Angry Gym Rant

Not sure where to put this, but this is starting to grind my gears, and I thought fellow fitness people might be able to sympathize.

Not too far from where we live is a neighborhood gym that my husband has been a member of off and on for years. It's a simple, no-frills sort of place with a good selection of equipment at a decent price. So back in late April when hubs and I decided to get serious about getting in shape, we paid in advance for a year-long membership for each of us at the place.

From then until late August, we went pretty regularly to lift a few times a week. But in August, I injured my knee and was having trouble walking, so we took a couple of weeks off from heavy weights and just went down to our building's tiny basement gym to keep the drive to work out going.

When we returned to the normal gym at the start of September, the outside was being repainted, which the desk staff treated like it was routine. Two days later when we went in for our next workout, however, we were met by "Under New Management" signs and a very excitable woman who introduced herself as the new owner.

She stood and talked one-sidedly for fifteen minutes about how the place was being turned into a Crossfit gym (we weren't excited; no offense to the Crossfitters here, but it's not our scene) to compete with another Crossfit gym several blocks away. And rambled on about everything from how much she hated the color the walls were painted, to how she was getting "new equipment from Europe" and installing a juice bar and a sauna (which there isn't room for no matter how you gut the place). She even badmouthed the previous owners, who had generally been beloved by the members.

We were told the price for membership was going up (because of all the "awesome" new equipment). But since we'd paid the original owners in advance, she would honor the rest of our year-long contracts, though she couldn't give us a refund. All of that pretty much killed our mood to work out that day.

For the next month, we went in constantly expecting sweeping changes, but apart from a couple small cosmetic changes at the entrance, things seemed much the same.

Then, we went on vacation for a week at the start of October. And when we returned, we found our gym door shuttered with a sign on it reading "Will reopen under new management". It's been like that for a month now, with no visible changes when looking through the window.

Reading recent reviews for the place online, it seems other members have attempted to phone the number on the sign and have gotten no response. Some people who had signed up for memberships using their bank- or credit cards are apparently still being charged for the past month while the gym's been shut. There's currently nothing to indicate that the place is going to reopen at all.

So. Despite having signed a new contract with the new management that declared that we would have our membership transferred to a comparable gym in the event that the gym closed, we're basically out a little more than half the amount we spent on our memberships with nothing to show for it. So since we can't really afford to shell out more money on another gym membership, now we're stuck with our basement gym where the only strength training equipment is a set of dumbbells going up to 50lb, and a cable machine whose explanatory poster shows you how you can "deadlift" on it. *sigh*

Thanks for listening to the long rant, people. Any of you have any gym horror stories to share?