FTC suits the gym chains to make it difficult to cancel membership

The Federal Trade Committee filed a lawsuit against the operators of many gym chains, including La Fitness, on Wednesday due to allegations that they make it very difficult to cancel membership. Perhaps this is the news welcome to anyone who has dissatisfaction with trying to cancel with the gym.

Companies that are being prosecuted by FTC are Fitness International and Fitness & SPORTS clubs, which have a gym chains such as Esporta Fitness, City Sports Club and Club Studio. The largest series, La Fitness, has more than 600 sites throughout the United States

The 22 -page complaint, which was Posted onlineDetails how FTC thinks that La Fitness and others have created a stressful process for consumers to cancel. For beginners, members must log in to their website and print the cancellation form. But users are encouraged to subscribe to the use of the La Fitness app and QR code, which means that many people do not seem to know their login information for the site. There is no way to cancel through the application, according to FTC.

Customers who do not know how to log in with their adoption data need to jump through more hoops to get them. The user must submit the original email address of the user to obtain the membership account, distribute the “key brand number” when registering it, and the first five numbers of the bank account or credit card number included in the account, according to the complaint.

The cancellation form is not provided to the public on the company’s website and can only be found after registration of users. The model must be printed, which is a very real obstacle for many families in 2025.

Even if you discover how to log in using your credentials and print the form, customers must either send the form or bring the form to a financial site, where they will face more obstacles. FTC says customers must send cancellation forms via registered or approved mail. Although most fitness sites are open seven days a week, and often for 19 hours a day, the cancellation is only acceptable between 9 am and 5 pm, when most people are at work.

Nobody really wants to take PTO to cancel the gym membership. Thus, people can stumble with the membership of the gym they no longer want.

The press statement of the FTC newspaper, which announces the lawsuit, claims that La Fitness has trained employees to refuse to cancel requests by phone or email. And “consumers who are trying to cancel their membership by stopping fees to their bank or credit card find that they are re -deposited, and they are often under new account numbers.” FTC says FTC and the online shopping law (Rosca). It seems that the cancellation without anything more than clicking on the app will be a reasonable and friendly method for consumers to do business.

” press release.

“Tens of thousands of La Fitness customers have been touched by difficulties – the transfers were often limited to specific or required times of speaking to specific managers who were often not present or available. FTC will not hesitate to behave on behalf of consumers when you think companies suffocate consumers to choose the frequent implications they want to keep.”

La Fitness is far from the only work that seems to be stressful Automatic renewal policies. How many times have you registered for a digital subscription of some kind and failed to cancel before a fee is imposed on you again? It looks like an increasingly common business model these days. I noticed FTC.

After publishing this article, Fitness International, the La Fitness operator, sent a lengthy statement attributed to Jill Hill, the club’s operations president:

We are disappointed that FTC chose to follow this complaint. These allegations are useless, and the FTC’s statute depends on – the law of the online shoppers (Rosca) was designed, which was about 15 years ago – to address only online retail transactions, and does not require any specific method of cancellation, and has not been applied before to the health club industry. We are still confident that we will fit in court.

It is important to note that most of our membership, and all our personal training membership, is purchased personally on our club sites. Nevertheless, 18 months ago before entering the new “Click” base in FTC, we operated the option to cancel online proactively for all members, regardless of how they originally registered them. With only a few clicks, members may cancel online – a step that we have implemented voluntarily before the regulatory final dates. Although the Federal Appeal Court recently nullified the “Click to Awad” base of the Federal Trade Committee, we have chosen to maintain the online cancellation program to provide members in another simple way to cancel. Members have always had the option to cancel personally in any club, or by mail, and those who wanted to do so can cancel this way.

Our company is working hard to comply with all the laws of the health club state regarding the cancellation of membership and presentation at least every method of cancellation that each state requires specifically. Over the years, the company has taken many steps to improve registration and cancellation.

Fitness International is still intended to provide high -quality fitness options while maintaining compliance with all the laws in force. We will continue to defend our practices strongly while ensuring that our members receive clear, simple and fair organic experiences.