(caught the spelling mistake afterwards ugh)
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.
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.
Paying to not use a service is peak gym membership logic 😭
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.
Like Randy would say, ok I was going to do it for a cheeseburger, but give me the $10.
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
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.
No idea how it works where you are but in Belgium and in the EU we have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman which according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsman_services_by_country is available in most places. Anyway I can tell you when companies receive an email from them, they don’t mess around. I’ve been waiting for a bike part for a year. I contacted the ombudsman, no cost, just 2 emails, suddenly my carbon belt was shipping the very next day.
This is the US, and Trump’s US, so it’s all hell there.
My bank immediately referred themselves to the financial ombudsman (UK) when they realised they’d been charging me for an account they weren’t supposed to be, which I was very mildly impressed by.
In the us, in most places, things are much different than that. There aren’t as many protections for the consumer and even fewer with the current administration taking an axe to things that were enacted during the previous administration.
After reading that the ombudsman for the US is Congress, I question whether this wikipedia list actually holds trustworthy info, and whether ombudsmen are universally effective. Congress do not strike me as effective resolvers of anything.
The Wikipedia list is trustworthy, even if the US Congress is not.
Based on their relationship to Trump I’d say they were impotent.
So ombudsman can be for “petty” things, like the belt of my e-bike, but also for much more “serious” things like political corruption, vote scams, etc where I imagine Congress might be correct. As https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ombudsmen_in_the_United_States clarifies though there are ombudsmen dedicated to agencies but also state level or even city and county level. So I imagine the more precise you are picking the right one, the more likely it’s going to be treated, efficiently or at all.
Hello Congress, I’d like to report that you are corrupt. Plz fix. K thanks bye.
I thought I heard that California had a law requiring cancelling be just as easy as signing up? Is that not the case? (Assuming the name of the gym is an indicator of the city it’s based in, and not the state or country.)
And that’s why California is considered ‘anti business’.
LA Fitness is a national gym chain.
This is true but checking their website shows locations outside of California which could be the case here
A subscription fee to not do anything, what a bunch of criminals. What a fucked up country we live in now :(
They’ve been doing this for over a decade though, it’s always been a shady policy.
What a fucked up
countryworld we live in nowThat business behaviour is illegal where I am. We have regulations and they’re actually exercised.
Interesting. It is illegal where I am as well. Yet nobody gives a fuck and gyms still pull that crap.
Then sue them. If they are actually doing something illegal, you will win.
i’m glad i never joined a gym when i was thinking about it around a year ago. it’s literally cheaper to save up to buy your own equipment (you don’t need the big stuff, but even then you can get it secondhand or something). i don’t work out anymore but when i did, i used body weight exercises (push ups, pull ups, etc.).
You need space for a home gym. Most don’t have it.
I don’t know where you live, but I have nowhere near enough space for exercise equipment at home.
You dont need excercise equipment unless you wanna be a competitive body builder in which case gym is among the least of your expenses
Competitive body builders are basically just professional eaters who workout.
You don’t need that much space for a functional home gym setup. You can do a lot with just a set of adjustable dumbbells and regular furniture.
Even if you’re in an extreme situation, living in a barely habitable illegal rental, you can just take your dumbbells outdoors to a park or something. You can even skip leg day if you do that!
“You can even skip leg day if you do that” BLASPHEMY!
I do quite well with a set of adjustable dumbbells, a foldable bench, and a 4x8’ area of floor. I do wish I had a cardio machine of some sort but I get by without it. Not sure about your situation but it doesn’t take a ton of space to work out at home. If you have room to lay down somewhere you can do a lot.
Most don’t have 4x8 m² of floor space available
4x8 feet is a whole lot less than 4x8m. That’s less than 1.5x3m if im remembering how long that cursed unit was correctly.
Still not a super small area to just have available, but probably more realistic for many people. I could probably arrange for that in my 40m^2 apartment
TIL that a single ’ is a feet. but what’s a "?
Inch??
i hate the imperial metric system
You’re correct
That’s feet not meters
I live in a 2 room (not bedroom, total rooms) apartment. I have no place for ANY exercising equipment.
You definitely have space for a set of resistance bands.
Look at Mr. money bags who doesn’t shit in the same room they sleep
Depends on goals and equipment needs really. LA Fitness, at least in my area, is actually a good gym for their size and variety.
Yep, go hunting for deals on Craigslist, Marketplace, garage sales, etc and you can get some great stuff for cheap. I don’t think I paid over $100 each (in some cases, alot less) for my treadmill, elliptical, weight machine, stair climber, or recumbent exercise bike.
I bought a used Bowflex on Nextdoor for like $200, a set of 10-90 lb adjustable Bowflex dumbbells with a stand for like $100, and a weight bench for ~$50. Retail on that setup is like $2k+. These things are large and cumbersome. A lot of people buy them then never use them and get rid of them for pennies on the dollar. I work out in my garage whenever I want to and I don’t have to worry about waiting for someone to get off a machine or work in sets with people. I get my workout done so much faster and I don’t have to go anywhere to do it. I will say the gym has a certain social element that you miss, but not having another freaking subscription is nice. Ya know what? I’m gonna go get a workout in right now.
Fair warning, Bowflex dumbbells are under an active recall. You should check and see which model you have.
I’ve had them 5-10 years (maybe more), but better safe than sorry I guess. Might as well give it a look.
I assume this is the one they mentioned. Just posting it in case other people come across this: https://www.bowflex.com/dumbbell-recalls.html
I was part of this recall, bought the 552 back during the pandemic. So I only qualified for a $50 voucher towards a new model, which happened to release at the same time of this recall announcement. Looking further into the recall details, the total unita of this affected model sold were 3,844,200. Of that 3+ million units, there were 350 reported incidents, 111 of which resulted in an injury.
I’ll take my chances with these dumbbells I’ve been using for the past 5 years rather than them trying to upsell me on the new model.
At that point my next set would be Power Blocks.
Am I reading this right that to reactivate they’d be charging the difference they ‘lost’ during the freeze term? Wild.
I read it the opposite, if you freeze for 5 months then come back, have $50 of credit towards your first 1-2 bills.
If it’s not that, it’s insane.
yup
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