Some Brisbane Guy

Today should be the last time Fitness First ever take money from my credit card. Amen. Never did I think this day would arrive.

I know that it’s today because it’s written on my Fitness First “Departure Application” form. Yes it is called an “Application” because the process of leaving applying to leave Fitness First is more grueling than their RPM classes.

The first thing to do when you want to quit Fitness First is make an appointment to see your “Customer Care Manager” — I feel so loved and cared for. Making this appointment is not the easiest thing to do if you have a life of your own; there’s only a few appointments per day and they were well booked at both Mt Gravatt and the Brisbane City Fitness First gyms I checked.

So my appointment was booked and the man behind the desk said that he would put a note in his computer to say that I’d asked to quit that day (a Wednesday, my Departure Application appointment was the next Tuesday) so that I wouldn’t be billed an extra two weeks. Nice.

I turned up at my appointment on the Tuesday at lunchtime. My caring Customer Care manager was about 15 minutes late — I’m not the most punctual person ever so that didn’t really bother me but he did blame his receptionist in the first sentence he said to me. Good one.

After that, my Departure Application Interview went something like this:

CCM (Customer Care Manager):

So what did you think of Fitness First?

Me:

Well I felt pressured into joining in the first place, I was never shown an exercise program or given any assistance except by a paid personal trainer, and if I didn’t visit for a while nobody called to check how I was doing or encourage me to come back. Other gyms I’ve been to did both of those things.

CCM:

Well, Fitness First is really aimed at the more savvy gym user…

Me:

Well I just thought for the amount you are charging — I mean I’ve paid $960 in membership over the last year and I would think that should include some assistance…

CCM:

Well obviously we aren’t setup to do that, we can’t provide that [blah blah blah x amount of members etc etc excuses as weak as the receptionist one]

Me:

Well obviously you guys have your reasons but I just think for the amount I was paying I want more for the money.

CCM:

OK so what are you doing now; are you quitting because you haven’t been using your membership or because you have somewhere else to go like a gym at work or something?

Me:

Well I am moving and I will have a gym at home, yeah, and there is one at work as well.

CCM:

Because if you feel as though it is too expensive, we do have cheaper options like one for ~$17/fortnight which gives you a single visit per week…

Me:

No.

CCM:

…or there are other options like you can sell your membership to somebody else if you have friends or family who might want to take it over…

Me:

[thinking...as if I am going to inflict this on a friend or family member] But if I sign this form I’m out, right?

CCM:

Yep that’s it.

Me:

*signs form* OK, thanks.

So that was that. I guess we will see whether I am billed by Fitness First on 3rd May; won’t the fun and games begin if I am!

So that’s it — I’m a Fitness First member until 2nd May, 2007 and then no more! Woohoo!

Two things though.

Firstly, Fitness First is so not a gym just for “gym savvy” people, it’s marketed and branded to attract beginner gym-goers with its friendly, slick, non-threatening image with shiny machines and no dirty old weights being slung around by huge sweating blokes. That statement from the CCM was just rubbish.

Secondly, how hard would it be to provide the extra service? A person to sit and call people who haven’t been in to the gym for a while wouldn’t be an expensive exercise; you don’t need qualified personal trainers for that, just somebody who sounds nice on the phone. I would guess that to cost maybe $40,000 a year including all extra crap like recruitment and whatever else goes along with having a person employed.

But, of course, you couldn’t oversell your membership as much because your members would be in the gym, using the equipment, instead of at home on their couches!

Having a personal trainer just floating around the gym all the time helping random people with their workouts wouldn’t cost that much more than the phone person. Let’s say they cost $60,000 a year including all the extras.

That’s $100,000 a year for both staff, or about 100 members’ membership costs. If you believe the Fitness First website, there are 330,000 FF members and 79 gym locations according to the gym search. That means there’s an average of 4,177 members per gym, and that each gym should average $4 million in revenue per annum.

Spending $100K to provide good service doesn’t seem like much of a chunk out of $4m+ a year per gym, does it?

Goodnight…

Whoo yeah I’m excited!

About two months ago I got a new Apple Macbook Pro. I love it, it’s rad, I love using it etc. But something that’s been bugging me no end is that I don’t know the shortcut key to jump to the address bar (where you type http://…etc) in Firefox. In Windows you just do Alt-D and you’re there, I think that works in Linux as well, but on OS X it’s no go.

Well, I’ve just found out the shortcut keys for not only the address bar, but the search bar as well (and also in Thunderbird!):

jump into the search bar in Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird

Cmd-K (Mac), Ctrl-K (Windows)

jump into the address bar in Mozilla Firefox

Cmd-L (Mac), Ctrl-L (Windows)

Mozilla.org has more juicy keyboard shortcuts.

This is super good news because now I can use basically the same key combo on Windows and on OS X. My life just gets better and better, friends.

Something else that’s kinda annoying about Thunderbird is that it’s not GMail. I love GMail and all my mail goes through it so that:

1. tons of spam gets filtered out by GMail’s awesome spam filtering
2. I can access a copy of all of my mail from anywhere on the internet (except work who block GMail…argh)

But not only does my mail all go through GMail, I download it all via POP3 to my Thunderbird mail client. This is because:

1. I then have a backup copy of all my email on my own computer and am not just trusting Google to never go broke/lose my mail/start charging me to access it/something else unforeseen
2. I can access my email when I’m offline, eg on a plane or a train or whatever

But as I was saying, Thunderbird is not GMail and despite being a proper rich, fat-client desktop application, it doesn’t have the great shortcut keys that make GMail so quick to navigate and move messages around. Plus it doesn’t have that whole “archive and forget, then search later” philosophy, it has the old-school “carefully choose category-based folders for your messages and then take forever to find them later” philosophy, which is so 1998 and lame

But what I’m getting at is that now thanks to GMailUI Thunderbird works like GMail, adding j,k and other shortcut keys to navigate messages as well as a really cool “Expression” search mode that lets you search just like you do in GMail.

As I said, my life just gets better and better.

In case you didn’t know Fitness First sucks, they do.

I went to the Fitness First gym in Brisbane city on Wednesday to try and further resolve the issues I had on Monday night. Armed with the info in Fitness First’s own online FAQ, my plan was to march in, politely demand to sign the forms I need to sign to quit the gym ASAP and then go on my merry way.

Of course that didn’t happen, because trying to leave Fitness First is like trying to leave the Yakuza.

“No I’m sorry I can’t give you a form, you have to make an appointment, so that the proper person can sign the forms with you. You could just come in and quit anyone’s gym membership, I am not qualified to verify who you are, each gym only has one person qualified to terminate memberships.”

Apparently, the reasonably intelligent (possibly smarter than some nightclub bouncers, for example) man taking phone calls, booking appointments and whatnot (we’ll call him Doofus for now) is not capable of comparing my photo ID with my face to verify that it’s really me who is requesting to terminate my membership.

But, anyway, what about my signature? I can write a cheque for $100,000 and sign it and my signature alone is enough information for the bank to transfer that money. I think it should be enough to quit a gym! Send the form to head office, compare with my original contract, terminate membership, job done.

What a bunch of crap. I think we all realise that this complete pain in the ass is just to get me into a room with a salesperson to talk me out of quitting, or find out my reason for quitting, or to make me procrastinate quitting. Awesome, that really improves my experience as a customer.

While I am standing trying to get Doofus to just give me a damn form, a cute girl wanders up to the counter beside me with a bank statement.

“Can I help you?” asks Doofus. Cute Girl replies, “I called up because you guys keep billing me even though I have quit my membership, so I brought in my bank statement because you said you would refund the money.”

I find this amusing, frustrating and disappointing and I feel like shaking somebody wearing a Fitness First polo shirt, yelling into their face, my spittle dotting their smug cheeks and forehead. But I wish Cute Girl well on the long, hard road I think she may have ahead of her.

Doofus then suggests to me a very limited number of appointment times, the next one that I can attend is Tuesday 10th April, one day after my next billing date. Doofus says that he will use his Braille keyboard to put into the computer that I have come in to terminate my membership that day, Wednesday 4th April 2007. This would mean that I only have to pay two more payments instead of three (or over ten, assuming they remember to stop debiting my card.) I don’t believe him, but I make an appointment for the Tuesday.

I ask some more random questions before leaving. I harass Doofus with a few more questions and weakly ask “so you will put in the computer that I am quitting from today?” before leaving, he agrees that he will but I am certain that I will be paying at least three more membership payments.

Entertaining as my stories are, I’m not alone in my grief with these glossy anti-customer corporate mafia gyms. Choice magazine has done a bunch of surveys about how satisfied Australians are with their gyms, and Fitness First are the worst, along with chicks-only Fernwood (no dicks…except the management?) Lots of great stuff there, like:

• high pressure sales tactics
• no workout plans for new members (36%)
• little or no help for new members in using machines and equipment (22%)
• money continuing to be deducted from accounts after membership ends (3%)
• not being offered a fitness assessment (39%)

Ergh.

Oh and one other thing. Most gyms you go to (where they actually give you a fitness assessment), will call you throughout your membership to see how your membership is going — are you happy, do you feel like you’re going enough, are you getting something out of the gym, how is your program going, etc. This didn’t happen once with Fitness First, which was convenient because I didn’t receive a fitness program to be asked about. I did get two phone calls, both were sales calls to try and get me to refer more members!

Hah, no thanks.

Oh my god could Fitness First suck any harder? Yeah that link is to my last blog post about Finance First, I wrote it in a sad attempt to justify to myself that I really wanted to join. The pressure of having my mate there waiting to get his discount after I join was I think really what made me do it.

But I’ll get the positive stuff out of the way cause nobody wants to read it. Compared to other gyms, Fitness First was good for the following long list of reasons:

1. I could go to any gym (in the Valley, in Brisbane city, Mt Gravatt…) which was awesome and I did this

Anyway I’m moving into the CBD (which I am so stoked about) and my new place has a gym in the building. My Finance First contract expires in two weeks so I want to ditch them so I can afford to eat after I move. Easy right? Just sign a form that says “okcyabye” and done.

No.

To quit Fitness First, you have to make an appointment to see the “Customer Care Manager”. Customer care! If they cared, they would let me quit now. But no, I can’t make an appointment for 8 more days (next Tuesday) and the only out of business hours appointments are booked up. Same for Wednesday. I guess I could have found out about Thursday but I was going to strangle the girl at the front desk until her apathy squeezed out all over the floor, so I huffed off upstairs after exclaiming my bewilderment and confusion at the situation.

Let’s review Finance First’s helpful website FAQ (apparenty questions they get asked frequently):

How do I cancel my membership after the minimum term has expired?

After the Minimum Term you must give us 4 weeks written notice (counted from the next direct debit date) preferably using the required form supplied by Fitness First and availabe at the club.

It is preferable that you make an appointment to see the Customer Care Manager (CCM) who will help you fill out the paperwork. If you can’t make an appointment, you need to put your request to cancel your membership in writing to the CCM preferably at your home club (where you joined originally). You can do this via email, letter or fax and it’s recommended you follow up with the CCM to ensure your notice of cancellation has been received by the club.

Financial penalties will apply. For explanation of the Minimum Term, please refer to your contract.

It’s like a cult. Once you’re in, you never get out. I guess all I need is counselling, a bit of an attitude adjustment and I’ll see why I really don’t want to quit Fitness First after all…they’re my friends, feel the love.

Interestingly, my “next debit date” (9th April) mentioned in the above FAQ answer is one day before the next available appointment (10th April). That means I wouldn’t get to quit for 5 more weeks! Handily, I would also get to pay three more payments to them instead of two, when really all I want to do is stop using their gym that I have been so privileged to pay $960 for over the last 12 months.

Also interestingly, I should “preferably” use the required form (is it preferable or is it required?), and submit the preferable/required form to my “home” gym, I imagine to avoid confusion or to track sales leads, or something else that as a customer I really could not give a toss about. My plan was to just write a letter and take that to the gym near my house (Mt Gravatt) but I think that would just be asking for trouble; and extra transactions on my credit card.

This kind of stuff gets me fired up. I am the customer here, why do I have to jump through the hoops? Why can’t I just ring up and quit? Why can’t I just fill out a form? Do I get a bad credit rating if I just get my bank to deny the transaction? How about if I have already given them a letter?

So if you’re thinking of joining Fitness First, look around for alternatives first. They’re expensive, they get you in with high pressure sales tactics, they don’t give you any help with your workouts unless you hire a personal trainer (who are all actually self-employed, not by Fitness First), they lock you in with contracts unless you pay exorbitant fees, and they make it hard for you to quit.

Overall I’ve enjoyed my Fitness First membership but things like this are just frustrating and a waste of time and money, so try and avoid it.