Sunday, November 29, 2015

LA Fitness Billing Horror Stories

LA Fitness: #LAFitness @LAFitness #LAFitnessSucks  LA Fitness Billing Horror Stories.

 have been a member for 10 years and mostly, I put up with their nonsense. My son joined a few years ago so we have a family membership. One of my daughters joined in January of this year and the other for just the summer.   Both memberships were supposed to be temporary and to end in August.

We told the people when we signed up and they said that it was no problem. They wrote down the dates and it looked like we could have short-term memberships.  In August, just to check, they went into LA Fitness and made sure their memberships would end but stupidly, we did not insist in getting of this in writing.

In September, they billed us for all four again.  $121.69. I called and protested. They said it would be the last time. I let it go.

In October, they billed us for all four. Then I got angry. I called my credit card company and told them to stop accepting bills that were over $55 (two person membership).  I walked into two LA Fitnesses and tried to get them to stop billing us for four. One said that they couldn't do anything about it. I was there at 4:30 and they said that I had to be there between 9 and 5. But on that day, they guy wasn't there.  BTW, very hard for me to be there between 9 and 5.


At the next LA Fitness Club I stood and yelled so that until one of their guys sat me down, made the calls, and gave me some paperwork saying that I would no longer be billed the four person rate.

However, they kept billing me. I have now sent them letters, visited their facilities, and made many phone calls. They insist on billing $121 per month. What makes this amazing is that they billed the last month when we added one of the kids in May, they billed $221.22.  And we quit the extra kids in August. Yet they still keep billing me $121.

BTW, LAT Fitness has recently sent my name to bill collectors so all this is showing up on my credit report and I'm getting harassing phone calls from both LAFitness and bill collectors. Plus, when I go to their gym (which I still use since I'm happy to pay for the two of us), they always page me over their loud speakers and send their front desk lady over to tell me that bill is overdue.

The cancelled barcodes are f21781458 and f22069484.

LA Fitness. What I want:

No membership billing after August for more than two of us. Also, turn off your bill collectors. NO need to apologize.  That's all. That's fair. That's what I signed up for and arranged and have been speaking to your people about. I've logged about 3 hours of phone time, letter writing, and visits to your facilities to get this done.  It's amazing that you would keep fighting for the right to bill use more than that. Stupid mean petty company.

If I don't get it solved this next weeks. I'll start using social media on a uch larger scale. I might hire a pair of interns and give them a few hundred dollar budget to see how much of shitstorm of other angry customers they can find.  I'll figure out which government agency or lawyers might like to take this on.  It would amuse me to put an ad next to LA Fitness on Facebook and get everyone who goes to your page to see an ad for a website dedicated to "LA Fitness Billing Horror Stories" ....

5 comments:

Sandra Nelson said...

I just saw this. I think it's a great idea. I added my daughter to my account for one year while she was living at home and spent an entire additional year trying to get her removed from the account.

I would go into the LA Fitness, tell them to take her off, they would sit at the computer and tell me it was done. After the first time, I went in and asked for paperwork. They told me that they couldn't print anything but I could log in from home into my account and print it out.

This went on for most of a year. They must have some particularly weird thing where staff get penalized for removing someone from an account because they were weirdly and cruelly persistent in refusing to remove her.

I eventually insisted on getting paperwork for the cancellation which they gave me. They still billed me an extra month even though the paperwork at signup included paying for the last month.

Still LA Fitness is the closest club to my home and although it's dirty, it's too convenient to not use.

Jason P. said...

Great idea. I'll put up my LA Fitness Billing Horror Story on my blog and I'll link to it from here. Plus I have a fitness hashtag that I moderate that has 17K followers so I think this will get some stuff there. I also share a big Facebook fitness page. Let me check with my partners there.

Question. Why7 haven't you take this onto Twitter and Facebook and gone big time? I know you have those pages with tens of thousands of followers. OF course, they are mostly teachers and parents.

Why?

Johne said...

Jason,

You know me well. I have privately tweeted to LA Fitness telling them I'me angry and have started to post. I have just put it up here but haven't put it on any of my big media. I thought I'd give them one more chance, maybe through the first half of this week, prior to making a big fuss.

I sort of hate to make a big public fuss but I have dealing with LA Fitness so frustrating that I'm sort of ready. And I feel bad for the all the people who can't afford to be gouged by LA Fitness and don't have the means to strike back.

Jason P said...

Joh, you are a more patient man than me. Plus I like to make mischief for big companies that consistently mistreat their customers. LA Fitness absolutely fits this description.

We should research all the court cases they've lost and make them available to everybody. Also, aren't you friends with the TV reporter that does exposes?

"The Fitness Gal" said...

Hi, My story was simple. I tried to suspend my membership for the 6 months when I was going to travel out of the country. I thought that I had arranged it. Long story. LA Fitness treated me like crap and lied to me consistently.

I'll dig out my file and put it on my fitness blog too. I think it's a good idea for us to stop being crapped upon by the LA Fitness corporation.

What I found horrible was that my credit card company seemed to be intimidated by LAT Fitness. I use Amex and while they usually help me with merchant problems, they seemed to be more worried about their contract with LA Fitness than they were about supporting me despite having a platinum card.