Help! My gym is holding me a financial hostage

We waste millions on unwanted gym memberships, and that’s partly because it’s so damn hard to cancel them. If you’re struggling to find a way out, you’re not alone. 

Like everyone else, I’ve grown increasingly concerned about the impending cost of living crisis. One easy place to start making a saving is the online fitness subscription I have but rarely use. Instead of forking out £160 a year, I could just hop onto YouTube for a free weekly flow with Adriene.

So, I logged onto the app to cancel my membership. Except, there was no option to leave. There wasn’t an option to stop subscribing anywhere on the screen and it was only after about 10 minutes that I found instructions on writing to the app itself to ask for my subscription to be stopped. This from an app which takes less than three minutes to join. 

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You’d think that online communities would be easy to leave but it turns out that they’re almost as difficult as in-person membership cancellations. My old local gym actually charged me for cancelling my membership in March 2020… when the gym was closed. But it turns out, I’m not alone: it really is difficult to get out of a membership.

On Reddit, for example, there are loads of threads about being trapped by punitive contract conditions, with most people agreeing that it’s an economic, not legal, decision for gyms to keep members prisoner.

In fact, according to Natwest, we waste some £25 billion every year on subscriptions we don’t use or want – with unused gym memberships accounting for the biggest chunk of wasted cash at 12% of people paying out and not using them. 

Writer Kushie tells Stylist that she’s been a member of a nationwide budget gym for the past three years but recently hasn’t had the time to go regularly. “Because of the terms and conditions, I feel locked in. I also personally feel like a bit of a failure for quitting because I know I should be going. If I managed to cancel, I’d still have to pay to use the gym until the end of a specified period.”

It seems simple enough; all Kushie wants is to “end the membership immediately and get [her] money back” but she knows that it’ll cost to get out of the contract. You can’t just leave then and there.

Even when it’s not a financial consideration, it can be tricky. Ruth has been trying to get out of her gym membership but says that “it’s just so long and complicated. You fill out a never-ending form online to be told that you actually have to call to cancel… so you call and nobody answers.

“It’s more hassle than it’s worth, so I just haven’t bothered!”

Clearly, there’s something wrong here. Gyms are supposed to be a space for getting stronger, finding confidence and supporting mental health, yet some of us feel trapped by threats of financial recriminations if we need to prioritise saving or want to explore new fitness horizons. 

 If you are struggling to leave, there’s a whole chapter on the subject on the Citizens Advice website, with the organisation setting out steps for fighting against gyms who refuse to let you leave without hefty fines. The consumer platform Which? also offers plenty of advice on dealing with unfair contract terms, and complaining to the Competition and Markets Authority should it come to that. 

Memberships are purposely hard to break

New York City attorney David Reischer told the Washington Post back in 2020: “Gyms are notoriously hard to quit… these contracts are drafted in such a way as to not allow you to quit without suffering a penalty.” 

That might sound like the kind of carrot-stick (or really just ‘stick’) approach to fitness that’s worked in the past – holding people as financial prisoners or shaming them into continuing their membership – but it seems rather outdated today. We can use YouTube to work out for free from home, join running clubs, drop into local yoga studios… we don’t need the gym. 

It seems especially odd given the stress the fitness industry seems to put on wellness and mental health these days. If these gyms, studios and apps were serious about making us into fitter and happier people, they wouldn’t need to make it impossible for us to leave – we’d want to stay, or at least be likely to return once we were able to do so. 

For more fitness thoughts, follow Strong Women on Instagram (@StrongWomenUK)

Images: Getty

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