Complaint Review: ABC Financial

I entered into an agreement with ABC financial when I signed up for two one-year memberships for my wife and myself.  When signing up for the membership we were NOT told that we were on an autorenewal program.

When I tried to cancel the membership with ABC they told me that I could not cancel the membership over the phone because my renewal went into effect the week before.  I needed, they said, to send a certified letter explaining that I wanted to cancel the membership and that it would cancel 30 days from the receipt of the letter making me responsible for another months payment.

Unfortunately, I did not have my agreement.  I called the gym and was able to get a copy of the agreement.  There was a small checkmark on a line in the middle of the contract that was checked which stated that I was on autorenewal.  This was not made clear to me at the time of signing up at the gym.  I feel that I was deceived.  I explained this to ABC Financial but they did not care.  I tried to protest the charges through AMEX, but when my next month charge came due ABC Financial charged me $40 in service and late fees (5 days late) because AMEX was in the process of investigating the charges.  While this was happening I sent the certified letter to cancel the membership.

I felt that, like EVERY single contract that I have signed, there should have been an area where I would have initialed the checked auto-renewal policy detailing that I was aware of the auto-renewal policy.  It is strongly evident that ABC Financial and the Gym hopes that people will not see or specifically ask about this policy.  This was a huge learning experience for me.  I will never do business with ABC Financial again as I believe their practices are deceptive; they use fine print in a contract and do not outline pertinent information to customers.  The salesperson at the gym should have explained this policy to us.

When I spoke with the gym owner he said it wasn't his fault if I wasn't told about the auto-renew; I should have asked. That was the same response I got from the 4 "supervisors," all of which have the same level of responsibility.  It was like "ha, we got you."

Consumers beware of these deceptive practices; read all your contracts from start to finish - take them home if necessary.  This way you won't get ripped off by companies like ABC Financial.