In 2006, Club One deducted
approximately
$400 from my bank
account - without my permission.
At the time, it was a huge surprise and extremely stressful. It
was like being mugged by 2 Club One managers. I had previously
been mugged for $15 by some thugs on Geary, and I would have to say it
was quite a bit more healthful to be hit over the head by an angry kid
from the projects, than to be robbed by Club One.
It took me some time to be able to tell this story without my own blood
pressure going up.
When I signed up at the Fitness
Advantage with Troy, the Club Manager,
in 1996, I expressed my concern about letting that health club have
access to my bank account for the purpose of automatic billing.
She re-assured me that I could trust Fitness Advantage with my bank
account - that they would never make a withdrawal without my permission.
I was also a member of Frog's,
a gym in Solana Beach. It worked
out that Club One, a health club chain in the San Francisco Bay Area,
bought both Fitness Advantage and Frog's.
In 2005, I went on medical leave
from Club One. I had a bad
outcome from LASIK eye surgery. I explained this to the people at
the club in Encinitas. I agreed to put my membership on
indefinite hold for $10 a month.
In 2006, someone from the
Rancho Bernardo Club One location emailed me
to tell me that they would be continuing my membership vacation status
for another 6 months. At
the time I was quite overwhelmed with money problems and it never
crossed my mind that they would start charging me $40 a month for an
active membership.
That is, a health club in San
Diego
started billing me for the use of their club, even though they knew I
was living in San Francisco - that I was not using their club - and
that I had put my membership on $10 a month
vacation hold because of health problems with my vision.
One thing they certainly did not
have my permission for. Not only
did they convert me from vacation status to the much more expensive
active status - they also increased my dues
to $46 a month. I don't recall ever agreeing to that, but that's
what they did.
In short, I exhort other
gym-rats to be very careful about trusting
Club One with your financial accounts.
In my 2007 communications with
Club One, they insisted they had the
legal
right to do what they did.
In my opinion, there may have
been some pressure to "meet numbers" in
2006 - possibly in anticipation of an upcoming IPO - and my bank
account was just a casualty of Club One's "corporate progress".
As it turned out, they
auto-deducted from my bank account. I
didn't discover it until January 2007, when they had tapped it out.
My experience with Club One is
as follows - it is a significant mistake
to enter into any contractual relationship with Club One.
Their robbery of my bank account was significantly detrimental to my
health. The un-authorized withdrawals they made hurt me.
Sincerely,
NC_Infotech@yahoo.com
