Bally Total Fitness Customer Service Confirms Member Complaints

By Amanda Gonzalez

Bally Total Fitness (BTF) boasts about being located in over 40 cities nationally and having 4 million satisfied customers, according to their website. After visiting Ballysucks.net you wonder how many more members the company actually has that are unsatisfied. The creator of the site was unavailable for comment but does publish his story on the site. After joining Bally Total Fitness for what he thought was a 12-month membership, he went to terminate his membership because he was returning to Europe. While overseas the gym continued to bill him monthly for 2 years. He finally received notice from a collection agency about owing the gym a large amount of money. After trying for months to rectify the situation nothing was resolved. So according to his website, Mladen Sudarevic decided, “I will cost this company thousands of times more money than I paid to collection agency. I will let the world know about their business practices.”

I have heard complaints from friends about their memberships with BTF. When you sign up for membership, “it’s like your signing away your life, they never mention that you have choices other than the 3 year membership” said Bejal Shah, a 3 year member who has been trying to get out of her contract for a year since she has not visited the gym for some time. “At this point I have 3 months until my contract is up, I’d rather pay the money than have to deal with member services people,” said Shah.

Many members of BTF faced the same problem when trying to break a contract with the gym. Many customers get duped into signing a long time contract. The typical comment on Ballysucks.net is that members try to get out of the contract but unlike other contracts there is no cancellation fee, you simply cannot cancel. There is a clause that the company recently began advertising through their hold music – “work out 12 times in your first 30 days” and you can cancel. Let’s think about this – if you find that you do not like the place, what are the chances that you will work out 12 times there?

If a member does not pay their membership fees their account is sent to a collection agency and with an APR of up to 12%; a $60 a month fee can jump to $1000 after not being paid for sometime. Many members, whose accounts were sent to collection agencies, did not even know that this happened until the amounts reached into the thousand-dollar range. Apparently, BTF sells these accounts in default to a collection agency without giving any notice to the customer until it is too late. Many members on the site end up paying these large fees because contact with BTF customer service gives not results. No one at the customer service department was available for comment on the collection process.

Another problem frequently mentioned on the Ballysucks.net website is the fact that employees and trainers at the locations are rude and do not know enough to be training people. Other posts on the site suggest members contact the manager or customer service department of the Bally Center they visit. When contacting the South Philadelphia Bally Total Fitness to see how many complaints they receive a year Susan, the front desk person, said, “I cannot disclose that information.” But she did take my name and number and transfer my call to the customer service department. Customer service was not able to answer the question either sending the call to a manager. After holding for some time David answered the call and took a message. Once he learned the reason for the call he let me know that management would not be able to answer my question. The best way to find out the information would be to contact the Bally Total Fitness main call center.

Efforts to contact this customer service department were also futile. The first four calls made were answered by a machine, placing me on hold because of the number of calls the department was receiving. Each time I would be on hold for a minute then my call would be disconnected. Finally, after holding for 10 minutes, an actual person answered the line. After I asked them about the number of complaints they receive in a year the gentleman hung up the phone with out giving any response.

After trying to investigate the legitimacy of the complaints made at Ballysucks.net I understand the frustration that many members feel. If you can never talk to a customer service representative, then when you do they are rude, how will any conflicts be resolved? Some members think of Bally employees as the ultimate sales people, they rope the buyer into a contract that many do not get to read in its entirety, then they are unavailable when people want to ask questions or cancel their membership. This behavior makes one assume that the complaints on Ballysuck.net are legitimate. After my experience with customer service the critical piece of advice to remember when dealing with Bally Total Fitness is “let the buyer beware.”