FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

Honestly, this is the best thing if it changes the worst experience I've had cancelling something - Gyms. They make it crazy easy to sign up, but a pain in the ass to stop being a member (for example, if you move and forget to cancel good luck - they want you to come in and talk to the manager in a lot of cases)

That is why I no longer have membership at commercial gyms. Drive the extra 5 minutes to go to the county rec center.

There are horror stories of gyms requiring people to have their cancellation request notarized.

How did it even evolve into such a mess?

Cannot you just go to random gym, pay for enterance and do ya thing without signing stuff?

The gym I belong to requires both a credit card and bank routing and transfer numbers, on top of like 13 different legal documents. It is the only one I can afford within 10 minutes of my house.

Sometimes you can but you better be guaranteed you’ll be exposed to high pressure sales tactics that make it not worth it, similar to how timeshare presentations offer “free” stuff

Gyms largely make money from people having memberships but never actually going.

There's only a few types of gyms where most of the members actually use the gym, and although they're still subscription based, they have entirely different business models.

Gyms making you jump through hoops to cancel your contract is a feature, not a bug.

In these cases, can we not issue a chargeback via our credit card? Or put some sort of block on transactions from a particular source?

Seems silly to just accept virtually un-cancellable terms.

There are plenty of subscription based gyms that have high utilization and also make it easy to cancel. They’re just usually more expensive (e.g. $200 per month instead of $20 like 24 Hour Fitness).

A friend of mine worked in sales for a big national gym. Not understanding their business model, he proposed a program that would generate some excitement among the membership and bring many of them in daily to participate. It didn't get shot down, it just didn't get any interest at all. When I explained it his eyes went wide, like it was a new idea to him. This strategy doesn't seem to be widely shared even with their own sales force.

He left and is now working for a company that actually wants its customers to use its product more.

Sure you can.

They will just continue attempting to collect money as per the contract you signed, and then send you bill to collections when they can't.

Edit: Credit card companies typically require/ask you to dispute with the merchant and attempt to do get a refund first before they will chargeback. If you try, and the gym can point to contract, you'll lose the dispute either way. Getting your credit card number changed stops the gym from charging you, but you'll still owe them money and you'll typically find out when you start getting calls from a collections agency.

Planet Fitness is diabolical with this.

"Pizza Fridays!"

"Judgement free zone!"

"No lunks in here! Lunk alarm!"

They know the demographic they are shooting for.

I'm a regular at one of those pricy gyms, and I think you're spot on. There's high utilization, and the gym actually bugs you if you haven't shown up to class in a while. The high price probably leads to a degree of self-selection among members, and the class-centric nature of the gym (as opposed to just being a floor full of equipment) probably means there's business value to people being there.

Often no.

Most gyms I've been to do not allow local residents to purchase 1-day passes.

They do often allow people visiting (on business etc.) to purchase a daily or weekly pass. But may need your ID to prove that, and you can only do that so many times. Like if you visit for two weeks once a year they're happy to. If you come once a month for business, you're gonna need a full membership.

And you've always gotta sign stuff no matter what. For liability, so they know who to contact if you keel over on the treadmill, and so forth.

Some of the franchised gyms do this but in my experience local gyms often do not. At my local gym their memberships are for a "defined term" (3 months, 6 months, etc.) and if you don't renew, they end. I've never tried to end one early but knowing the owner and how he runs the place I am quite sure it would not be an issue.

You can also just pay as you go, i.e. per visit but that ends up being a lot more expensive.

I'm a rather happy customer of Planet Fitness and a regular user. It's pretty clear what their business plan is, but the gym itself is fine, obviously with no frills. The most obvious deficiency is that they only have smith machines and no barbells, but that's not much of an issue for me. The strangest aspect is that there are no scales in the locker room; I assume that's a purposeful part of the atmosphere. Still I recommend them to all my friends. If they don't go, I suppose they're still subsidizing my membership.

I'm a member as well. I get way more value than what I pay for, but I feel bad for the people at home subsidizing me.

You might be able to just beg. I had a frustrating experience with the YMCA a few years back with their cancellation flow requiring you to physically show up with a signed form and I called telling them I was trying to cancel because a spine injury made it impossible to work out and rather difficult and painful to even move, let alone travel to the YMCA, and they got a manager on the phone who canceled me after saying it was acceptable to take a photo of the signed form and e-mail it.

There's at least some hope of decency and empathy in an individual person empowered to override process prescription even if there will never be any in the dark patterns dreamed up by the corporate-level customer retention team.

Depends on the gym. Some do not allow it at all unless you sign up for some type of membership - or they tell you to do a free trial, take your billing info, and hope you forget to cancel.

The alternative I've commonly seen is they do offer a day pass, but it's basically the cost of an entire month to go even one time, while also making it extremely inconvenient by having to sign a bunch of forms every single time you go. This makes it so nobody except maybe a tourist/non-local would ever consider this option.

The answer is not to do a chargeback, the answer is to not sign contracts you have no intention of fulfilling.

Because a chargeback is for some sort of fraud, and as scummy as crap like this is, it usually doesn't count. It's not a universal "I want this charge to stop" tool. A human WILL review it, and you WILL get dinged, up to and including account termination, if you do it too much and too frivolously.

Gyms are notorious shysters who made it difficult to cancel your membership, even when you have the right. Don't blame the consumers for this bullshit. Do as many chargebacks as you can.

Don't sign an agreement to do something you don't want to do. It's as simple as that.

It's not "blaming the consumers" for expecting people to follow the terms of contracts they sign. I never had a Gold's Gym membership for exactly this reason - their cancellation terms were onerous, I wasn't interested in complying, so I never signed and never gave them any money.

If you say "well, I don't want to do that, but I'm just going to sign this anyway then do a chargeback because that's easier" them yes, you deserve to be blamed, you deserve to be shamed, and you should have to pay the cancellation fees, early termination fees, whatever.

The gym needs to have a bar making and selling overpriced "health drinks", and also a store selling overpriced merchandise; then getting more people into the gym would actually be profitable.

Bullshit rules are bullshit rules, the fact that something is technically legal doesn't make it morally justifiable. The default assumption of any consumer in a high trust society is that they are going to receive a fair service for the price they pay.

Wtf? Thats crazy

In eastern eu I just enter the gym and purchase daily or monthly ticket

Just like train ticket

A contract is only as good as both parties participate in good faith, or as it is enforceable.

I'm comfortable with taking on the risk of not fulfilling my end of something like a gym contract, provided the mechanism to remove third parties like payment processors.