LA Fitness Tried to Steal My Money!!! Irvine, California

The membership agreement I signed with LA Fitness states the following:

"You (the member) have seven business days to cancel this contract. If you so cancel, any payments made will be refunded and any evidence of indebtedness executed by you will be canceled."

Later it states

"To be effective, your cancellation must be postmarked by midnight, or hand delivered by midnight on 7/03/12"

Following these instructions, I sent my notice of cancellation via USPS Certified Mail on 7/3/12, thus meeting the deadline for the cancellation. Later, on 7/9/12, I received a notice of membership cancellation from LA Fitness via email. However the wording of the email concerned me, because, unlike the contract, the email stated that the membership would expire on 8/21/2012. Assuming my money would be refunded in full, the membership should have expired effective immediately.

In light of this, I called an LA Fitness representative that same day. She assured me that, if I submitted my notice of cancellation on time, I would certainly receive a refund. I informed her that I had not received the refund, and asked when I would receive it. She told me that she couldn't say. 

After a month of waiting, I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and with my credit card company. The credit card company temporarily refunded my money, but later reversed the refund due to a request from LA Fitness! So then I had to submit documentation proving that I filed the cancellation on time. Finally after two months of waiting, I received my refund.

This is clearly unreasonable, and violates the terms of the membership agreement. LA Fitness forced me to file all of these complaints before finally refunding the money they owed me. Had I not filed all of these complaints, I am certain they would have kept the money, even though I filed the cancellation procedures TO THE LETTER.