Casman Blog

My wife and I joined Gorilla Sports in San Francisco in 2005. It was a three year commitment, with a clause in the contract that said if you relocated to a place farther than 25 miles away from a Bally’s affiliated gym, you could cancel, no problem. Just a $50 cancellation fee. After a year, my startup died, my job disappeared, and we moved away to New Mexico, back near family. December 29, 2005, I called to tell them I was moving. I paid my cancellation fee soon thereafter.

New Mexico was not only not close to a Bally’s affiliated gym, there’s none of their gyms in the whole state. First I was told that my proof was rejected because I wasn’t making a permanent move. (They said it was a minimum of 6 months, nowhere defined in the contract, but either way I ended up living in New Mexico for 10 months.) Next I was told that I was canceled, but my wife wasn’t. They weren’t sure she was my wife, and after I faxed a marriage certificate, next they weren’t sure that we actually moved together. Apparently they assume that most married couples moving are getting divorced.

It doesn’t matter either that it was a contract with me only, with my wife added as a second member. She didn’t sign the contract anywhere. I received mistaken letters from Bally’s addressed to different people more than once, I received bills for different amounts of money regularly, I got constant (2-3 times a week) phone calls from their accounts receivables people. Many times their tone was threatening and obnoxious. I was told that my credit rating could be hurt, and that I was unreasonable. Nonsensically, often after I had sent in still more materials for them, and my account would be “under review,” the accounts receivable people would still call, saying I should pay in the meantime. The Cancellation Department reviews were independent of bills collection.

When I finally got both of us canceled at the end of May, after 10-20 phones calls from me, multiple faxes, and probably over 50 calls from Bally’s, I could not get them to send me a cancellation letter. I tried 3 times over 3 months, and each time was told that it had already been sent but that they would “resend” it. I remind you, their bills had no trouble finding me.

Stunningly, in December 2006, I have started getting bills from Crunch Gym, which I have never set foot in. Crunch had bought Bally contracts out, or something along those lines, but had so many problems with incorrect records that they stopped the relationship after 5 months. Still, Crunch claims that we need to deal with Bally’s directly, even though the bill on our credit card is from Crunch Gym.

It is clear to me that this is a deliberate set of corporate policies to bully and threaten, and if I was not unemployed during most of this period, I would not have had the time or energy to deal with Bally’s constantly shifting tactics. Most certainly, I would have, at some point, paid some amount of money, and given up. But this was so obviously wrong, and such an abuse of their corporate resources versus one individual, I was determined to stand my ground.

UPDATE: It wasn’t just us. Bally’s has been heavily criticized for overly aggressive sales and marketing.
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