t anyone introduced a brand that doesn’t have all these awful features? Why would they when our national paper of record adopts similar tactics? https://social.kernel.org/notice/AWSTn6aOpeEvSKZ7Wy 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.
hanniabu 3y ago
Just like any ToS, if you want to use it you don't have much of a choice
paulddraper 3y ago
> It’s bizarre that consumers collectively agree to these terms. Sorry to blunt, but if you think that's bizarre...I don't think you understand human behavior very well.
kgdiem 3y ago
There are a few gyms that let you cancel online. If you know of any other chains that require certified mail/hard to cancel requirements let me know. I recently had to add a signature feature to my app for Retro Fitness! # 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)
- topkai22 3y ago
  Orange theory requires in person (at least my franchise does.)
  - kgdiem 3y ago
    Huh. Their website says you can send them an email. I guess it could take a lot of legwork to figure out what individual franchises allow. https://memberservices20.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360042095911-HOW-DO-I-CANCEL-MY-MEMBERSHIP- https://memberservices20.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/36004...

toddmorey 3y ago

Ryan Hamilton's comedy bit about canceling gym contracts is hilarious: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnKJiixfa00 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnKJiixfa00

nickpsecurity 3y ago
That man said Civil War lol. Yeah, there’s something wrong if the level of difficulty in canceling is the same between two eras. At least washing our gym clothes got easier…

quickthrower2 3y ago

FFs :-)

bob1029 3y ago

I prepay my membership up front so I don't get stuck in some recurring system. 6 month terms are the way to go.

SoftTalker 3y ago
I prepay as well, I pay for a year as it's the best deal but there's no contract/automatic renewal. Independent gym.

danielvaughn 3y ago

I had a membership in NYC. When I moved to Florida, I forgot to cancel before I left. So I called them up to cancel, and they said I had to be there in person. 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.

kgdiem 3y ago
That's why I made https://byebyefitness.com https://byebyefitness.com -- they all accept certified mail to cancel. 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.
medler 3y ago
Since 2020, gyms in NY state are required to offer an easy means of cancellation

RajT88 3y ago

Just recently dealt with this. 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.

klipt 3y ago
If you paid by credit card just dispute the extra charges. Credit card company will side with you if you have evidence of trying to cancel earlier.
- phil21 3y ago
  They do not. The major gyms somehow have basically blocked chargebacks from most major issuers and additionally even cancelling your card for a new one won’t help. 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.
- SkyPuncher 3y ago
  The major chains don't accept credit cards. 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.
shostack 3y ago
Had you tried going in physically and demanding a form?
- RajT88 3y ago

omeze 3y ago

I once forged an offer letter to get out of my Equinox membership, the requirements are ridiculous

petesergeant 3y ago

About twenty years ago I had a gym structure their yearly fee as a credit agreement, where I paid the year upfront, and then was paying off an interest free loan to them every month as my dues.

RankingMember 3y ago

The current FTC leadership sounds amenable to killing this nonsense. Hopefully they got hammered with support during the public comment period: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165527249/ftc-rule-charges-cancel-online-subscriptions https://www.npr.org/2023/03/23/1165527249/ftc-rule-charges-c... 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/...

al_borland 3y ago

One I went to required you quit in person, which I had experienced before, but then the guy running it asked if we could talk about why I was quitting, since it was his first day taking over and he didn't want to lose anyone the first day. I was there for 3 hours talking to him and his buddy that got him into fitness. I ended up agreeing to 3 month free and a personal training session with him just to get out of there. I did the training session, it was very bad, and then went back again later to quit when he wasn't there.