I get scammed and I'm not happy

[HotelMinion]

Sigh...it seems the karma of the universe is determined to keep me down. I signed up for a gym membership. Might as well get healthy with all this free time, eh? The guy wouldn't let me have one without trying a personal trainer. So I said yes. Mistake one.
But! The only reason that I said yes was because the guy said I could cancel and if I didn't like, get a full refund within 3 days. So I go the next day, train with the PT, and he was ok, but definitely wasn't worth the money. At one point he called me names. I was insulted.
Anyway, the next day after that, I call to cancel. Mistake two.
When I called, I explained and the guy said I had to speak with a manager. SO I asked to speak with one. Another guy came on the line. I asked if he was the manager. HE SAID YES.
I said that I need to cancel and get my refund because I didn't think PT was right for me. He says ok. Asks me for my member info. I give it. I hear computer clicks. He said Ok, it's done.
I say, to confirm, "It's canceled? I'll get a refund?" He says yes. I thank him and hang up.
Days later...no refund!
I call again to speak with a manager. They direct me to corporate number, so I call them. Explain everything. They said the cancellatioin/reund was NEVER put in and the manager lied to me! And now that the 3 day deadline is over, there is nothinig they can do to cancel/refund it.
I was pissed off. How can they claim to have cancelled it and then never have done so? In other words they scammed me. Well, I wasn't going to let them get away with this.
I'm still fighting. I plan to call my credit card company and declare fraudelent charges. I hope they can help. If not, I'm out $1K.

[mathnerd]

I'd definitely not back down on this one. And don't delay in disputing the charges with your credit card company.

[Argabarga]

Doesn't surprise me, gyms, sadly, seem to have become very fond of scamming and hitting you with various and sundry membership and cancellation fees.

I think it has to do with the fact that a lot of people join up with one, to fulfill a New Years resolution or pay lip service to their family/physician about getting in shape, but quickly fall out, and the gyms have decided to assess as many fees as possible as quickly as possible to get their money.

Some comedian, I don't remember who, said it's become as hard to leave a gym/health club these days as it is to break up with a clingy girlfriend/boyfriend, you tell them it's just not working out and you'd like to leave, and they want to sit you down and talk about it.......

[Jay 2K Winger]

Some comedian, I don't remember who, said it's become as hard to leave a gym/health club these days as it is to break up with a clingy girlfriend/boyfriend, you tell them it's just not working out and you'd like to leave, and they want to sit you down and talk about it.......

I remember there was a Friends episode where Chandler is trying to quit a gym, and every time he goes there to try to do it, the gym trots out some "manager" or other for him to talk to... only the "manager" is an attractive woman, and Chandler always loses his nerve. So Ross goes along with him to try to help him out... and ends up signing up with the gym as well, and is equally stuck. So they decide (for complicated reasons I think) to quit their bank, so the gym can't claim their fees from it.

Same problem there.

[Sapphire Silk]

I'm still fighting. I plan to call my credit card company and declare fraudelent charges. I hope they can help. If not, I'm out $1K.

Holy shit! Is that just for the gym membership, or for the PT by himself?

When I signed up for my gym membership, I also signed up for five sessions with a PT. It cost me a few hundred dollars, IIRC (It was awhile ago). He helped me a lot with setting up a circuit training routine that didn't rely on just the machines. I still use a lot of the techniques; they're very effective.

[bainsidhe]

Holy crap.

Before you file the cc claim, get your ducks in a row. Make sure you get a paper trail by emailing the company, and include any names of people you spoke with and the times you spoke with them.

Contact the store. Contact corporate. Hell, send them a copy of your phone records that shows when you called the location to cancel. Besides, those phone records may come in handy when you eventually try to do a chargeback.

[sms001]

Just want to reiterate what bainsidhe said - as usual, document, document, document! Contact your card company NOW, and do everything in your power to get full names and accurate times (Note as much as possible what was actually said as well.) of all your contact with these asshats. (Including going back there to identify people.) Good luck HM; we're pulling for you.

[An Haddock]

Any time you get a guarantee from somebody you've got to get their name, extension, phone number, ID number, anything you can use to identify them. And make notes as to the day, time, etc. Maybe even see if you can get the person to fax you something stating your account is closed, credited, etc.

[Sliceanddice]

this is why i never do these things on the phone its always either in person or in email

[HotelMinion]

I remember there was a Friends episode where Chandler is trying to quit a gym, and every time he goes there to try to do it, the gym trots out some "manager" or other for him to talk to... only the "manager" is an attractive woman, and Chandler always loses his nerve. So Ross goes along with him to try to help him out... and ends up signing up with the gym as well, and is equally stuck. So they decide (for complicated reasons I think) to quit their bank, so the gym can't claim their fees from it.

Same problem there.

LOL I don't remember this episode and I love Friends! Made me laugh to read it tho. Will they try to send me a hunk to bamboozle me? I doubt it. Anyway, I'm not going back to the gym to complain, they tricked me there.

Good news! I called my credit card company to file a claim. At first I was a bit afraid, because I have never filed one before and I thought they would be like "Oh God not another one" but actually they were pretty decent. They listened sympathetically and guess what? They had a whole department that deals with claims from gyms! So I guess I wasn't the first one, huh?

After that, I went to the sites where you can post reviews on businesses and told them my story. I didn't expect much, honestly, but I got an email after that from them reaching their hand out in a truce! Is it a ploy or another trick? I'll keep you updated.

[Captain Trips]

I'm going to guess it's the gym named after a large west-coast city, not San Diego or San Francisco. Why do I guess that? Because they jerked my wife around when she cancelled. She did have a good trainer there, one who understood how to work with the disabled, but he left and they didn't have anyone else she liked. It took her a year to get them to stop billing her the "keep-alive" fee.

[Jetfire]

Marketplace (A Consumers show on CBC up here) has done at least one, possibly more episodes on Gyms and some of the shady practices they do.

Even if you get confirmation that you are cancelled, keep an eagle eye on your credit card statement and make sure EVERY charge is accounted for and not from that company. Some of them would keep charging a small fee under some innocuous name that you might skim over.

First thing you need to do is make sure the membership IS cancelled. I'd go in to the gym and get that in writing, and maybe add in a note (hand written or maybe as a pretyped up statement) saying something akin to "This is just to cancel the membership, I will be challenging the fees due to the gym not cancelling when I requested it on Date three days after I first joined"), and get someone at the gym to sign/initial the statement, and make sure you know who they are. Also get a printed statement showing your account is cancelled.

Then start climbing up the gym's management hierarchy to make sure you get your refund. Have the numbers for the local press and any other consumer reporting press you might know of. (CBC Marketplace always loves to get Gym stories from the sounds of it; Gym stories and Travel Insurance stories seem to be popular subjects).

Good luck!

[Ironclad Alibi]

I got an email after that from them reaching their hand out in a truce! Is it a ploy or another trick?

It depends on whether or not the extended hand has your refund in it.

[Catwoman2965]

And don't be afraid, if you don't get resolution, to post on their facebook page. COmpanies HATE being called out like that, and chances are, if you go that route (if all else fails) you'll get a speedy resolution.

[fireheart]

This is one of the reasons why I'm reluctant to join a gym. I need the exercise sure, but the fees are a pain in the butt. If I can, I tend to get 10-20 visit passes somewhere and do it that way.