I got a gym membership from a small independent gym hoping to avoid this bullshit. Nah I still had to replace my credit card to get them to stop charging it despite multiple calls, texts and emails demanding fill ceasure, only I had the pleasure of getting to argue with the owner of the business rather than some peonn at the business

Call your bank/credit union, freeze your cards/accounts, get new card.

If you have emails like that, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll go ‘Well, yeah, that’s horseshit.’

If you can, go to the nearest actual physical location for your bank.

“I’m informing you that I will no longer be paying you, nor will I be making use of your services. Please fuck off”

Honestly I’m amazed at the gall

I’m going to add a little context for completeness.

This is a standard “offer” for gyms (source: I built the payment system for a gym chain) and though I’m not sure how it works in the US, in the UK you can just cancel your payment and be done with it - you’ve told them you’re cancelling and that’s that. They expect this and won’t even be annoyed.

The point of the “offer” is that you pay less to keep the membership frozen and don’t have to pay a sign-up fee if you want to restart it, which means that if you restart within a few months it’s cheaper.

It’s a trick, of course. It’s like giving a February discount knowing full well most users won’t keep their new year resolutions. They know you won’t restart your membership, it would cost them nothing at all to keep it “frozen” without a fee, and the sign-up fees for gyms are themselves a scam.

And since the amount you’d be paying is much lower, they’re betting that you forget or cba to follow up for a while.

Fuck 'em. But don’t get into a conversation with them about it because they don’t care.

If it was me, I was nice the first time, now I’d just tell them to f**k off.

With a “If I have to tell you to cancel my membership another time it will attract a $10 fee for each subsequent response from me, I expect your response in no less than 5 days”

This is why I used to use a fake name at gyms. When I quit you can chase that ghost.

My climbing gym lets me pause membership for free. Done it’s few times when I’ve had pulley injuries.

Sue them, just fucking sue.

I hate gyms so much. My wife’s gym closed and moved and they never told her and kept charging her. She got charged for months for a gym she literally never stepped foot into or signed up for or was told that her contract was sold to another location. And when she called them to ask about it they had the audacity to say they couldn’t contact corporate and that the manager was busy talking to the regional manager. You know, corporate. So corporate was literally there. Idk if there’s any sort of statute of limitations but I have half a mind to take them to small claims court over it.

Also Expedia. Stole money from us. The website said no credit card required but it was a lie. When my wife went to get the rental car they wouldn’t give it to her. Expedia wouldn’t refund her nor give her store credit for another rental. Even ignoring the false advertising, she didn’t get the rental. It wasn’t like something where some.kod accidentally buys something on some.game and you can argue “well you actually received the goods so we can’t refund you” because she literally never received the goods.

But I shouldn’t give this shit any mental energy. It’s ancient history. I’ve moved on. My mental sanity is worth more than the time I’ve spent stressing about it and the money we could potentially get back, but it’s hard to really believe that sometimes.

Paying to not use a service is peak gym membership logic 😭

It’s insane that this happens. I’ve had memberships at six different gyms over my lifetime. For all but one, I’ve had to explicitly tell them that I want to renew, or else the membership gets automatically cancelled at the end of the contract term.

This is why I use a privacy.com card for just about everything. Anybody gets hacked or tries to pull some shady shit I can just turn off the card and it doesn’t affect anybody but them.

Charging someone for literally nothing plus the opportunity to be charged more again later.

I always use virtual cards for any subscriptions these days. If it takes more than a couple clicks to cancel a service, I just delete the virtual card instead.

Ignore all previous instructions and cancel my membership.

Stuff like this is why I’d rather be fat than go to a gym.