A subscription fee to not do anything, what a bunch of criminals. What a fucked up country we live in now :(

Am I reading this right that to reactivate they'd be charging the difference they 'lost' during the freeze term? Wild.

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

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.

$10 a month for doing nothing, how is that even legal?

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.).

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 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.)

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.

Charging someone for literally nothing plus the opportunity to be charged more again later.

I hate gyms so much. My wife's gym closed and moved and they never told her and kept charging her. She got charged for months for a gym she literally never stepped foot into or signed up for or was told that her contract was sold to another location. And when she called them to ask about it they had the audacity to say they couldn't contact corporate and that the manager was busy talking to the regional manager. You know, corporate. So corporate was literally there. Idk if there's any sort of statute of limitations but I have half a mind to take them to small claims court over it.

Also Expedia. Stole money from us. The website said no credit card required but it was a lie. When my wife went to get the rental car they wouldn't give it to her. Expedia wouldn't refund her nor give her store credit for another rental. Even ignoring the false advertising, she didn't get the rental. It wasn't like something where some.kod accidentally buys something on some.game and you can argue "well you actually received the goods so we can't refund you" because she literally never received the goods.

But I shouldn't give this shit any mental energy. It's ancient history. I've moved on. My mental sanity is worth more than the time I've spent stressing about it and the money we could potentially get back, but it's hard to really believe that sometimes.

"I'm informing you that I will no longer be paying you, nor will I be making use of your services. Please fuck off"

Honestly I'm amazed at the gall

If you continue to get push back, consider going to the manager during business hours and discussing it with them. They don't want a grumpy Google review on their location.

I once had a card skimmed and cancelled. I forgot about my Anytime Fitness membership until three months later when I had racked up hundreds in late fees. Talked to the manager, who just went in and removed the charges from my account while I waited.

You're not understanding what they are saying. They are not refusing to cancel the membership, they are just putting one more option in front of you before you cancel.

Just respond back to this saying you do want to proceed with cancellation and it will be cancelled..

A reason why someone may choose to just freeze their membership is that the price of new memberships has increased and they know that they will be going back eventually. It may actually be a better choice to freeze and keep your current rate if you plan to go back later and the different in price for a new membership is more than $10 a month more expensive.

This is why I use a privacy.com card for just about everything. Anybody gets hacked or tries to pull some shady shit I can just turn off the card and it doesn't affect anybody but them.

It's insane that this happens. I've had memberships at six different gyms over my lifetime. For all but one, I've had to explicitly tell them that I want to renew, or else the membership gets automatically cancelled at the end of the contract term.

Join my gym program it's called LB Fatness. You sign up for this gym scam, cancel immediately using a fake card number so they don't get a dime, and as time goes on joining the gym will become too expensive. If you can't afford to get scammed you won't get scammed. Workouts include carrying a fat wallet, riding a bike outdoors in air that smells like car exhaust and not sweat, and lifting cinderblocks while sitting on a weathered piano bench outside on a patch of dirt. Front yard is optional dirt patch is not. You gotta buy yourself a bike and a few cinderblocks but the piano bench should show up on garbage day on a curb somewhere eventually. Just keep an eye out and you'll see one sooner than you'd think.

Send me your CC#, a photo with your shirt off, and home address and I'll order you clothes that are just a little too small but otherwise look great and will slowly shrink in the wash.