Extreme Fitness (Interchange Location) Extreme Ripoff Told me that I won a free 3 months gym membership, instead, I was scammed $70 from them. Toronto, Ontario Canada

Long story short, I went into their office (90 Interchange Way) on November 28,2009 to claim a 3 month gym membership prize. They told me over the phone that I didn't need to sign any contracts and that I just had to go into their office and claim the prize. Instead, I was coerced into signing a 1 year membership.  They then went on to tell me that this person who called me about the prize was a new employee and that I had to sign a 1 year membership in order to get the 3 months free. 

I knew I wasn't going to anywhere about this so I decided to give their gym a try but I told them that I wanted to do a trial first before I consider joining with them.  We then agreed that because I had exams going on during that time, they allowed me to have a 2 week grace period before my 1 week trial membership began, in which I could still cancel during that time (therefore, we agreed that I had 3 weeks after November 28,2009 to cancel my membership).  Although this was not fully stated in my contract, a date of December 15,2009 was written down to represent when my trial membership would begin, which my friend who was there with me the whole time, can provide testimonial evidence that this agreement did happen.

I realized soon after I had signed the contract that I was not able to afford the membership, so I decided to cancel my membership on December 13,2009 and since I lived too far away from their office, they allowed me to send my member cancellation by email (big mistake!).  I followed up a few days after to verify my cancellation, and was told that my membership was cancelled and that I could expect a refund back for their erroneous charges against me.

Fast forward to March 4,2010, I have still not received my refund back so I went into their office to rectify this issue.  After going in, they told me that they would only refund a partial amount of $120 rather than the full amount they still owe me of $188.70, under the basis that I had cancelled my membership too late (within 10 days of signing the contract) and would not acknowledge that I was given extra time to cancel my membership.  Because our other agreement was not properly documented, I am in a difficult situation to dispute this.  The only evidence I can provide is the first hand witness testimony from my friend who was with me when I had signed up.

After this incident, I got into contact with the general manager, Gordon Roblin and he said that he would look into this but I have not heard back from him ever since.  Instead, I was repeatedly put on the phone with the same people I spoke to when I came into their office.  They are still not acknowledging that I had extra time to cancel and refusing to give me back my money.  I put way too much trust into these scammers, thinking that they would uphold their words and promises but I was dead wrong.  They honestly don't care who they scam, even people who come from low income families like me.  

I'm still fighting this dispute to this date. I am not giving up until I get my full refund back because what they are doing is wrong and I truly do feel cheated and scammed.  It's time for people to rise up and defend our rights.  Extreme Fitness is not a proper business and they should be exposed and punished for their fraudulent and unethical practices.