So you want to be a gym rat? Well, we commend your motivation but buyer beware – you wanna’ talk about a racket? And we don’t mean the tennis kind. Horror stories abound regarding gym membership rip-offs. It seems every major fitness club has spent more money on litigation than Enron and Junk Bond salesmen can count. They make all that money by selling expensive memberships to people who don’t end up showing up. Consider this, if 50% of the members actually turned up, they wouldn’t be able to accommodate the massive overcrowding. So, before you take the plunge, consider the YMCA ymca.net/find_your_ymca/, local universities or other fitness routines – the free kind. And know these things.
Thing No. 1 You know what they say about location.
You may
like some really swanky place in some fancy neighborhood but we’re
pretty sure that if your gym is more than 5-10 minutes from work or
home, this will add just the hurdle your lazy psyche is looking for to
rationalize not going. Conduct your search in a small radius and
only expand if you don’t find anything you like because the only thing
that will discourage you from going more than a drive is if you hate
the place and everyone in it. gymticket.com or citysearch.com
Thing No. 2 Try before you buy.
Any gym will give you at least
one guest pass – The bigger ones, for at least 7 days. You can also
squeeze 10-12 free guest passes out of friends that belong to fancy
gyms because the gyms want them to bring people in. The majors
will almost always give you a trial membership for a discounted fee
(usually equating to between $20-$30 per month.) Definitely take them
up on this for as long as you can. You should be able to apply this fee
to a membership later. Do not commit to anything beyond the trial
period – pay very close attention to what you sign. Make sure you
test it out at the times you would normally work out. There is nothing
worse than standing around waiting for some joker to get off a
machine. Again, with the majors, you should also get at least one
consultation with a private trainer (1 hour) to asses what kind of
shape you’re in, take you through an intense workout (which will
familiarize you with the facility) and stretch you. Make sure you walk
away with a specific routine that you can follow on your own. If
you’re going to take classes, check them out (if the time table works
for you, make sure it isn’t going to change) and see what the
instructors are like at your preferred times and how crowded the
classes are.
Thing No. 3 Stretching is very important.
If you’re up
to it, most gyms will extend your free trial if you ask. The
bigger gyms have salespeople that work on commission and are very
anxious to sign up members. They usually have the authority to
stretch the trial period at least once to get a sale.
Thing No 4 Shop around at the end of the month.
This is
when health clubs are desperately trying to meet quotas so you’ll be in
the best position to negotiate. The spring and summer months are
especially good because they lose memberships to people who simply take
to the free outdoors so they offer special deals that you can lock in
for the year. November and December are also good times to shop
since business is slow while everyone postpones until after the
holidays. January is, in theory, the absolute worst time.
We’re guessing that “getting in shape” is the number one New Year’s
resolution around the world (well, perhaps not in Uzbekistan but almost
everywhere else.) On the other hand, many gyms try to optimize
the spike in interest at the start of the year by offering special
deals. You can check it out but you probably won’t have as much
negotiating room and besides, it will be packed.
Thing No. 5 Shop around for special promotions, discounts and
coupons.
Truth is, you should avoid signing up for a long-term
membership at all if you can. Look for a place that charges you
by the month. If you must sign a contract, look everywhere for
special deals – grocery stores, your employer, online promotions and
newspapers. And, ask health clubs about current promotions as
well as off-peak, buddy programs and family discounts. You can’t
really compare membership costs online because they vary from location
to location and are individually negotiated (Thing No. 10) but if
you’re feeling rambunctious, look for message boards like fatwallet.com to at least get an idea of deals that other people
have gotten in other places – a decent barometer.
Thing No. 6 Look for resale memberships.
This can be a little
dicey but there are deals to be had from people who are selling their
memberships on ebay.com. You will likely have to pay their transfer
fees (around $100) but they might have been able to flirt with the
salesperson and score a great deal and you can potentially benefit from
their suave moves.
Thing No. 7 Use Your trial time to get the real scoop.
Go ahead and pester your fellow members and find out what they paid for
their membership. Do some investigative reporting. These
people are a treasure trove of information about the ins and
outs. And, as you know, people just love to tell you all of their
complaints which, of course, you want to know about before you have to
experience them all for yourself. Don’t forget to pay attention
to the towel situation, lockers, availability of toiletries and
cleanliness. Even if you don’t normally shower at the gym, you
may have to someday. You don’t want it to be traumatic.
Thing No. 8 Breakdown all the options.
Find out if you
can transfer your membership to someone else, if there are fees for
towels/locker or automatic debit payments. Breakdown every single
amenity that you will have access to and every single cost you will be
charged. Take a look at your cost per visit assuming realistic
attendance and find out if you can turn it off when you go out of town.
Thing No. 9 Make sure you have an exit strategy.
You want to
be able to cancel the contract at any time. Many gyms will try to
foist a non-cancelable contract on you. Or, they’ll only let you
cancel if you move and your new location doesn’t have a facility within
10 miles. Screw all that. You want to be able to cancel at
any time. If you really can’t wrangle a cancelable membership, at
the very least, check the grace period for a full refund. (It can
be anywhere from 7-30 days.) The legal “lemon law” is 3 days.
Thing No. 10 Negotiate. Hard.
These memberships are highly
negotiable. More negotiable than cars. These guys have A
LOT of wiggle room and they will start out presenting you with plans
that are exorbitant. People say you should act dumb, poor and
uninterested and those fees will drop like lead dumbbells.
Definitely pit them against their competitors. We’ve seen
initiation fees drop 80-percent with a half-hour of back-and-forth
negotiation and monthly fees cut in half. Once you’ve driven the
fees down to rock bottom, try to get that price for the shortest
possible commitment. In general we don’t like to see you signing
up for more than 6-12 months because God only knows what will be going
on in your life by then or if it will turn out that you don’t have the
gym rat DNA after all. Which, is why we don’t even like to see
you pay initiation fees at all. They can be few and far between
but there are gyms that do not require them and operate on a
pay-as-you-go basis.
Thing No. 11 Get it in writing and go home.
These
salespeople will lie. Egregiously. They will tell you that
Pilates classes are $2 when they are really $20. They will tell
you that you can cancel when you can’t. They will tell you
anything. You think we’re exaggerating? Think again.
The Internet is full of stories of people being taken into back rooms
by some Hans or Franz telling lies as fat as their heads: my3cents.com consumercomplaints.com, pissedconsumer.com.
“Trainers,” that is, who aren’t the ones that are going to get
personally sued. Lots of times, they’ll show you the binder with
all the different programs but won’t let you photocopy it. Review
the contract at home. Carefully. You’ll likely find lots of
fascinating things they didn’t tell you about. If they tell you
the deal is only good for that day…they’re lying.
Thing No. 12 Negotiate again.
Finally, just as
you’re about to sign on the dotted line, pause, put down the pen and
start in on getting Hans to throw in some perks. A free class or
two here, a private training session there. As they say, “work
it.” If the salesperson is ready to push you through the plate
glass window by the time you leave, your work there is done.
Thing No. 13 Say no to finance charges.
Never sign a
membership contract that has finance charges attached to it.
These will add up to a fortune.
Thing No. 14 No automatic renewals.
These guys will charge you
for the rest of your life and then charge your children if you let
them. Many of these Byzantine contracts include automatic
renewals. Don’t agree to it. In fact, if you can avoid
authorizing them to charge your credit card without your signature that
would be best. Again, horror stories like nobody’s business about
credit cards being charged after cancellation and other unauthorized
nightmares that take months and months to get credited because
everybody you talk to says that somebody else has to do that. complaint.bbb.org
Thing No. 15 Bond with the bonded.
Many a local gym has gone
out of business after the members have paid their fees. If
they’re bonded, that means that money has been set aside to pay back
membership fees. Some states require these performance bonds for
health clubs.
Now, go you chicken fat, GO.