LA Fitness - Personal Training Scam help?

PennGarcia,
I was in the same boat in when I lived in North Carolina. They will send it over to collection and put on your credit. There is a reason why they ask for social security on those forms.

My advise to you is to keep fighting. Tell them you have to move, try looking up an area they may not have a location there. Most likely if they do a location outside the 30 miles radius of your new spot, you can get out of it. Best of luck.

Aimee

Don't ignore it. Call your credit card company (I hope you didn't put it on a debit card) & explain the circumstances. Most of the time they will do the work for you.

You could threaten to report them to your state's Attorney General's office. Most local news station have a consumer affairs person, contact them see if they would put in a call on your behalf. Then there's always the Better Business Bureau. Most companies don't want bad publicity so they'll let you out of the contract just to be rid of you.

ETA: Though this could be moot, since some gyms have "bait & switch" scams, especially when it comes to contracts (probably why I don't belong to one) and threats may not get them to do the right thing.

Could I get in serious legal trouble if they start calling for updated payment information and I ignore it?

The non-payment could show up on your credit report eventually and worse you could even be sued. If a judgement is won against you it stays on your credit report for years and in extreme cases a lein could be put on your property, bank accounts, or even your wages. It really depends on how aggressive the company is with debt collections. My advice would be to find a way to make payment arrangements and consider the whole thing a learning experience. It's flat out not worth the risk over only a few hundred dollars.

I checked in all my paperwork from the gym and they didn't give me a copy of my contract.

Go to the gym and ask for a copy that has your signature on it. Then read it.

I'm still trying to figure out what the scam is

I signed up for LA Fitness years ago and I changed my mind within the allotted time. Might have been three days but I can't remember specifics. I do remember that to get out of the contract I had to drive to their corporate office to do it and I was in a waiting room with a ton of unhappy people in the same or similar situations. I was able to get out of the contract with no loss but my time but it taught me a valuable lesson. I've been a member of 24 for about 13 years. They take my money out of a account that is only set up for auto withdrawals from 24 and a couple other entities and I keep just enough in there for those purposes in case a billing error, etc., none of these companies have access to screw up my primary account.

I once dated a person who worked at a gym signing people. His tactic was to talk fast and throw out a ton of information. He said people were more likely to sign up cause they don't know what hit them.

Good luck.

You're screwed.

6 months and you are unhappy?
And again- 6 months? I call BS- you should have known better.
And the trainers who don't care about you? really? you're going to blame them for you bad decisions? You could have switched trainers- you are not locked into ONE trainer.

So I was tricked into signing up for a 12 month contract with LA Fitness for personal training

what did they say- here sign this it's for the smoothie bar? They cannot TRICK you into signing up for 12 months of personal training.

It's your money you should have backed out sooner- and you absolutely could have. This is your fault.

If you have paid for sessions- use them and cancel the sales. They can't charge you for a service you aren't using.

LA has some shady buisness for sure- but you can request a new trainer- or go to a different gym. I have no sympathy what so ever- Personal Training is elective- you are not in a high pressure evniornment- you can just say no thanks any time- they are selling you what you want to hear- but the reality is you have to show up and do the work- Ultimately you purchased the sessions- you knew what you were signing up for- this is like buying a truck and driving it for 6 months then realizing you pay 80$ a tank to fill it up- then get mad that the dealership sold you a gas guzzling car and now you're bank doesn't want to give you your money back.

Nope- no sympathy. none.

^few hundred? Personal training at LA Fitness would run $600 per month, so 6 months left would be several thousand dollars. That's why it seems so unlikely.

well- depends on how many sessions a week you book I suppose- but it's easily that or more. There is flexibility with what they charge you.

do you work for LA fitness or something? why are you being such an *kitten*? and did you even read the post? she clearly said that she was told she could cancel at 6 months- and now she suddenly can't. definitely shady **** happening there. if there's a contract where they mentioned that she would have to pay to cancel yeah that's her problem, and it sucks, but there's no need to be so rude.

For what it's worth, a personal trainer at my gym tried to do this, too. I go to Blast! Fitness, which is advertised as $10/month (it's really around $15-20 when you add in the multiple gym fee, the yearly fee, and the sign up fee) for the basic membership. I was by myself and she came around asking if I'd like some pointers. So, I said yes. With my membership came a free personal training session, which I cashed in about a week later. It was a good thing I already knew that they were a little bit sketchy from my sign up experience and that I had some knowledge about fitness from MFP before I went to this session because from the start to the finish, the trainer was trying to pry on insecurities. If I hadn't gone in knowing that this was likely where it was going to end (thanks class on persuasion and manipulation in college!), I could easily see feeling forced into signing up, which, yes, still would have been my fault, but psychological factors do play a role in decisions and psychology is a strange thing. I feel for you, OP, I really do. I've seen a lot of people, women especially, put into the same situation and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that many of them sign up without knowing how they're going to pay for it.

The session started with her "measuring" my BF% and then telling me how dangerous it was. Next was the actual training session; I was sore from that 20 minutes for an embarrassing amount of time. It was clear that the end was supposed to be me signing up. I started by looking through all of the things I couldn't afford and politely saying just that. However, this wasn't an acceptable answer. Next, I was offered a payment plan, which I politely declined. At this point, it was clear that the trainer was becoming agitated. I said I might consider it closer to September, which was when I would have a job (this was June and I'm an adjunct) but right now it was out of the question. I went through all of the motions, like saying I'd have to talk to my husband about it. Yet, this wasn't enough, either. At this point, she schedules an appointment for me with her supervisor a couple of days later to see if he can "make me a deal." I told him the same thing I had told her. He told me that their DM was in the gym today so there wasn't anything he could do for me. I said that I understood and that was fine. He gave it one last half-hearted attempted before handing me a Post-It note with the options available to me. I thanked him for his time and went to do my workout. On my way out of his office-cubicle, the original trainer woman saw me and told me, "Well, when you want to get serious about your weight loss, come see me." I gave her a very non-committal, "Will do," while trying to keep my snarky comments down (at this point, I had already lost 30lbs) and was on my way. It was a seriously high-pressure situation, using a lot of the same things other salesmen do to close a sale, because that's what they are. It's hard to take that away from an online post, so I suppose you'll just have to take my word for it. I'm honestly surprised that I wasn't contacted about this in September, since that was information that they took down as well.

I hope you're able to work this out, because it's a terrible situation to be in. I do know that ignoring it and hoping it goes away is probably not the best plan, but I think that's become apparent.

TL;DR: I've been in a similar high-pressure situation as the OP, but was able to say "no" to the pushy trainer because I was expecting it and hope you can work it out.