24 Hour Fitness Refuse to honor contract terms Carlsbad California

The following letter has been re-posted to Yelp, Ripoff Reports,and Facebook along with a request to my Facebook friends to re-post to their own Facebook page as a warning of your deceitful practices:

 

I have been a member of 24 hour Fitness since 1991. It was Family Fitness at the time. In 1991, my monthly dues were $11 per month and guaranteed not to go up. It was called a "COE" membership which means "Club of Enrollment". I was limited to that club. OK, I agreed.

 

Later, I moved to a different part of town and transferred to a different club. Although it was not as nice, it was more convenient. They called that an "upgrade" and raised my monthly dues. Everything was fine for a couple of years until I moved back to my old neighborhood. Going back to my original club, they charged me an additional "upgrade". Now, I have too much invested to walk away and didn't have the initiation fee to go to a competitor. They had me over a barrel,so I paid it. So now I have paid two "upgrades" to get back to where I originally started. 

 

I was angry, of course. This time I reluctantly signed a new contract for the additional reason that I was given an "All Clubs" membership. This entitled me to also include their new "Sports Clubs", in which I could see no difference. However, I was once again assured that my monthly dues would never go up and that i would be grandfathered into any new clubs that might open in the future.. I was lied to again, although that deception did not surface until tonight.

Upon that rewritten contract, my $11 monthly dues had now more than doubled to $24 per month.

 

Tonight, I visited a new Carlsbad club that had recently opened in nearby La Costa and was told that I would once again have to pay their "upgrade fee" for yet a third time. When they told me that, they also said I could use the facility to see how nice it is before I (shudder) "upgrade". I protected and hid my wallet and demanded that they honor my contract. They would not and immediately launched into sales mode for my additional money. I exploded and walked out.

 

The General Manager followed me out and tried to appease the customer (me) by again offering use of the facility for this one visit only. I demanded that my contract be honored without any increase or contract rewrite. That's when the tap dancing started.

 

The GM insisted that the only solution was for me to "upgrade" to a new fee level. He was not interested that I had been grandfathered into future locations at the same monthly fee. The rationalization given was that this was their new level called "Ultra" and was a grade "above" Sports Clubs and therefore I did not qualify to use the facility without an increase. I told him I did not care what the name type the club now went by.  I demanded that my contract be honored, but to no avail.

 

He first tried to justify his position by pointing out that $24 per month did not keep up with inflation. Furthermore, company costs were rising. He used the example of new clubs opening in New York City and the exorbitantly high rents in Manhattan. Sorry. Not my fault. Not my problem.