Beware!!! LA Fitness is one of the most dishonest companies I have ever come across.
Please know that if you give them your credit card to start your membership, you will probably end up having to cancel the card and get a new one. I know, because that's what I am having to do.
After trying out the club in Lake Forest, California for a few weeks, we realized we had been lied to about many things the club said it offered (the person who signed us up and promised many things to us mysteriously disappeared and was said to be working at another health club!) So, within 2 weeks of our membership starting date, we followed the procedures set out for cancelling our membership and quickly realized we were dealing with crooks.
First of all, we were told that we would not be billed monthly membership dues for the first 6 months, but immediately both my husband and I were billed (on our credit card). When we explained this to the club, they pretended not to know anything about this and blamed it on the person who signed us up (you know - the one who was missing)...
So, we called American Express (the credit card we used to begin our membership) and told them what was happening. They instructed us to file a dispute for the charges (which we did) and to write a letter to the corporate office (which we also did).
On January 14th LA Fitness sent us a letter acknowledging our cancellation and it stated we would now longer be billed. Sound good? - Well actually "Too good to be true"!
Imagine how I felt when this month (April 1st) I noticed that LA Fitness had charged our card for a $447 initiation fee!!! Over two months after sending us their acknowledgement of our cancellation they bill our credit card!
I called the corporate office and they instructed me to call the local club. Nobody who had originally been there when we first signed up is there (gotta wonder about places with such a high turnover) and I was forced to try and explain our situation to a young girl who they had hired as "Operations Manager". She was totally clueless and said she would call me back. Of course she never did. When I called back, she pretended like she did not know who I was. When I firmly told her who I was (again) and that they were billing our card in error, all of a sudden she knew exactly who I was and very rudely told me that we should have cancelled within 3 days if we didn't want to get billed!
Needless to say, I was furious and told her there was no way they were getting away with this.
I have sinced called the corporate office and they are trying to give me the same "3 day" cancellation crap. Meanwhile, every contract I have says we have 60 days to cancel.
In summary, the only way we can stop them from charging our card is to compltely cancel the card we have now and get one with a whole new number!
I am really angry and disgusted with the way I was treated and believe what they are doing is illegal. I'm thinking about writing our local newspapers about this and also contacting the Better Business Bureau.
But for now, I can't warn people enough to be very careful in dealing with this company. They are crooks, lied to us several times, and have absolutely no problem taking $447 from people who only visited their club only a few times.
Beware!!!
Disgusted
Lake Forest, California
U.S.A.
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