Bally's Fitness Cancellation process is a SCAM San Jose California

My wife had been a member of Bayarea Family Fitness club. After a year, it was suddenly closed and there was a notice on the front door, saying that it was sold to Bally's fitness. Then she received a letter from Bally about the transfer and was informed that she could cancel the membership by visiting the office in person. My wife visited the office in May 2013 and submitted the request to cancel her membership. The manager (Jeremy Santos) looked up her name in the list (which appeared to be the list for all the transferred members from Bayarea Family Club) and crossed out her name. He then told her that she was all set, that the membership was canceled.

But after a year as of today, my wife was suddenly contacted over phone by another fitness club (Fitness Evolution), claiming that she had over $120 overdue payment for her past Bally membership!!!

My wife explained to the lady that she had already cancelled her membership with Bally a year before. BUT it becomes clear that Bally did not process it at all. Instead, they kept charging her CC for over 9 months! Since her credit card was replaced in Feb due to Target incident, Bally couldn't charge the CC any more. But the membership fee kept accumulating in her account. They (purposely) didn't even send her a mail or bill to let her know about this because she would then discover this scam long time back!

Furious, she called Bally immediately, but was told that her membership has been sold to the new company (Fitness Evolution), and Bally had nothing to do with her any more. As for Fitness Evolution, it claimed that my wife could not cancel her membership unless she pay off her overdue! It becomes crystal clear that these so-called fitness clubs are using these kind of tatics to rip off people.