Esporta Fitness

Very bad experience there as well. Due to moving, I went to cancel my membership, the manager kept my last payment, and said I can still use it for one more month after I cancelled which I didnt need at all. A totall ripoff. I wont use LA Fitness again. The manager is arrogant and not helpful at all. more

I think my comments will mirror others that are on here, but I think it's a story that needs to be told again. The gym itself is OK. I have definitely been in nicer gyms but have also been in worse. It's kept clean, it's not overcrowded, the fees alone aren't exorbitant. For my first few months going I was pretty pleased with it. Then, I decided I might want to meet with a personal trainer to work on a few things to improve my workout, and everything went downhill, FAST. So I called up and explained (naively) that all I wanted to do was to learn more exercises for my core area to improve my posture. I am admittedly a bit overweight but I really don't care because I am in decent shape and only wanted a few pointers. The trainer I met with told me that in order to strengthen this area I had to do a lot more than learn some new exercises. He had all this pseudo-scientific information on fat and muscle ratios which probably had a grain of truth to it but was heavily slanted to make me feel unfit as I currently was. Then he put me through a punishing workout which almost made me throw up. I have since read that the LA Fitness trainers do this to make you feel really out of shape so that you feel like you really need their help. So the guy takes me back to his desk and quotes me some rates. I am low on oxygen and feeling pretty bad about myself, so I am listening but also telling him that I don't have the kind of money they're looking for. That's when he calls over the manager, supposedly to get me a better deal. The manager is one of the worst human beings I have met in a long time. He was a pushy, arrogant, obnoxious, pumped-up looking guy who seemed willing to resort to anything to make me sign a contract. For example, when I explained that I needed to speak with my wife about the fee since it's a big chunk of change, he grabbed the form which asks about your reasons for having trouble keeping up with your workouts and marked the ""procrastination"" box right in front of my face with a smirk. He also told me that my body fat ratio was ""not acceptable"" (or some similar term) and started prying into my personal spending habits by asking how much I spend on coffee and other luxuries a week. He started telling me I will need to take protein supplements. The worst thing was this - I told him explicitly that I was in there for health reasons, not vanity - but he kept using vanity-based language even when I told him not to. He ended by telling me that if I drop 15 pounds I will have no choice but to be vain. He can have all the fun he wants at home kissing his biceps and marveling at his abs in the mirror, but I have...uh...better things to do. Like maybe strengthen some muscles in my core which is why I was there in the first place. Or really anything else for that matter. Like an idiot I signed a contract because I felt pretty bad about myself from all of this berating, but fortunately came to my senses and went right back to cancel. They have a three day grace period so I got all my money back. I also called the manager's manager to report his behavior but as expected that guy just backed up his boy. I mean, what else would he do. So all in all, a very very bad experience. I felt honestly kind of violated. I am still a member of the basic gym while I research other options, and to be fair maybe it was just the guys at this one branch of LA Fitness. But if this is how they do business, really anything would be better. So take-home point is, be careful with this gym. If you want a few personal training sessions this is not the place for you unless you are obsessed with getting ripped and want to devote all your energy and money in that direction. more

Honestly, the gym fee is reasonable, and the staff has been friendly and professional. However, I learned a pretty important (and expensive) lesson when it came to signing a contract for the personal training. First, the ""pitch"" was a pretty high-pressure situation (more on this later). When I expressed my financial reservations, I was told ""don't worry about it. Just let me know if it becomes a problem, and we'll figure something out."" I wish I had gotten that in writing. When the finances became a problem, I found out I was on the hook for 50% of the year's fees for canceling. Technically, this was all on the contract. I admit I should have been more careful. But, this information was not clearly conveyed during the signing, which by the way took place after an intense ""trial"" workout. To say I was in the right state of mind to make a major financial decision would be a lie. Management handled my concerns professionally and assured me that the sales staff would make contract obligations clearer in the future, but obviously that doesn't do much to help me out. Ultimately, I can't fault the local branch much, and I will continue to use the basic gym membership, as it is affordable and nearby. However, I feel that the L.A. Fitness business policies would best be described as predatory. By this I mean the the ""pitch"" for personal training is, as mentioned previously, a high-pressure situation. This is not the fault of the individual salesperson, per se. The staff clearly follows a scientific approach to sales that involves gathering information about the client's motivations and all their possible excuses and uses this information after the trial workout to convince the client that they need to hire a personal trainer. The contract itself is designed to screw anyone who changes their mind or later finds out that they can't afford it. The lessons here: A) Do not sign a contract unless you KNOW that it fits safely within your budget. B) Do not sign a contract unless you KNOW that you need a trainer to help you keep fit. If you do sign a contract, and later realize that it just wasn't meant to be, LA Fitness will get your money, and they will not apologize for it. more