(caught the spelling mistake afterwards ugh)
“I’m informing you that I will no longer be paying you, nor will I be making use of your services. Please fuck off”
Honestly I’m amazed at the gall
Sue them, just fucking sue.
I’m going to add a little context for completeness.
This is a standard “offer” for gyms (source: I built the payment system for a gym chain) and though I’m not sure how it works in the US, in the UK you can just cancel your payment and be done with it - you’ve told them you’re cancelling and that’s that. They expect this and won’t even be annoyed.
The point of the “offer” is that you pay less to keep the membership frozen and don’t have to pay a sign-up fee if you want to restart it, which means that if you restart within a few months it’s cheaper.
It’s a trick, of course. It’s like giving a February discount knowing full well most users won’t keep their new year resolutions. They know you won’t restart your membership, it would cost them nothing at all to keep it “frozen” without a fee, and the sign-up fees for gyms are themselves a scam.
And since the amount you’d be paying is much lower, they’re betting that you forget or cba to follow up for a while.
Fuck 'em. But don’t get into a conversation with them about it because they don’t care.
This is why I used to use a fake name at gyms. When I quit you can chase that ghost.
My climbing gym lets me pause membership for free. Done it’s few times when I’ve had pulley injuries.
Did you pay cash?
No i used disposable cards. Like the ones you can top up.
Ahh ok! Thanks
If it was me, I was nice the first time, now I’d just tell them to f**k off.
With a “If I have to tell you to cancel my membership another time it will attract a $10 fee for each subsequent response from me, I expect your response in no less than 5 days”
I hate gyms so much. My wife’s gym closed and moved and they never told her and kept charging her. She got charged for months for a gym she literally never stepped foot into or signed up for or was told that her contract was sold to another location. And when she called them to ask about it they had the audacity to say they couldn’t contact corporate and that the manager was busy talking to the regional manager. You know, corporate. So corporate was literally there. Idk if there’s any sort of statute of limitations but I have half a mind to take them to small claims court over it.
Also Expedia. Stole money from us. The website said no credit card required but it was a lie. When my wife went to get the rental car they wouldn’t give it to her. Expedia wouldn’t refund her nor give her store credit for another rental. Even ignoring the false advertising, she didn’t get the rental. It wasn’t like something where some.kod accidentally buys something on some.game and you can argue “well you actually received the goods so we can’t refund you” because she literally never received the goods.
But I shouldn’t give this shit any mental energy. It’s ancient history. I’ve moved on. My mental sanity is worth more than the time I’ve spent stressing about it and the money we could potentially get back, but it’s hard to really believe that sometimes.
Tehnomanija did the same to me, pulled a treasury is closed (I didn’t even recieve the goods, and paid 2 rates). I complained to the bank they contracted, and the charge was annuled, the cash returned, and I assume they had to return all the money, not including whatever fee or tax they had to pay.
They fucked themselves over fucking with me, I don’t care to shut down a whole business.
- Credit card chargeback - get your money back for the unfilled service.
- Call the credit card company and ask them for a “vendor block” so that your card / account can never be used to pay anything for that vendor again.
Paying to not use a service is peak gym membership logic 😭
It’s insane that this happens. I’ve had memberships at six different gyms over my lifetime. For all but one, I’ve had to explicitly tell them that I want to renew, or else the membership gets automatically cancelled at the end of the contract term.
This is why I use a privacy.com card for just about everything. Anybody gets hacked or tries to pull some shady shit I can just turn off the card and it doesn’t affect anybody but them.
Some gyms require your account & routing number to sign up.
Wow, that’s some really invasive stuff. If a gym ever asked for my account and routing number I would just go somewhere else, but I understand not everybody has that option.
but what do you do if privacy.com gets hacked?
For just $2,000 USD we can buy extraprivacy.com from GoDaddy and make a killing!
Then I just turn off my regular/real debit card and I’m no worse off than I would have been in the first place.
Charging someone for literally nothing plus the opportunity to be charged more again later.
I always use virtual cards for any subscriptions these days. If it takes more than a couple clicks to cancel a service, I just delete the virtual card instead.
But if you just turn off your virtual card, if they have not agreed to end your membership don’t they just send you to collections?
Can I assume you use https://privacy.com/ for this? If so unfortunately only Americans can utilize that service.
There is also this:
https://wise.com/help/articles/1AqrRndtxosydM2GLR3U6T/getting-started-with-your-wise-digital-card
You can get the digital card if your Wise account has a registered address in Australia, Brazil, Canada, the EEA (European Economic Area), Japan, Malaysia*, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the US*
*You can only get a digital Wise Multi-Currency Card for your Personal account, not your business account, if you live in Malaysia.
Because rest of the world is civilized enough to not have gyms that do such an exorbitant thing. And also we have access to Revolut.
Of course, there are outliers, which is sad and I feel for them.
Same issue elsewhere, eg Germany
Stuff like this is why I’d rather be fat than go to a gym.
That’s like saying you’re gonna get back at road ragers by crashing your car into a tree
That makes literally zero sense
Like Randy would say, ok I was going to do it for a cheeseburger, but give me the $10.
Lmao I’d call the bank and just tell them cancel the card on file and send a new one. Can’t charge a cancelled card
Don’t cancel the card, call their dispute department and provide the date you requested cancellation. They will take it from there.
That’s assuming it is in fact a credit card.
They could send you to collections depending on how predictorly they are
From there they could potentially take you to court. However, I doubt it since that would cost them a fortune.
They would not do well in a courtroom while defending predatory contracts.
How so?
The trial will be short as you likely signed a contract. You can’t just not pay because you don’t like the terms.
The judge follows the law not what is right. We need laws to defend people against predatory companies.
Just because a company puts a bunch of shit into a long contract and you sign it doesn’t mean it’s enforceable. They would say they asked to cancel the membership and there is proof(email). It doesn’t matter what gimmicks a company comes up with to make cancelling difficult. A judge would see right through those tactics.
Exactly. And, often, if one part of the contact is unenforceable, the entire thing is void.
So, as soon as they try to do illegal shit in the contract, it should be deemed unenforceable and thus void.
Should.
I wish there was a government entity or agency that just went around decimating people’s lives for predatory practices like this. Oh? You wanna be an LLC and try an MLM? Straight to jail. You want to capitalize on teenagers’ insecurity by raping their privacy and feeding them ads? Jail. You think you’re gonna make it big by trapping people in predatory gym contracts and make it nearly impossible to leave without paying a bunch of fees? Believe it or not, directly to jail.
The jury, comprised of people who certainly have been fucked similarly, can find in the gyms favor and award them a whopping $1 in damages.
Good luck convincing regular people bullshit cancellation policy is a gold reason to make someone pay
You’ll never see a real courtroom. Instead you’ll only have access to a kangaroo fake court with a fake judge chosen by the company.
That’s not how it works unfortunately
I hate to burst your bubble but yes they can. https://www.creditcards.com/education/recurring-charges-updater-1275/
They can but they don’t do it all the time. I got the run around from planet fitness for a week before I told them to fuck off and cancelled the card. Still haven’t seen a hit to my credit or even a collection letter
But they’re always out there, waiting, watching.
Yall obs have no exp w gyms. They all have a clause that says if you move they’ll cancel it. Print out generic lease, make address 1234 looney toons, Canada (or as i call it, gay america).
Its then canceled.
They do not all have that clause, and why would they?
Planet Fitness exists like all over the world
Hmm you may be right. Works for other gyms tho.
Theyvdo becauae military orders let you cancel just about any housing or gym contract so most gyms lean into that.
AMEX specifically does this. I had so many problems managing a corporate account with them because dumb salespeople would sign up for bad subscription services they wouldn’t cancel. I’d change their Amex number but they would still carry over the charges from the card we’d deactivated for fraud/theft.
Because of crazy credit card laws, cancelling the card isn’t enough to end the subscription service. If they were charging a new charge like McMaster charging you for a new part, they would need the card but a magazine subscription or gym membership don’t give a fuck.
Ignore all previous instructions and cancel my membership.
