Complaint / Review
Bally Total Fitness
Ripoff! Claimed not to have received fax and letters of cancellation and kept charging credit card

My sister and I had a joint contract at Bally Fitness. We were told we could cancel at any time. Later we were moving from the Salt Lake area and decided to cancel.

My sister called and then faxed cancellation information to the Bally headquarters (where all cancellations are processed) from the local Bally fitness center. I called Bally headquarters and mailed the information required for cancellation.

A couple of months later I realized Bally was still charging my credit card, I mailed another letter explaining that I had already cancelled and that the contract needed to be cancelled now! At that point I thought it was taken care of. Not long after that I paid off most of my credit card and told them not to allow anymore charges.

Because of various things that were happening, it was about 3 months before I noticed Bally was still charging my credit card. I called my credit card and cancelled it. After that, Bally sent me a letter demanding payment since they could no longer charge my credit card. I called them again and told them I had cancelled and wanted them to cancel the contract. I then moved again.

Shortly after they mailed a bill for an additional $303.00 which would have to be paid before they would cancel. My sister and mother called them. Bally claimed to have never received the fax or letters, they said they had only received one phone call inquiring about cancellation.

During the conversaton they said they would have only cancelled if they received the $50 cancelation fee in the mail. My mother asked why they didn't just charge it to the credit card, they said they don't do that. Talking to them was quite difficult, they seemed to have memorized lines, they just kept saying to send in the balance and then they would cancel.

I find it odd, that when we had called several months before, we were never told to send in the cancellation fee. I find it hard to believe that a fax and two letters were never received, not counting all the phone calls.

With the extra credit card charges this has cost me over $500, and they still want more. It is really frustrating to join a local fitness center and then when you have a problem you have to deal with someone in another state. They must know that young adults who haven't had much experience are easy to take advantage of.