Small Business Solutions

Talk about an exercise in frustration. One of the easiest things in life to get can also be one of the hardest to get rid of: a gym membership. When a North Shore woman’s teenage son was roped in to one by the opening of a new gym, and he found it impossible to cancel, she asked NewsCenter 5 for help. Jennifer from Danvers — who asked us not to give her last name since she also owns a business on the North Shore — says she’s spent countless hours simply trying to cancel a $10 per month gym membership for her son, since he’s now out of state at college. But it’s been a heavy lift.”It’s way too much work. Way too much work,” she said. “In their contract it says you show up with a letter, and that’s what we did.” Last summer, Jennifer’s son signed up to join a new gym coming to Danvers, Crunch Fitness. As a perk of signing up before it opened, he was supposed to get a membership for $9.99 a month.”I was expecting $9.99, and I was charged $17.99 (a month),” Jennifer said. “That’s why I noticed a discrepancy right away.”The discrepancies continued on her monthly credit card statements, where the charges came under several different names like “20128 Crunch Danvers” or “ABC Crunch Fitness.” Jennifer leaned on her almost 18-year-old son to sort it out. After speaking with a manager, he secured the $9.99 monthly price but came home with a one-year contract.”Which I was a little frustrated about,” she said. “He didn’t understand you’re locked in until February of 2025. You’re leaving for college in the summer.”Massachusetts has a robust law on health club memberships, which is what got Boston Sports Clubs sued by the state during the pandemic. In 2020, that chain shut down, laid off staff but still continued to charge members and made it impossible to cancel. State law spells out numerous rights to cancel, including when a gym closes or in Jennifer’s son’s case if you move more than 25 miles away from a gym operated by the company. In this case, he was going to school in Vermont, far from any Crunch Fitness location. Per the contract, he tried dropping off a letter to the Danvers gym manager but was told he wasn’t there and no one else would take it.”He was told he needed to come back and meet with the manager,” Jennifer said. “It was the end of the month. He wanted it turned in in the month of July before leaving for school.”The contract also said he could mail a letter, so that’s what they did and suddenly got slapped with a collection notice.”A collection notice showed up in the mail for an unusual amount of money. It doesn’t even equate to the full term of the contract,” Jennifer said. “Why would it even go to collections without picking up the phone to try to reach out? ‘Hey, you canceled the membership. We have questions.'”When NewsCenter 5 reporter Ben Simmoneau showed up at Crunch in Danvers a man named Scott identified himself as the manager. Suddenly, it seemed to be much easier to cancel. He promised to take care of the issue, and Jennifer’s son’s membership was finally canceled.Crunch has numerous complaints at the Better Business Bureau with several related to the difficulty of canceling. “It is very challenging to cancel membership despite calling and emailing,” one person wrote. “When I tried to cancel my membership, no one returned my calls,” posted another.”If this is what’s happening and we’re just one case, what’s happening to hundreds of other people?” Jennifer said. NewsCenter 5 reached out to the ownership group behind this Crunch location — Fitness Holdings Northeast LLC — but they did not respond to a request for comment.