Gold's Gym Billing Rip Off - The owners of Gold's Gym are THIEVES! Venice California

Please read the following if Gold's Gym has stolen from you!

The owners of Gold's Gym are THIEVES! None of my friends have an account with them anymore, and I hope this report will convince you all to go somewhere besides Gold's to work out too. Hopefully we can get back what they have stolen from us.

Here's some background:

When signing up for a year long contract, I was told that I would have no problem terminating my account early if I decided to move somewhere where a Golds Gym was more than like 10 or 20 (I can't remember exactly) miles away.

I had asked because I knew there was a chance I was going to be going back to school within a year. I also asked to make sure that there would be no hassles, etc, and was told that all I needed to do was send a fax or letter with my new address.

After moving, I followed the instructions, faxed them and called to confirm acceptance. I got the voicemail of Traci in billing, and left a message stating that if she did not get my fax or if there was a problem cancelling my account to give me a call at my new number which I left.

I've received no call back, and decided to follow up with them anyway. I called again, got Traci's voicemail, then asked to have her paged at the gym. With no response a couple of different times throughout the day although I was told she was "around," and eventually gave up hoping that there would be no problems with the billing.

A month later, I called back after getting billed, and tried to get my membership cancelled. (I called Belmont Financial, the billing company of Gold's Gym that showed up on my credit card.) I was told that I was billed for the completion of the month and that I wouldn't be billed again.

Long story short, I WAS billed again, and after fighting with them about the fax and phone calls being "lies," there was nothing I could do. They wouldn't reverse the TWO MONTHS of additional charges I received (THREE MONTHS of billing including the 30 day charge.) They were extremely rude and called me a liar.

I was so angry at them, I wanted to do something about it! My friend in Santa Monica had been going there for about 8 months, and when I told her about it, she tried to get out of her contract too. She was moving and was going to drive to the gym after she moved, but I convinced her to go to a gym closer to her new residence.

She even PHYSICALLY DROPPED OFF A LETTER for Traci and was still billed by mistake. Luckily, she had another print out of the letter that was dated, and they accomodated her. (I guess it helps to make a small scene in person at the gym and force them to sign something saying you won't be billed again.) Anyway, I got about five other people to leave the gym early, and all of them also had problems.

This is a JOKE of a business. I am pretty sure this constitutes FRAUD of some sort since there is a seeming intent to deceive honest customers. I am not going to do anything about it legally unless I hear from a bunch of people who have had similar problems. The only way to punish these people is to make sure that they are hit where it counts and get our money back.

If we got the money back for all of the people they've ripped off in some class action lawsuit or whatever the term is, we could probably really hurt them financially! (hopefully not so badly that other people get screwed into losing the remiander of their memberships because they go bankrupt or anything, though.) It is time someone did something to get these jerks back!

Take it EZ,

Taylor Hamilton

Taylor
Los Angeles, California
U.S.A.