Gym Memberships During The Pandemic - A Cautionary Tale
Welcome to Saving Money with Andrew! If you’re new, you might want to check out my top 9 money-saving tips.
A recurring theme of the last several months has been companies behaving badly during the pandemic:
StubHub is still not refunding cancelled events, instead offering customers (basically) useless vouchers (still waiting for my Ali Wong refund, guys! I’m not giving up!)
The airlines are doing everything possible to avoid providing cash refunds. After several phone calls and about 5 hours of waiting on hold with Delta, I’ve received full refunds for four out of our six tickets so far.
The power company literally made up (estimated) electric usage even when our apartment was completely vacant. Fortunately, a quick call straightened this out.
A loyal reader of the newsletter recently sent me this shocking story about major gym chain Town Sports International, which owns the New York Sports Club and Lucille Roberts chains, among many others. Town Sports owns 185 gyms with 605,000 members (about 1 in 500 Americans), about half of them located in New York. According to the complaint filed by the State of New York, when COVID struck, Town Sports closed its New York-based gyms and laid off most of its employees, like most other gyms in locked-down states across the country. But Town Sports did something special…they charged New York members their April membership fee despite being closed.
Fast-forward four months, and gyms across the country have begun to reopen. Some, but not all, of Town Sports’ gyms are now open.
In early September, Town Sports charged members yet another monthly fee, claiming that the fact that some of their gyms had reopened justified resuming charges. A couple of weeks later, they filed for bankruptcy. The whole situation is a mess, and although it seems that members will eventually get refunds (the New York Attorney General’s Office has even gotten involved!), it may take quite a while and in the interim people could be out hundreds of dollars.[1] If you’re a current member, I strongly recommend following the situation closely.
There are a few morals to this cautionary tale for everyone:
Be extremely careful about signing up for any recurring subscription. Many companies offer attractive promotions for signing up, banking that customers will forget to cancel. Always set a calendar reminder for (i) the end of any promotional period and (ii) 11 months to periodically reconsider whether you want to continue paying.
For some reason, gyms are famous for sketchy behavior. The last gym I was a member of would occasionally “make mistakes” about what my membership level (and fee) was. Notably, these mistakes never seemed to be in my favor. Make sure to read the fine print when you sign up, review your credit card statement monthly and be on the lookout for any weird charges.
Keep track of any subscription cancellations when they’re required in writing. Notably, the people who are most likely to get refunds (or at least being charged) are those who made sure to promptly cancel their membership.
I’d love to hear if any readers have been dealing with their own refund battles. Stay strong and persistent, you might get your money back!
And now…Andrew’s pick of the week:
I’m not a big fiction reader, but I’ve been really enjoying The Secret History, Donna Tartt’s 1992 debut novel (she later won the Pulitzer Prize for The Goldfinch). The story begins as what seems like a formulaic coming-of-age story, set at a small liberal arts college in New England much like the one I attended almost 20 years ago (!). But then it becomes something very different altogether, with some crazy twists.
I hope this has been helpful. If you liked it, please share it with a friend! Also, please send me your feedback, requests, and success stories.
[1] Fortunately, a judge has at least temporarily ordered the company to stop charging fees to members of closed gyms, and those who had requested cancellations.