Gold's Gym Nightmare Continues

Most recent correspondence from Gold’s Gym

Hi Andy,

I did take this to a corp. meeting and they stated that I would need the cancellation form and if you do not have the cancellation form you will have to pay the Past Due Balance amount to GO MORE FINANCIAL @ 1-888-466-6730 and the membership has already been terminated.

April
Gold's Gym Member Services

My email flame back to Gold’s Gym – I’m getting angry

April,
I do not owe you any money. I have been a loyal customer since you launched this gym. I've been nice and understanding while you guys figured out what was going on with your merger.

I am no longer feeling nice and understanding. I do not like wasting my time on this...but I like even less the way you think you can invade my life and call me for collections that I do not owe you.

I've been into the Gold's gym that I signed up for at least 3 times with my contract and paperwork and discussed with management ....all in an effort to try and get this resolved.  Enough. No more.

Let me tell you what I am going to do:
i) I'm going to ask that you reconsider your decision and talk with Lauren about the details of this situation to see if your desire to collect 190$ is right and worth it.

ii) In the meantime, I've posted about this on my blog and will continue to do so.

iii) I own a company called Judy's Book which has a readership of over 30K people in Seattle alone and is a site designed for customer reviews of small businesses. I obviously will post the result of our discussion to them. Check it out....www.judysbook.com

iv) I hate to say it but if necessary I may be forced to consider more aggressive forms of PR around this story -- the story being company signing consumer up for subscription service and then harassing them even though they tried to correctly cancel their service.  Did you hear about the AOL cancel service -- this was a big story. I hate to see your desire to collect 190$ incorrectly blow out of proportion on you ...but your treatment of me is simply wrong. I could send a press release to the

seattle

times, the

seattle

weekly, etc. I could be more guerrilla too -- I'll just print up our story and post this at the different gold's gyms in Seattle so people know how you treat your "valued" customers.

v) If all the above doesn't works, I may consider small claims court....I've never been and this could be a fun learning experience. And by the way -- if all that doesn't work, I still won't pay because you're just wrong. 

Why hasn't anyone called to actually understand the situation from my perspective?

Are you sure your firm wants to escalate this more?

I'm tired...and frustrated and annoyed.  Can't you we resolve this in some way please...before I actually start to take pleasure in fighting back for my rights? 

Thanks for doing the right thing here.....

Let me know what you'd like to do. If I don't hear back from you within by Aug 3rd, I'll assume, you think the value of collecting 190$ is more valueable than the relationship and reputation you with customers in Seattle, online, etc.  You know what they say about a negative word of mouth don't you? People are 10X more likely to talk about and blast it out.

It's up to you.

Andy

 

 

Comments

[Ben Casnocha]

Tell April you have some thugs from the east side of Oakland who you'll gladly dispatch to Seattle, too.

[E and R]

Well my comments would be that this story is not unusual. Most the golds gyms in Seattle are owned by the samee coportation. This corporatioin has become nototious for billilng errors and having a difficult time clearing ghem up. What I found is that they are not following the WAC codes on posting payments or notification of money owed. The reason I know this is that I have recieved the same notice with the wording that they were truning me into collections (not folling WAC Codes of course). Other memembers are being double billed on credit cards and are unable to get refunds. HMMMM seems like the problem continues.

[Dan R]

I am going through similar nightmare in New Jersey. They have jeopardized my membership. I have a back problem and my physiotherapist have asked me not to workout and only do light stretch exercise that I can do at home. They wont cancel my membership and wont take the doctors letter and are charging late fee too.

I am amazed by these people. I advice, ur better off building ur own gym then going to this crapy place.