Complaint Review: 24 Hour Fitness

My brother and pregnant sister-in-law invited me to meet them at the Hermosa Beach 24 Hour Fitness, since they are members and they were told they had free guest passes with their membership.

When I met my brother at the front desk, the sales team at 24 hour fitness obviously did not want to honor his guest pass. Edman (the sales guy who we had to wait for to sign me up) admitted that my brother's "guess passes" weren't actually guest passes but instead he admitted that these were nothing more than a referral list and that the passes he thought that he had were no longer in the system or the terms had changed.

Therefore, I was told to pay. I had no problem paying the $20 but my brother was upset and told me to put my money away. After a runaround of lies and excuses we asked for a manager. We decided we were going to just leave when they said that there was no manager that we could talk to on the weekend and my brother asked if they could go find his wife from the locker/pool to leave.

At this point, we asked for a business card for the manager because allegedly they are not allowed to write any emails in the store. Ironically, the business card had a "Free Guest Pass" printed on the back and a link to their website. At this point, I asked about this "free guest pass" on the business card and I was told that this was an expired deal and that they can't give free passes anymore. Another employee, Luis, was very clear to me that no one gets this deal, not even his friends.

Thinking that this was probably a lie as well, I went online and saw that I could in fact sign up for a "free pass." I met all terms, had an ID, am a local resident, haven't been to a 24 hour fitness in 6+ months, etc. However, Edman (the sales guy) still rejected me and said that I couldn't enter the gym. He said he just couldn't let me in and said its just policy. I was dumbfounded.

When my brother's sister was found, it became a bit of a scene because she is 8 months pregnant and all of the sales staff at this time was chiming in on random reasons why we couldn't get in. However, a few of the employees seemed equally as confused as we were about why they wouldn't just honor the free pass. By this point, I even had the free pass filled out online just to prove a point.

After more than an hour of being told various lies, the ultimate conclusion appeared to be one of complete stubbornness by the sales team. Simply because I wanted to play basketball with my brother and didn't want a membership, Edman was following policy to not let me enter the gym or honor the publicized "free pass". If this is the case, then please stop publicizing any free passes, do not sell misleading guest passes and never tell blatant lies to my family who are members.