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There’s also tricks like requiring certified letters to cancel the membership. One I went to required two. You also paid a fee upfront that was like being there for half a year.
Wow.
There’s also tricks like requiring certified letters to cancel the membership. One I went to required two. You also paid a fee upfront that was like being there for half a year.
It’s bizarre that consumers collectively agree to these terms. If I started a business that was this anti-customer, I would assume there would be zero customers willing to take that deal. Moreover, why hasn’t anyone introduced a brand that doesn’t have all these awful features?
Why would they when our national paper of record adopts similar tactics?
https://social.kernel.org/notice/AWSTn6aOpeEvSKZ7Wy
Years ago I called NYT to cancel my subscription. After I repeated for the third or fourth time "I just want to cancel please" the representative finally relented but not before insulting me based on some assumption he formed based on my name.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Popularity is an anti feature at the gym. Working adults have limited windows to workout and so once a gym gets affordable like 24hr fitness where seasonal sales at Costco make it VERY cheap it becomes a gym you might not actually want to work out in. Then you have the whole gym owner archetype which I won’t dive into but IMO exasperates the issue.
Mega-gyms are pretty terrible. I've never been to a 24 Hour Fitness, LA Fitness, or Gold's Gym that wasn't a sea of equipment hoggers, broken machines, random dirty towels, occupied lockers, and screens with CNN or daytime TV on. What's even more strange is how willing people are to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for an Equinox membership. The rationale is that paying that much upfront keeps you motivated to ma…
Finally I must add, all the friends (more like acquaintances) you make at the gym are absolutely crucial to motivate oneself and also just have a positive social interaction. I guess that perk of the gym membership is not even quantifiable.
I feel really thankful and privileged to have gyms around now, I will never take them for granted going forward.
There’s also tricks like requiring certified letters to cancel the membership. One I went to required two. You also paid a fee upfront that was like being there for half a year.
You'd think that telling them that I had moved 20 hours away would have made them budge, but nope. I had multiple phone conversations with them before sending a legal threat, which finally prompted them to "make an exception for me." Ridiculous.
There’s also tricks like requiring certified letters to cancel the membership. One I went to required two. You also paid a fee upfront that was like being there for half a year.
It’s bizarre that consumers collectively agree to these terms. If I started a business that was this anti-customer, I would assume there would be zero customers willing to take that deal. Moreover, why hasn’t anyone introduced a brand that doesn’t have all these awful features?
Any gym owners can chime in? My local gym seemed pretty normal this January so far (but I am in Australia where many people book their holidays during forced shutdown periods). Also the gym seems to have the same pricing whenever except sometimes there is “no joining fee” which is a weird thing to me but hey? My gym is independent. A famous world brand of gym I used to belong to seemed to make their money by making i…
Any gym owners can chime in? My local gym seemed pretty normal this January so far (but I am in Australia where many people book their holidays during forced shutdown periods). Also the gym seems to have the same pricing whenever except sometimes there is “no joining fee” which is a weird thing to me but hey? My gym is independent. A famous world brand of gym I used to belong to seemed to make their money by making i…
There’s also tricks like requiring certified letters to cancel the membership. One I went to required two. You also paid a fee upfront that was like being there for half a year.
I had a membership in NYC. When I moved to Florida, I forgot to cancel before I left. So I called them up to cancel, and they said I had to be there in person. You'd think that telling them that I had moved 20 hours away would have made them budge, but nope. I had multiple phone conversations with them before sending a legal threat, which finally prompted them to "make an exception for me." Ridiculous.
I never got around to sending the letter that LA Fitness wants you to send by certified mail. I spent around 6 months not mailing the letter, got to be my first customer.