Gym Pact - anyone using it now?

honeydoozy
honeydoozy Posts: 46 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
This has been out there for about 6 months - I'm wondering if any MFP-ers have been using it, and what their experience has been with it. Good? Bad?

If you haven't heard of it, it's an interesting app that you put on your phone and it tracks when you go to the gym. You commit to a certain frequency of gym visits and it pays you for keeping your commitment. If you DON'T fulfill your commitment, you pay up (a predetermined amount) How's THAT for motivation!

Seems that if you work it right, you can pay for your gym membership simply for just going. Nice!

Replies

  • meshashesha2012
    meshashesha2012 Posts: 8,329 Member
    if it were available for android i'd use it. it's a good idea. my gym has something similar where you get a certain amount of points for every visit. i almost have enough for a $25 gift certificate (should have it by the end of june) but i'm saving up for the $75
  • honeydoozy
    honeydoozy Posts: 46 Member
    That's a really cool idea - incentives at the gym level. How does that work? How many times do you have to go to get to $25?
  • comparingapples
    comparingapples Posts: 23
    i've been on since january. it's really cool to get paid to workout. i've set my pact to 3 days a week 5 when i know im not busy for most of the week and i've made about $50. i've only ever paid in once.

    try it out!
  • luvsherhubby
    luvsherhubby Posts: 135 Member
    wow thats awsome! How do you get paid & do you have to have a gym, i workout at home. but shoot if I was getting paid to go then maybe I could afford it :) I only have a android though- is it an apple app?
  • honeydoozy
    honeydoozy Posts: 46 Member
    Unfortunately, home gyms don't count. :-(

    Any verifiable fitness facility (gym, yoga studio, etc) can be added, but I tried to add a local boot camp program that is held at a ranch and it said "no". :-(
  • ygeezy
    ygeezy Posts: 1 Member
    Good Idea. Very Poor Customer Service. Having trouble getting refunded for an unfair charge due to a technical issue .
  • Foggy7640
    Foggy7640 Posts: 56
    Now, home gyms count !!!
    You can workout everywhere
  • MissSusieQ
    MissSusieQ Posts: 533 Member
    i use it, and it has motivated me to get moving more. i've yet to miss a workout, because when there's a monetary value on it a 30 minute walk (it syncs with runkeeper to track walks/runs/cycling etc) or trip to the gym really isn't that hard.

    but.. before you all start getting excited about the returns of this app paying for your gym membership, let me give you some reality.

    i've committed to 3 workouts per week, and pay $10 per workout missed. at these settings, i get about 75c per workout
  • Foggy7640
    Foggy7640 Posts: 56
    Still better than nothing !!! :)
  • vindidj
    vindidj Posts: 9 Member
    I'm into my 4th week with Pact and have found it to be fun and highly motivating. I'm using all three pacts (Food Log, Veggie, and Gym). For dedicated MFP users the Food Log is easy money and has had no syncing issues at all for me. The Veggie pact is my favorite because I get to see all the great food other users are eating. Gym pact has been simultaneously very effective and frustrating. The Gym pact has been terrific for motivating me to get out and do extended periods of exercise. In fact, I went running at 9pm one night to satisfy my pact and not pay $10! However, I've encountered several syncing issues between MapMyFitness and Pact. Unlike the one of the others posting here, I've found customer support to be prompt in dealing with the problem, but its still frustrating to have to write and email to get credit (and you have to send the error report within 24hrs!). Keep in mind that Pact is still in development and my hope is that syncing issues will become much less as the app matures.

    Overall, I think Pact is a great tool for people like me that are trying to adopt new healthy habits. Being able to make money doing it is icing on the cake.
  • vindidj
    vindidj Posts: 9 Member
    Almost 2 months in and I'm now pulling the plug on Pact. The frustrations with syncing just outweighed the added motivation to go on walks in the middle of the night to satisfy my gym pact. However, that's not the sole motivator for discontinuing using this nifty app. Last week was just utterly insane busy with many projects and meetings and I found that having to deal with Pact appreciably raised my stress level! Making sure I logged my food with fidelity, took pictures of my veggies, and got my exercise logged was just another series of tasks I had to fold into already over committed days. Having to draft messages to tech support to get credit for several of my pacts last week significantly added to the inconvenience. I consciously try to manage tasks to keep my stress level low, but sometimes life demands more. Unfortunately, you can't optional turn Pact off for those weeks when things get crazy without warning. Still a great app, but may not be the best for people who's lives already have many commitments.
  • FierceLisa
    FierceLisa Posts: 38 Member
    I've used it for a little over 2 months. I Love it! I use the Food Logging & The Veggie/Fruit Pacts. So far I've always made my Pact. So far I've never had to pay out. I earn roughly 4 to 5 dollars a week sometimes more or less but I average anywhere from 16 to 20 a month. I have had no issues with it thus far. You can transfer your earnings from the Pact site to Paypal after you earn at least 10 dollars. So far I've transferred funds 3 times. It takes a few days to be moved but I've never had an issue with it showing up. I'd definitely recommend it.
  • MsValerieAnne
    MsValerieAnne Posts: 90 Member
    I have been using PACT since January of this year. I only use it to log my food at the moment, I want to connect it to RunKeeper/MapMyFitness (whichever it uses) but since the last application update, I've had the hardest time syncing my PACTs. I've had to contact support a couple times because of the issue. I've found out that they reply/get back to you within a day if not sooner, if you are contacting them THROUGH the application itself. I'm still waiting for a reply from an e-mail I sent from the actual website. If It would sync properly, I'd use it more often. I've yet to reach the 10$ mark (I'm at about 9$) having 5 food pacts (logging) a week, because of all the issues with syncing lately, I changed this week to only have 1 PACT (1 Day), and I am seriously thinking of 'taking a break' next week and the week after or until the application is updated or working properly again.
  • MichaelDST
    MichaelDST Posts: 53 Member
    I just thought I would chime in with my experience. I decided to give these guys a shot, and after only 4 weeks it turned into a completely different daily routine for me! But after the first week of using Pact, the honeymoon was definitely over because my food logs all of a sudden stopped updating from MFP to count towards my food pact. So every day, I would need to file a trouble report with Pact, and eventually they would credit my food log. Time went on and it just became another tedious thing I needed to remember to do (filing a trouble report to Pact) until yesterday when the Pact support rep got back to me requiring that I submit screen shots of my MFP food diary so they could manually update my Pact log! WHAT???
    It was bad enough that I needed to remember to check my Pact account and file another trouble ticket on a daily basis, but asking me to send screen shots with them every day was the last straw!
    Account deleted, goodbye Pact!

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