2 On Your Side: LA Fitness Contracts
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So one of the most popular New Year’s resolutions is of course to get fit so January is one of the busiest months for new gym memberships and for hiring a personal trainer ah but as one local gym being upfront about what its new customers are actually signing up for CBS 2’s investigator Kristine Lazar joins us now with more on this you gotta listen to this you know it’s so hard these days because if you look at the Terms of Service of all these contracts you sign their pages and pages and pages so people really need to know what they’re getting into now once you join LA Fitness they’ll offer you a free training session and that trainer will then sit down with you to talk about training packages but when we went undercover we found that some of those trainers weren’t always truthful about that fine print their pitch sounds great the lowest monthly gym membership in town with no contract but is LA Fitness being truthful with potential clients I was furious I was livid I felt taken advantage last summer santa clarita pastor tony montijo met with a trainer at this LA Fitness in Santa Clarita to discuss monthly training packages I said I cannot afford any of this I could afford maybe one or two months did you ask him if you could cancel at any time yes I did I made it abundantly clear that I cannot afford a personal trainer for a whole year so after two months when Tony wanted to cancel his training package he says the manager told him he would have to buy out his contract for more than $1000 and at that point he said that he was so sorry that I was misled and that the person that signed me up is no longer there iliza Valley says she was told the same thing about the same trainer but she tried to confront him about the contract that she signed she signed up for a membership at LA Fitness in Santa Clarita and decided to ask about swim lessons in the gyms pool iliza says she was very clear that she wanted to sign up for a package of eight classes for about $300 so all this time I’m just focused on one package for eight classes eliza says she never saw a contract until they emailed it to her after she had signed it they mislead you and that they trap you into this contract stuff turns out what Eliza signed up for was eight classes a month for an entire year more than $2,000 worth of swim lessons it’s like I’m going to be competing Olympics I have to do this kind of a training for a whole year it’s a joke hi how are ya – on your side went to three area le Fitness’s including Tony and Eliza’s location to hear the sales pitch this employee told us when it comes to memberships contract she assured us that le fitness doesn’t do contracts but their membership agreement says right here it’s a contract and at this San Fernando Valley location this personal trainer assured us we wouldn’t be locked into a training contract if we signed up for one and if I needed to cancel could I it was only once we pushed her for specifics that she told us about the buyout we asked at all three locations if we could take a contract home to review it and to said no do you have copies of the membership contracts I can’t go home and read it one location did give us a membership contract although they insisted it wasn’t a contract only fitness told you on your side that the terms of the contract are always displayed on a large computer screen at the time of the signing they would not tell us however what their policy is on allowing potential customers to take home a contract to review it before they sign it now after we contacted them LA Fitness did agree to let Tony and Eliza out of their training contracts and they refunded the extra months they paid after they asked to cancel so the key is you want to look at those contracts you want to take some time to review them if a business won’t let you take those contracts home ahead of time then maybe you want to look for a different business the line got me there is no contract but we’ll give you a copy of it right right okay I’ll tell you something right there thank you well Ken – on your side help you just email – on your side at cbs.com with your problem or on social media use the hashtag – on your side
