My win against Premier Fitness

I never like writing long posts, but I am making an exception here. I don’t want to see anyone else getting falsely billed by this gym. For the lazy, there is a TL;DR at the end of this post.

Early on in 2009, I signed up for a year of membership at Premier Fitness. The location was excellent and the price was right. It was the perfect gym for me to visit after work and then catch a train home. There was also a location just a short walk from my home for weekend workouts.

I walked in and signed up for a year and paid out the entire year in one shot using a credit card that I knew was about to expire within a month or two. The reasoning being that I had been told by many people that the gym has some shady billing practices and frequently over-charges their customers. My previous gym had already tried renewing billing me once after my membership had expired, so I was already wary. I asked the salesperson multiple times whether the membership would auto-renew and she agreed that it would not. I looked over the contract and confirmed that it wouldn’t. Even if it did, I figured who cares. It’s not like that card is going to be valid in a month’s time anyways.

After that was all done and I was on my way out, the girl that sold the membership to me insisted that I sign up for a physical assessment if I want to get my membership card so I could actually enter the gym. The session is free, but I know how they go. It’s a 1 hour session where a trainer pokes and prods you and has you work out under the guise of making sure you know what you’re doing when all they’re really trying to do is sell you on personal training. Showed up for the appointment, the trainer wanted to see my contract in order to print out the card. I never got the contract back and I forgot about it until a week later. By that point, the gym had lost it. I didn’t deem it important at the time. My thinking was that I had paid for my membership in one shot with a card that was about to expire. It’s not like they can charge it or anything.

9 or 10 months later, I had decided Premier is no longer a gym for me. The downtown location I used was going shittier by the day. They weren’t maintaining their equipment, the change rooms stank, many of the lockers didn’t have latches to actually put a lock on them, and they almost never had soap in the showers. Couple weeks later (End of November, early December) I went to the gym one day and I was told that the gym would be closed for renovations starting the following day. I asked them to confirm when my membership would expire, and they told me by end of December.

In my head, everything was on track. My membership was about to expire so I went off to sign up at a new gym and move on. Some time in February, I get a call from Premier saying my credit card was declined and that I owed them $35 for the month of January. I went in and argued with them saying that the membership was not supposed to auto renew. I had made it very clear that I was unhappy with Premier Fitness and that I had moved on to another gym and that I wanted to be pulled from this auto-billing cycle. In the end, she asked me to show her the contract and I explained what happened. I asked her to pull out the contract, she said “It’s at the head office”. After a bit of discussion, she finally said she would call the office and try to waive the fee.

I never heard back from them until August. I got a letter in the mail from the lawyers that Premier Fitness uses stating that I owed something to the tune of $250. I thought “What the fucking fuck???” Stormed over to the gym and had a discussion with the same lady from January. Same lady was there waiting for me. She remembered our discussion. She remembered exactly what we had agreed to. Yet she actually had the gall to tell me that I should have asked them to cancel my membership and that the head office had declined the request to waive the month of January. She said she’d see what she can do and call in 2-3 days.

A week passes and nothing. I go there in person, she tells me they didn’t respond. At this point, I started wigging out. Here I am being told that I owe $200+ for something I never even signed up for, and this company is having lawyers send me letters threatening legal action if I don’t pay up for a mistake that was caused directly by this lady. She said she’d call me within 2-3 days again.

I finally get a call back and she says they waived all but $35. I told her to show me a copy of the contract or I won’t pay. At this point, I stopped caring if it went to collections and affected my credit score. I refuse to financially support an organization that is trying to extort money from me. She said she would look into it and never got back to me.

Fast forward to last week. I get a call from the Premier Fitness head office that I let go to voicemail and an email that I ignored. They called me again a few days later. The lady on the other line said I owed something to the tune of $375 now.

I flipped. The gist of my angry, expletive laden yelling boiled down to something like the following:

I mentioned that the letter they sent in august was for a lower amount and that the amount was changed to $35. I also told her the same thing I told the other lady I dealt with. I’m not paying a dollar unless they show me a contract with my signature on it and a clause stating that I agree to recurring payments. I am not ashamed to say it, but by the end of my rant, the lady was nearly in tears and she said “I will look into it”.

After I cooled down, I wrote her the following email:

Per our phone call,



I will be willing to discuss this matter in detail if you can provide a copy of the contract I had originally signed, as I was informed multiple times on registering that I would not receive any recurring charges after my term ended. Towards the end of my term with the gym, I had spoken with a representative who had informed me that my membership was about to expire. At no time did I agree to renew my membership.



The amount you quoted me on the phone is far larger than the outstanding amount letter I received from Premier on August 17. Further, I dealt with Ann at the Burnhamthorpe location regarding this and she had informed me that the charges were dropped to roughly $30.



As of this point, I feel that premier has no basis for charging me anything, as I had covered 1 year’s worth of membership up front in a single payment.



If you want to collect, get your numbers straight, and provide me with a copy of the contract that I had signed with Premier because my copy was taken from me by one of the gym’s trainers during my initial physical assessment.



I will be willing to talk with you further after you have these details together.

She finally responded today:

Good Afternoon



I got your e-mail and I apologise for the misunderstanding on my part concerning your biiling a/c. I ask one of my colleagues he told me that as far as auto-renewal is concerned, you are not in the

renewal process.

So once more my apology to you Emad.

Only took them about 10 months to actually cancel my membership and stop bothering me about billing.

TL;DR: Prepaid for a year’s worth of membership at a gym. They tried billing me for a month after my membership expired. Said they would fix it. 8 months later, had a lawyer contact me saying I owed them for the past 8 months. They said they would fix it. They contacted me again saying I owed them for 10 months now. I screamed expletives over the phone and sent an email. They claim to have fixed it.