Complaint Review: Colorado Athletic Club - Boulder - Boulder Colorado

The Colorado Athletic Club has over the course of the last several years accumulated 6 online Ripoff Reports, 44 Better Business Bureau reports, and scores of negative Yelp and Yellow Pages reviews. A high proportion of the reports detail a pattern of the CAC collecting membership dues from members who do not want their memberships. Sometimes CAC will throw up multiple roadblocks to the cancellation of memberships. Sometimes they do not cancel memberships after members have clearly requested they be cancelled multiple times. Sometimes it is alleged CAC has restarted memberships without their former member's permission. In these instances, CAC drew money from their former members' bank accounts without their knowledge. And when the members discovered the charges, CAC paid no remediation and did not even end the memberships upon request. This constitutes a form of theft.

Here are the links.

ripoffreport.com/reports/specific_search/Colorado+Athletic+Club

yellowpages.com/greenwood-village-co/mip/colorado-athletic-club-dtc-5668524

bbb.org/denver/business-reviews/health-clubs/the-wellbridge-company-in-greenwood-village-co-8812/complaints

jenniferprevostblogwomania.blogspot.com/2014/02/my-denver-better-business-bureau-vent.html

I first became aware of this pattern of abuses when I discovered CAC had charged me for 5 months of membership dues without my knowledge after telling me that my membership had been cancelled and that to restart it I would need to reapply, which I never did. Of course, such mistakes often happen, so I treated this as an accident when I first raised the issue to a customer service representative, Thomas Klinkenberg, in an e-mail. But like many others who complained online, they continued charging me for membership dues after I clearly requested that my membership be cancelled. They even continued to charge me for membership dues a month after I filled out and returned two seperate membership cancellation forms. In fact, it was not until I went two more rungs up the chain of command, threatened to sue them, to call the police, and to find a reporter to cover the story, that they finally cancelled my membership. The amount stolen from me totaled about $500, plus a pending $200 more, which was charged after I switched credit cards around the time I found out they had been withdrawing funds against my wishes.

One can only imagine how much CAC has increased their profit margin through such practices. Of course, many of these cases can be chalked up to misunderstandings. And it is not unusual for gyms to make it difficult to cancel memberships. But somewhere there is a board of directors reviewing financial statements and a CEO crafting policies that make it so difficult to cancel memberships that they will bring in X percent more for each person who becomes a member. My sense is that this X-factor could run as high as 30 percent per member.

But taking money from people who have not intended to give it away, for services they do not intend to purchase, is theft. And it does appear that CAC is engaging in a massive criminal operation, in addition to running a gym. In any just system of governance, they would be prosecuted, which may sooner or later happen with CAC. I strongly urge you to exercise caution in any dealings with CAC and consider ahead of time whether you are willing to pay for several months of unused membership for each month you make use of their services.

My own dealings were with Thomas Klinkenberg and John Pagliarini, both of whom I believe fraudulently stole money from me on behalf of CAC. According to a Ripoff Report, Thomas is currently under investigation from the FBI, US Marshals, and the Department of Justice. John has stated that if I do not take them to court, they will release me from paying the final 2-months, of a total of 7, pending membership charges, which have not been collected, due to their lack of credit card information. While I cannot confirm the veracity of charges against Thomas, they do seem fitting and appropriate for John, who seemed to be high enough up the ladder to refund my charges.