Lady of America National Fitness I asked them to cancell membership, but they keep deducting payments Fort Worth Texas

 In June 2010 I signed a 3 year contract to join Lady of America work out gym.  I only went a few times in July.  After a year or so I called in and ask if there was any way to get out of the contract.  I was told no.

January 2013 my husband's company failed, we went through bankruptcy, and forecloser.  We moved almost an hour away from any Lady of America gyms.  I personally went into the gym and talked to Dana the manager/salesperson that signed me up.  I told her of our hardship and move and ask if I could cancell my contract. I was told no, that I had to pay the 3 year contract.  I said ok, so when will my final payment be taken out? She said August, so come September I would have no more payments taken out.  I said is there anything else I need to do.  She said no.  I asked her if she needed to take down my name or did I need to check in with my ID tag on the scanner so she would know who I was? She said no.

I called Lady of America, again a few months before August came to be sure they knew I wanted to cancell my membership as soon as the 3 year contract was up.  The lady on the phone assured me they knew I wanted to cancell my contract.

August rolled around and no payment came out of my account.  I was happy thought it was all over. 

Then in September a payment came out again.  I called Lady of America to find out why they took another payment out.  They said they never got a cancellation notice from me. I told her, I had come in, in person and called and requested my contract be cancelled.  She said did you write down the date and the name of the person you talked to.  I hadn't, thinking I was dealing with an honest company.  She led me to believe no more payments would come out of my account.

October rolls around and another payment comes out of my account.  I contact Stephanie and Dana again.  Then she tells "You can't cancell your contract without writing a request with your ID number on it and sending to the corporate office."  I told her this is the first time I had heard this.  She said it was company policy to have it in writing to cancell.  So, I typed a letter that night and had it in the mail the next morning, October 9th.

Then in November rolls around and yet another payment is taken out of my account, plus an annual matenance fee.  I contact Stephanie and Dana again, what is going on here?  I have come in, called, written letters, and done everything I know to do to stop these payments from coming out of my account.  Dana said, They have a 30 day cancellation policy which means they don't cancell your contract until 30 days after they recieve your cancellation notice.  I demanded that they refund me the payments for October, November, and the annual fee.  She said the only thing she would refund would be the annual fee.  The total money taken out of my account is $143.44 which may not be a lot of money to most people, but to me that is a weeks worth of groceries, or half of an car payment, almost my electric bill.  I explained our hardship to Dana and she was merciless and uncaring. I asked her for the president's number or someone else I could contact to make an exception to their policies and she said there wasn't anyone to call.  She said I could talk to a Customer Serivice Rep., but that they didn't have any authority to authorize a refund.  She was brutal.

It's a scam, they have this figured out how to not telling you everything up front so they can keep getting money out of your account. 

I am going to be forced to go to my bank and spend yet another $30.00 to put a stop payment on this company to get them to stop taking money out of my account. Or report them to the fraud department of the bank and see if they can get my money back.