I Hate L.A. Fitness

I joined L.A. Fitness about 3 years ago. I think there was a $150 sign up fee. It has cost $35 per month since then. I have used my membership quite a bit.

My husband signed up 2 years ago. I think he has used his membership 2 or 3 times.

My daughter (the Student) signed up about a year ago, but she used her account only once.

I tried to cancel several times, but they have this really cool policy. They make it easy to sign up. You can do it right then and there in the club. You just give them your bank account number and they begin auto-debiting your account.

But if you want to cancel, you have to pick up a form from the club, fill out information such as the account number from which the club is auto-debiting, and mail that to the company. I have tried to do this several times but I lose the form or forget to look for the bank account information.

So finally, this past December, I closed my bank account. There were too many things coming out of my account on auto-debit, so I closed it. (I can't believe what I went through with Sprint, but that's another story, and they did finally fix my problem.)

I have received several calls from L.A. Fitness for the last week. They are treating me as if I am a debtor. One guy even yelled at me and said they would close my account if I didn't provide new billing information. Well, duh! I was trying to close two accounts!

Just now someone called and the only point they kept repeating is that I gave them notice on March 3rd that I was canceling the two accounts (I finally sent notice in because someone said that even though I closed my bank account, I still had to send notice) and that wasn't enough notice. They said I have to give 30 days notice.

I repeated several times that they weren't going to get my bank account information again. I kept explaining that we barely used the 2 accounts, that I was going to keep my membership there, and they should just let me off the hook.

This doesn't make sense. I understand that they have set policy (designed to help them make more money) which requires 30-days notice to terminate an account. But this seems unfair.

First, the only way to have a membership is to set up a bank account from which they can withdraw money. Then, the only way to terminate the membership is to give 30-days notice so that they can bill you for one more month.

I think I smell a lawsuit here.