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Are you an ex-employee of LA Fitness who has recently been given notice and your job been taken over by an "in house" trainer? if so, they acting against the law and you can take them to an industrial tribunal. Even if you are a part time studio instructor (like me) they are not within their rights to dismiss you. Go to www.employmenttribunal.gov.uk, go to forms and download ET1. They are breaking the law and you will win. Good luck!
Similar experience recently in leaving LAF Manchester. I satisfied the minimum term of my contract and gave 6 weeks' notice. This resulted in RCS being instructed to claim £407 from me without providing any detail of the alleged debt.
I followed advice found on this forum and emailed the CEO, Martin Long. I reecived the following today:
Thank you for contacting LA Fitness Member Relations. I write in reference to your recent correspondence.
I am sorry to hear you are unhappy with the service you have received from LA Fitness. I assure you that we endeavour to provide the best possible service for all our members and apologise if you feel this has not been achieved.
I have spoken to my manager who has agreed to cancel and waive the outstanding amount on the membership. I have instructed ARC to cease contact immediately.
I apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused.
Kind Regards
So the matter is closed, but not without some effort.
I too have been in discussion with intransient LA Head office staff. The gym staff are very nice, the instructors excellent. If it wasnt for the brilliant classes held by the brilliant staff then I would have left ages ago. Speaking with others in the changing rooms the discussion is often about the different fees charged for the same contract, and the difficulty in leaving. Gyms generally have a bad reputation and LA fitness is no differnet. Remember you are just a source of income to head office.It is the gym instructors locally that keeps the head office in credit. If we had to deal with head office we would have all left years ago. Warning to LA fitness CEO treat your exisiting customers well and they will stay, treat them badly and they will let everyone know about it. Seems like they prefer everyone to know about it.
I too have been trying to cancel my contract with LA Fitness. However the gym manager at the LA Fitness Burnham was not willing to discuss the issues, neither were LA Fitness Member Relations.
LA Fitness are not willing to accept the contracts have been breached by by the consumer credit act and goods and services acts and hence have referred the case to RCS (LA Fitness debt collection agents).
They also seem to think that allowing minors of the opposite sex to shower along with grown ups is acceptable in open communal showers. Personally I think it's wrong that a 9 year old girl is allowed to shower with grown men. This is just one of the reasons we're trying to leave!!
I have sympathy with anyone else dealing with this company!!
I have tried leaving LA Fitness, as I have no longer need of a gym due to injury. I contacted the local branch, who said they couldnt help, but referred me to a members phone number. This never gets answered, so I wrote. What LA Fitness now effectively asking, is for a further 2 months membership, although I have been a member there for over a year. They have taken umbridge over my cancelling my Direct Debit, and requestes for copies of documentation that backs up their claims are being ignored.
My opinion - avoid. This company are worse than a mobile phone company when you come to cancel their services.
An acquaintance of mine has had his Direct Debit increased without notice, and is currently sueing LA Fitness ( I understand).
After reading all the "blags" about LAF i felt the need to post my opinion. I love this company and have never had ANY issues with them. Mind, unlike the majority of the comments, everyone failed to read the Terms and Conditions of the contract you are obligating yourself into. If you all read these, there would be no need what-so-ever to "blag", moan and threaten action agains't the company. It is your responsability to read what your signing. For example, signing a mortgage contract i'm guessing you'd all read that, as in charges for missed payments? repossesion?? Thought so. Honestly, read everything so you know what's what. Yeah, i'm not saying some Sales Advisor's do tell the odd white lie so you'll join but when you sign away you sign to agree that you have read, understood and agree with the contractual length, fee's and also the terms and conditions. Lies or no lies, it is your responsibility to abide by the contract in which is signed. All the passing the blame and bad reviews on here about LA Fitness is giving a great Fitness chain a bad reputation for those who do read, understand and sign correctly. I assure you, it's a brill club to be a part of!! OK, opinion said!!
Please sign my petition at http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/betterlondongyms/ to try and force London gyms to improve their service and re-think their pricing models.
I have been a member of most of the big gym chains in London (including LA Fitness, Fitness First and Virgin) and they continue to amaze me with how appalling the service is and what a bad service experience they provide.
The service is dire and they truly do not care about their customers - I know of no other business which could offer such poor customer service and stay in business.
The facilities aren't normally that good however that isn't my major gripe as they are generally clean. If you do compare them to facilities in the US though they are a lot busier and have less facilities and equipment available per member.
The worst thing however with gyms in London is the sales staff. Unbelievable people. They will literally tell you anything in order to get you to sign up. Will I get a free massage every day, of course sir; Will I be able to get a free burger and chips with each sesssion, why of course madam. The worse thing is there is no come back to these guys and there are very few alternatives, so the customer has very little power in the relationship. The number of stories I have heard where people have been mis-lead into signing a long term contract are most worrying.
For this service we have the privillege of paying somewhere between £30 - £100 per month! Have you ever actually worked out how much that costs per session? If you compare that to gym memberships in the US which average at c.$30 a month even in big cities we can be paying up to 3 to 4 times more than our transatlantic friends!
I have left all gyms behind me and am now enjoying sport at a new sports and social club called 'Come Play Sport' which is more fun, sociable and much cheaper! Until London gym's start concentrating on the customer, re-think their pricing models and invest in modern facilities I won't be going back soon. Hopefully this petition will encourage more people to do the same and force the gym chains to take some action.
Roger, If you have the time and legal/technical skills, of course you would do it yourself. All I would say in my case is that their help and fairly minimal costs have far outweighed the aggro and potential costs we were looking at from LA Fitness and ARC. Good luck.
I'm having a complete nightmare with La Fitness and am just absolutely exhausted from it all. I'm 6 months pregnant and back in October (so over 3 months ago) I asked the membership services team to provide me with a copy of my contract. I wanted to cancel my membership as not using the gym because of pregnancy. The state of the swimming pool at my club is disgusting and used it once and once only. Anyway, membership services couldn't find my contract and asked via email what i wanted to do. I emailed and said cancel my membership - if they didn't have a contract then technically i have no terms and conditions. Gave them one months notice on the email and heard nothing more. Until the rampage of texts and letters. I returned every text and letter asking for the person who had signed the letter, left numerous messages but never got a call back. I finally got a call first week of Jan from ARC debt company... I didn't understand at first who they were but they are hideous. The way they speak to me is just disgusting. I've explained i am 6 months pregnant and don't need the threat of solicitors and baliffs. They are chasing 1x month missing payment and suddenly they are saying i owe £281!!! I am so scared by all this as just don't know how to get them to go away. They are now saying that i agreed to a 'verbal' contract back in June 09 so i am still in contract and there are only 3 ways out of a contract - redundancy, dr note or die!! I've spoken to Consumer Direct who have been helpful but they keep telling me to send recorded delivery letters, to which i get absolutely no response. They have also said i don't need a dr note by law and to send them the t&c's. La Fitness say they don't have any cancellation t&c's they can email me as its all verbally honoured! My last resort is to get a dr note to prove i am pregnant and not really up to using the gym equipment. I'm just cross that i have to go to the hassle of getting a dr appt for something soooooo stupid, i really feel as if i am wasting my time and the dr's time. I just hope this works and gets them off my back. My advice is to never get involved with La Fitness. Following reading other posts they are just cowboys and con-artists. What else can i do to stop their bullying behaviour? I'm not sure who is the worst - La Fitness or ARC credit management! Will this affect my credit ratings?
Sorry for the long rant but any words of advice would be greatly appreciated.
I used AdviceLine as well and they helped my son to issue a claim against LA Fitness and their debt-collectors (ARC Europe). ARC sent in a defence but LA Fitness didn't bother before the stipulated date so my son and AdviceLine have now been able to ask the court to make an award against LA Fitness for costs. On top of that, as soon as the court papers were issued, the phone calls stopped! Get legal help as it is the only way to sort out these people. www.1stadviceline.co.uk.
Good luck to everyone who has to deal with LA Fitness.
There is a consumer help service who is taking-on this company on behalf of customers who are being hassled by them and ARC - their debt collectors. They are Adviceline (Legalhelp) Ltd and are on 09061223328.
Once the fixed period of the contract has ended and you have given any notice required to terminate (preferably in writing) then you should have no further liability and if they pester you then you can claim damages from them.
I thought my experience might be of interest. I signed up for a 12 month gym membership. When it came to an end I emailed and wrote to cancel my membership and at the same time cancelled my direct debit. In the letter I asked for them to let me know how much I owed them as I expected to be told I had to give a month's notice even though I had completed and paid for 12 months. Nothing could have prepared me for the hassle and harassment I experienced. They ignored my emails and letters (last one sent by recorded delivery) and then passed my details on to a debt collection company who continued to harass me by phone and letter. (I was getting 4 or 5 calls to my mobile every day. This was then passed to a solicitor who threatened me with court proceedings so I wrote to him and said 'go ahead' and sue. By this time they were demanding £117 without any explanation of how this sum was calculated. Received another letter from the solictor dated 4th november again threatening court action in 10 days, so I contacted Trading Standards and they told me that it was a criminal offence to be harassed in this way. In fact there is something called the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 which is supposed to protect people from being pestered by these people. Trading standards said they would contact the debt collection company and look into it and since then I have heard nothing. Today is 28th December, well past the 10 day mark! Anyone should be able to cancel a gym membership and their refusal to even respond to a letter or email shows them to be a bottom rate cowboy company. Don't give in to their bullying and send them money; report them to trading standards or the office of fair trading. I think this demand for money is a very lucrative sideline for LA Fitness, Arc debt collection and their solicitor Trevor Munn.
why does this head office not give a damn how their individual customers are treated? I will never waste a single penny on this gym again having been ripped off by their reps, i will get fit my way, not theirs!!
i tried to get my membership back but was told every time that i was ineligible, what i was told did not match with what my contract says, far as i'm concerned that makes these people out of order
I have also had various issues with this DISGUSTING company - misselling, lies, people calling from headoffice using the F-word(!!)> some of the things happenening are just out of this world unreal. And it all started when i asked to freeze my membership for free for 6 months as the salesman at Northolt Branch had detailed (i had asked him 3 times whether it was free and he confirmed just before I signed the contract!).. Clear case of misselling. The problems did not end here, as not only did they not freeze it for 4 months but once they did there was a charge of £12/month. I paid that for 2 months but then they said i had to pay a charge of 24 to cover the previous months freezing charge... and so on and so forth. I decided to cancel my direct debit as nobody seem to be competent enough to carry out a simple action at their head office. I then started to receive harrasing and threathening phonecalls from the headoffice with people using abusive language (including the F-word).
This was it for me and I decided to cancel - and boy did they NOT want me to cancel. Despite a phonecall to membership services, an email to membership services my account was not cancelled and I continued to receive the harrassing phonecalls.
I then found this blog and other websites about LA Fitness and have found a way to cancel my memberhship:
1. First email the CEO of LA FITNESS martin.long@lafitness.co.uk, and send a separate email to your branch (look at their website). In here detail the DISGUSTING behaviour of all the staff/departments you have so far dealt with at LA Fitness and DEMAND your contract and any oustanding balances to be terminated effective immediately.
2. Simultanously send a letter - detailing your complaint and HOW LA FITNESS BREACHED THE CONTRACT (very important that you state exactly how they breached the contract and why you now terminate it ex misselling, poor customer service etc) AND that you are seeking legal advice AND that you have already sent an email to the CEO and Branch manager - to their headoffice (address found at website) and send a copy of the same letter to your branch manager and a copy to the Trading Standards Institute local office (you can find addresses for all their branches at www.tradingstandard.gov.uk)and keep one copy safely at home. Ensure you state a date here of when you believe they should have completed this action of terminating your contract and by which date you would expect a reply> 7-10 working days from the date of the letter is enough.
I just completed this and within 3 working days of when the letters/emails were sent had a response from the head of membership services (via email) confirming that they have terminated my contract and removed any outstanding balances.
Although if you do not receive a response following this method after 7-10 working days then I suggest filing a small claim with the courts (which costs around £60) and send a copy of that complaint to the headoffice and follow up with an email to the CEO so that he knows that you are taking this seriously and effectively taking them to court (my friend did that and LA FITNESS quickly decided to settle out of court!!).
redcat, when I had trouble with this shoddy company I contacted trading standards who have opened a file on them. I suggest you do the same unless they repair the problems they have caused.
I wrote to LA Fitness membership services to cancel my Flexi club membership. When I didn't hear anything from them and the Direct Debit continued to come out of my account, I contacted membership services who told me that membership can only be cancelled by phoning membership services. So they received my letter then completely ignored it. There's nothing in my paperwork about this. As far as I'm concerned it justifies my decision to leave that gym.
If anyone signs up to La Fitness and they write on your top copy that you can cancel your mebership before the contract ends then make sure you dont misplace your copy as conveniently it doesnt go through to their copy and unless you can show them your copy then you are charged £200 to cancel. There are alternatives offered to you but obviously all involve money which La Fitness are only interested in and not their loyal customers.
I recently visited the LA fitness West India Quay branch to find about membership fees. I thought it would be simple enough to provide this information, and it is as long as you're willing to submit all your private details relating to your identity and address. I explained that I would be happy to provide this information if I chose to join the gym, but until I made that decision then I would not be happy to give out this information. The Sales supervisor stated that it is their Company policy not to disclose membership fees without being provided personal and contact information of the potential member and when I asked her why, she was unable to provide any explanation which made sense except to say that she “doesn’t make the rules” and that it’s a standard procedure in many businesses such as a bank when you open a bank account. I pointed out that she was incorrect as banks happily disclose fees involved with the accounts they offer and that you do not need to open a bank account or provide your name or address in order to obtain this information. As she was unable to “help” any further, I asked to speak to a manager instead. After initially being told that all the managers were in a meeting (how convenient), a manager suddenly became free. I explained my position and he informed me that it was because of Company policy and reasons relating to health and safety procedures that they could not give me membership fee information e.g in case there was a fire or I fell during an inspection of the gym. Although I thought this was complete and utter codswallop, I decided to humour him and as we were situated in the reception area, I asked if he could give me the membership fee information if we skipped the tour. But he again refused and reiterated that even without the tour, giving me membership fee information would be against their company policy. As we could not reach an agreement there was no point in continuing the discussion. I originally thought that perhaps I could discuss this with their head office but I suspect they would be less than willing to disclose their membership fees as it’s clearly classified information. Needless to say, I have no interest in joining a gym who have demonstrated at the outset to be unreasonable, ignorant and stupid at best. Reading everyone else’s experiences which are far worse than my own, I do hope they get investigated by Watchdog and the Trading Standards office - I can’t think of a more deserving case.
I am a freelance self employed personal trainer at a central London LA Fitness and although I am not directly employed by the company I have attended a regional sales meeting and to be quite honest I was appaled at the attitude. Basically there is a culture of get the signature and someone else namely the reception staff or the gym staff can sort out any problems. All the sales team need to do is get numbers in. The problem is that the poor reception staff who are on the same wages as the cleaners have a massive administrative task when sorting out dodgy sales. My advice is to speak to the regional sales director (for central London it is Mark Rogers) as it is there fault so many contracts are a mess
I have been given a minimum of 40% increase in my LA Fitness membership rate with just one month's notice even though I no longer use their club in Brighton as I have moved out to Crawley and use the Gatwick one instead. I had also introduced a friend last month with the incentive that I would have a further 10% off my monthly fee for 6 months which starts in November 2009. Now that I have complained to them about the price hike and asked for a cancellation, they won't honour their promise to the 10% reduction for 6 months to be reimbursed because they say I will no longer be a member. I could appreciate say a 5% hike or one in line with inflation but 40-60% is unreasonable and then saying that I won't benefit from introducing a friend now that I have decided to leave is nothing more than trade by stealth. Beware of such incentives!
I am using Adviceline Legal Help (as is Westcoaster below) and they have been brilliant. My son and a mate signed up in January for what they believed (and were told) was a 6 month contract as all they wanted was membership until going off to Uni in September. Since trying to terminate their contract, they have been harassed by letter and phone, even getting phonecalls asking for credit/debit card details! Would you give your card details to an unknown caller? Try calling Adviceline on 0906 122 33 28 as they will not pussyfoot around with this lot. Just what LA Fitness need and deserve, some real hassle back. I wouldn't recommend LA Fitness to anyone.
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Visitors to the site are reminded that the details contained within user comments are uncorroborated and as such should not be read as fact but as the opinion of the person who left the comment.
Comments:
I followed advice found on this forum and emailed the CEO, Martin Long. I reecived the following today:
Thank you for contacting LA Fitness Member Relations. I write in reference to your recent correspondence.
I am sorry to hear you are unhappy with the service you have received from LA Fitness. I assure you that we endeavour to provide the best possible service for all our members and apologise if you feel this has not been achieved.
I have spoken to my manager who has agreed to cancel and waive the outstanding amount on the membership. I have instructed ARC to cease contact immediately.
I apologise for any inconvenience that this may have caused.
Kind Regards
So the matter is closed, but not without some effort.
LA Fitness are not willing to accept the contracts have been breached by by the consumer credit act and goods and services acts and hence have referred the case to RCS (LA Fitness debt collection agents).
They also seem to think that allowing minors of the opposite sex to shower along with grown ups is acceptable in open communal showers. Personally I think it's wrong that a 9 year old girl is allowed to shower with grown men. This is just one of the reasons we're trying to leave!!
I have sympathy with anyone else dealing with this company!!
My opinion - avoid. This company are worse than a mobile phone company when you come to cancel their services.
An acquaintance of mine has had his Direct Debit increased without notice, and is currently sueing LA Fitness ( I understand).
I have been a member of most of the big gym chains in London (including LA Fitness, Fitness First and Virgin) and they continue to amaze me with how appalling the service is and what a bad service experience they provide.
The service is dire and they truly do not care about their customers - I know of no other business which could offer such poor customer service and stay in business.
The facilities aren't normally that good however that isn't my major gripe as they are generally clean. If you do compare them to facilities in the US though they are a lot busier and have less facilities and equipment available per member.
The worst thing however with gyms in London is the sales staff. Unbelievable people. They will literally tell you anything in order to get you to sign up. Will I get a free massage every day, of course sir; Will I be able to get a free burger and chips with each sesssion, why of course madam. The worse thing is there is no come back to these guys and there are very few alternatives, so the customer has very little power in the relationship. The number of stories I have heard where people have been mis-lead into signing a long term contract are most worrying.
For this service we have the privillege of paying somewhere between £30 - £100 per month! Have you ever actually worked out how much that costs per session? If you compare that to gym memberships in the US which average at c.$30 a month even in big cities we can be paying up to 3 to 4 times more than our transatlantic friends!
I have left all gyms behind me and am now enjoying sport at a new sports and social club called 'Come Play Sport' which is more fun, sociable and much cheaper! Until London gym's start concentrating on the customer, re-think their pricing models and invest in modern facilities I won't be going back soon. Hopefully this petition will encourage more people to do the same and force the gym chains to take some action.
Sorry for the long rant but any words of advice would be greatly appreciated.
I'll take on LAF on my own thanks!
Roger McRogerson at 21st Jan 2010, 10:34AM
Good luck to everyone who has to deal with LA Fitness.
Your 1st Stop for confidential
LEGAL ADVICE
Confidential legal Advice and Assistance direct from a Solicitor
We are not a call centre
We provide a personal service on issues of UK Law (English & Scots)
Immediate Advice by telephone with legal issues and problems
Assistance with correspondence and court documents
We aim to assist you to resolve problems
Calls recorded
£1.50pm-max £30.00
Mon - Fri: 8.30am-6.30pm
Should the line be engaged we are speaking with a client
please leave a message - we will call back
or wait a short while and call again
Seems they'll help, but only for a price....
Roger McRogerson at 13th Jan 2010, 03:05PM
Once the fixed period of the contract has ended and you have given any notice required to terminate (preferably in writing) then you should have no further liability and if they pester you then you can claim damages from them.
Westcoaster at 6th Jan 2010, 07:06AM
This was it for me and I decided to cancel - and boy did they NOT want me to cancel. Despite a phonecall to membership services, an email to membership services my account was not cancelled and I continued to receive the harrassing phonecalls.
I then found this blog and other websites about LA Fitness and have found a way to cancel my memberhship:
1. First email the CEO of LA FITNESS martin.long@lafitness.co.uk, and send a separate email to your branch (look at their website). In here detail the DISGUSTING behaviour of all the staff/departments you have so far dealt with at LA Fitness and DEMAND your contract and any oustanding balances to be terminated effective immediately.
2. Simultanously send a letter - detailing your complaint and HOW LA FITNESS BREACHED THE CONTRACT (very important that you state exactly how they breached the contract and why you now terminate it ex misselling, poor customer service etc) AND that you are seeking legal advice AND that you have already sent an email to the CEO and Branch manager - to their headoffice (address found at website) and send a copy of the same letter to your branch manager and a copy to the Trading Standards Institute local office (you can find addresses for all their branches at www.tradingstandard.gov.uk)and keep one copy safely at home. Ensure you state a date here of when you believe they should have completed this action of terminating your contract and by which date you would expect a reply> 7-10 working days from the date of the letter is enough.
I just completed this and within 3 working days of when the letters/emails were sent had a response from the head of membership services (via email) confirming that they have terminated my contract and removed any outstanding balances.
Although if you do not receive a response following this method after 7-10 working days then I suggest filing a small claim with the courts (which costs around £60) and send a copy of that complaint to the headoffice and follow up with an email to the CEO so that he knows that you are taking this seriously and effectively taking them to court (my friend did that and LA FITNESS quickly decided to settle out of court!!).
Don't lose hope - we can beat these B****rds!!!
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