LA Fitness ripoff artists extremely rude Glendale Arizona
In February of this year Rusty faxed me a cancellation form (he said you cannot do a cancellation over the internet) so that I could cancel my daughter and my membership. At the time he said to fill it out and mail it in. He also stated that since it was so close to my billing date I might get two additional charges because the mail may not get there before the February billing date and they charge an additional 30 days beyond the time you cancel. I filled out two forms and mailed them to the address on the form. I never thought about it again.
On May 16th I received a call from a man at LA Fitness asking if my credit card had been stolen because my payment hadnt gone through. I explained to him that the bank had canceled and reissued our card for what they thought might be fraud, but I canceled my LA Fitness membership and they shouldnt be taking any money out of my account. He said he would have someone from corporate call me back. I received another call the very next day from someone at another gym wanting to know about my payment and I explained the whole thing again. This went on for two weeks with messages on my answering machine. Someone from corporate named David finally called back and left a message on my voice mail but didn't leave a contact number. Another person from a LA Fitness location that I had never even been to called me and I explained to her what was happening. She said did you can cancel online and I told her that I was told you cannot cancel online. She said it was a new feature that had just started it wasn't available in February.
I told her I mailed the paperwork and had a copy of it. She said did you send it certified mail and I said no, is that required and she said no but you should because sometimes they get lost. When I asked how I could reach corporate back she said you can't they have to call you. I explained that I couldn't wait by the phone until someone called. She said she would have someone call me back.
No one from corporate has ever called back and last night Jason called and reached my 15 year old daughter and started asking her about the bank card and then threatening her and speaking about ruining her credit. Tonight I spoke with Brittany at LA Fitness again calling to ask about the payment (no one ever calls about the cancellation) and I explained the whole thing to her and she said she would have me speak with the Manager. She came on the phone, never introduced who she was and just started telling me that there was nothing I could do I would have to come in and cancel, when I tried to explain to her what was going on she cut me off and said she could see what was written on the screen and that a lot of people had tried to call but no one had reached me and I told her that was not true I had spoken to more than five people and she again interrupted and started reading dates and didn't answer. When I insisted that I had talked to people and started telling her who I spoke with she said let me change screens to look at your account. She then started reading from the screen again dates and didn't answer. I told her I knew that was incorrect because the first person I spoke with called me the very day the payment didn't go through (she didn't respond to this and probably didn't hear the whole sentence because she interrupted me again and started reading from the screen). She said I had spoken with someone on May 22 who wrote that I had cancelled my membership but they had no record and I didn't have a copy.
I told her that was an out and out lie because I have told everyone I have a copy and would be glad to bring it in. She continued saying that what's on the screen is what is accurate. She was very rude, extremely billigerant and obviously deals with this very often because of the unscrupulous way she does business. She said she would have to have corporate call me. I told her I could not sit by the phone and wait; again she interrupted me and said what's the best number to reach you in the morning? I gave her my cell number and said I wanted to call them. She said they don't take incoming calls. She said I had to pay the monthly fee and I told her I wasn't paying anything. She ignored that and continued with a very sarcastic have a great evening.
I immediately got on the internet and tried to find a number for the corporate office but could not locate one. I called another location in another state and asked for their corporate office number so I could call and inquire about our business working with them to establish a program for our employees (thinking that she may give me a number) and the girl told me they can't give out the corporate number they can only pass on a message for them to call me back. That speaks volumes about what type of business they are; doing business in such a way that they won't take phone calls from customers. Their employees won't help you and they don't want to know about it. They just want your money. This still isn't resolved but I wanted people to beware! I would NEVER deal with these people again.
Nena
Desert Hills, Arizona
U.S.A.
Click here to read other Rip Off Reports on LA Fitness Body of Change
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Choochoo
Long Beach,California,
U.S.A.
Here's the inside of how LA Fitness Billing Works
#2UPDATE EX-employee responds
Tue, July 24, 2007
I'm an ex-employee of LA Fitness (billing/soft collections dept) and quit because my conscience really couldn't take it anymore. I stumbled upon this site in search of the corporate phone number to place on my resume and started reading the reports and felt bad. So here's how the LA Fitness (shady ethics) billing functions-
Yes- members really should read contracts before they sign it. But I often heard members saying that they walked into the gym and told people at the front desk that they wanted to cancel their membership and that it was done. All membership NEEDS to be cancelled through a written request and sent into us. Only problem is that we found that on some cancellation forms, they had our old address still printed and they sent it there and not to the new location in Irvine, therefore, we never recieved it. And we would only accept the fact that they sent it if they certified the mail, if not, they would have to resend it to the new billing address further delaying their cancellation. And from what I remember, members get billed on two dates (either the 1st or the 15th- ??? it's been a while so i forgot, sorry). If you were to send in your cancellation letter after your billing date, it wouldn't take it effect until your next billing came around. After your billing date, the system thinks you paid for the month already. The cancellation, in which they state that it takes 30 days for it to process through, charges you another month. People often think this is their last month payment that they have already paid for in the beginning. But IT ISN'T. Their last month kicks in after the 30 day processing cycle is over. This is how some customers get a final bill when they think they have paid for everything already.
Billing gets really shady here. Everyone wonders why they feel like they have talked to so many people. And the simple reason is that they do. What people don't realize is that we get commission off clearing your membership by getting new credit card information. So when you're behind on a monthly payment, you get flagged and people from the gym you are going to gets alerted and the people working at the corporate office gets alerted, and you become an easy commission to them. Because the more simpler case is that they lost a credit card number and a new number was issued- so by clearing your membership with a new credit card, you provide them $10 in commission. That same new credit card number for 2 or 3 members on your account, $20-$30 dollars in commission. Get the idea? So that's why you have people from your gym and corporate calling you to get the new credit card information.
So here is where it gets shady. The computer system will only give a payback to La Fitness workers with a new credit card number. Sometimes a credit card gets a new expiration date with the same card number but we're told to try and get a new card number in order to get a payout. And corporate will do their hardest to get a new number even going out to say that we can switch back to the old card after a month. But some workers at corporate, like me, who didn't really care much for the additional commission, would just type in the new expiration date and clear the member. Sometimes, and I saw this quite a few times while working there, since we input the credit card numbers manually, we'll type in the wrong numbers by accident. So let's say you did provide a new credit card number but we typed in a 4 instead of a 5. You'll get a call once again next month stating that your number didn't go through and if there is possibly another creditcard you can put on file. Remember... stick to your guns... if you're POSITIVE it's a good card, don't let them hassle you. Just provide the number w/ expiration date. And if they continue to hassle you, just say you'll do it at the gym when you go in. And make sure you get the number read back to you.
And you feel like you never get the same person week after week? Easy explanation for that too- clubs are rotated each week. So lets say, I work on 10 clubs this week that covers east and west coast, next week, I'll get another batch of clubs, and my old ones will rotate to my co-workers, & vice versa. New names/phone numbers come in every two weeks.
Often times, members think that by cancelling their credit cards, LA Fitness will stop billing them. This is incredibly wrong and this goes back to reading your contract. Members billing will just begin to accrue, so much sometimes that after a while, they just get sent to collections. On our computer system, we also take notes about members and their problem. Our job is to clean up the easiest job with the greatest payout and least problems. So when we look up a members account and have notes stating that this member is angry, that this member said she cancelled... we'll avoid calling the member completely and by doing that, their membership dues accumulates into the thousands sometimes.
OH ALSO! Another thing LA Fitness is famous for is their outrageous NSF fees. When I was working their, my supervisor loved hammering into my head that we don't bill them, we send the bills out to a financial institution and they bill them. The biggest mistake people do is setting up their gym membership directly to their bank/credit union accounts. So for fairness to LA Fitness, they send out the billings to their "financial institution" and it leaves their hands. From there, the financial institution takes it upon themselves to run the billing through whether it be once, twice or three times before they decide to return it back to LA Fitness. Thats where members get hit with 2 or 3 NSF fees from their bank and on top of that, NSF's fees from LA Fitness.
Hope everything I wrote here is helpful!!!