What It Actually Cost to Be a Member

There is a moment a lot of people know. You look at your bank statement and see a charge you thought was gone months ago. The membership you cancelled. Except you didn’t cancel it, not the way the gym defined the word. You tried. You called. You sent an email. You maybe even showed up at the front desk and talked to a real person who smiled and said they’d look into it. But none of those things counted. None of those things were the correct procedure. And so the charge kept coming.

LA Fitness was built around that moment. The federal complaint describes a system that was not accidentally confusing. Every friction point had a name and a policy behind it. The website you couldn’t log into. The form you couldn’t print. The one specific manager you had to find. The window of 9AM to 5PM, Monday through Friday — hours that, as one member pointed out in a Better Business Bureau complaint, require you to use your paid time off from work just to end a gym subscription.

One parent spent over two years watching his son get billed for a membership his son couldn’t cancel. The son traveled for work. He was home on Sundays. The in-person cancellation window didn’t include Sundays. The mail option required certified mail from a post office, also mostly open during working hours. The son kept trying when he came home. The manager kept not being in. And the charges kept coming.

Another member mailed five separate cancellation forms over the course of months. Not five regular letters. Five certified mail letters, each requiring a trip to the post office, each costing money on top of the membership dues they were trying to stop paying. They have tracking proof showing all five were delivered. LA Fitness continued billing them anyway.

Someone else got off the phone with corporate after explaining that they could no longer access the website credentials needed to even begin the cancellation process. Corporate’s response was to tell them to call back tomorrow. Then the call was ended. The complaint notes that this person had tried every channel available to them and was referred back to a paper form they couldn’t print, through a website they couldn’t access, to be delivered to a manager who might not be there.

When LA Fitness responded to formal complaints from state attorneys general, they reportedly resolved those specific cases quickly: cancelling memberships, issuing refunds, waiving fees. No form required. No Operations Manager required. No website login required. They were simply able to do it, the same way any reasonable company would do it for anyone who asked. They reserved that ability for the situations where they faced legal pressure. Everyone else got the maze.

The company also sold personal training memberships for up to $660 a month. Those had minimum six-to-twelve month terms. Cancel before the term ended and you owed 50% of the remaining balance. Members were not told the cancellation fee before they signed. The cancellation terms weren’t disclosed before the agreement was populated. The fee was in the contract, but the contract was the last thing you saw, and only after your billing information was already saved.

Some members who successfully navigated all of this and cancelled their gym memberships then discovered that their personal training membership was still active. Or their towel service. These were separate negative option programs with separate cancellation requirements, but LA Fitness never told anyone that. Members were allowed to believe everything was one account. So when one item was cancelled, they assumed the rest was too. It wasn’t. The billing continued.

The phone line existed, and it was staffed. It just wasn’t there to help you cancel. It was there to send you back to the process that wasn’t working for you. The script said your privacy was being protected. One member’s response to that in the record is worth repeating: “There’s no privacy protection for members, you guys just want to make it difficult.”

Verbatim: What the Federal Complaint Actually Says

The following passages are quoted directly from the FTC’s Amended Complaint, Case No. 8:25-cv-1841, filed December 23, 2025. Nothing below is paraphrased or invented.

“Defendants have operated as a common enterprise while engaging in the violations of law alleged below… Because these Defendants have operated as a common enterprise, each of them is liable for the acts and practices alleged below.”
— Paragraph 17, Amended Complaint

• This establishes that both named defendants (Fitness International, LLC and Fitness & Sports Clubs, LLC) share full liability. The subsidiary cannot hide behind the parent company, and vice versa. Both entities face the full weight of the FTC’s claims.
• The FTC used “common enterprise” language deliberately. It means the two companies shared ownership, officers, managers, employees, and locations, and operated as a single coordinated system of harm.

“If you don’t have an existing online login, they make you enter your membership info, then say that they’ve sent you an email, but as of the writing of this complaint, I haven’t received that email.”
— Consumer complaint quoted in Paragraph 53, Amended Complaint

• This quote appears inside the federal complaint as direct evidence that the website login recovery process was broken at the point of need. Members attempting to begin cancellation were stuck at the very first step.
• To reset credentials, LA Fitness required members to provide: their original sign-up email address, their “key tag number” assigned at signup, and the first five digits of the bank account or credit card on file. Many members did not have all three pieces of information readily available.

“I don’t have or use a printer and think this is just a way to keep deducting money from my account, hoping I will forget about it.”
— Consumer complaint quoted in Paragraph 54, Amended Complaint

• This quote directly identifies the consumer’s own conclusion: the printer requirement was not accidental friction. It was a designed barrier to discourage cancellation without explicitly denying it.
• The cancellation form was not available in the mobile app, was not publicly accessible on the website without logging in, and required physical printing. The combination made cancellation inaccessible to anyone without both a working computer and a printer.

“To require the average person to come in person between 900-1700 (9-5pm) means you expect us to use PTO [personal time off]….”
— Better Business Bureau report quoted in Paragraph 55, Amended Complaint

• This statement captures the core structural injustice of the in-person cancellation window. LA Fitness gyms were open up to 19 hours a day, seven days a week. Cancellations were only processed 9AM–5PM, Monday through Friday. The overlap with standard working hours was not a coincidence.
• The complaint further notes these hours were “times when consumers are ordinarily working,” confirming the FTC recognized this overlap as a deliberate accessibility barrier.

“Since June 2022 [my son] has been trying to cancel his membership. He travels for work constantly, home only on Sundays, when he attempted to do it in person, they told him he had to see the operation manager (who apparently only works from 9-4 M-F, or mail a cancellation request [by] certified mail ( [sic] which requires him to go to the post office, again only open during his working hours. Neither of these options work for him. He has tried over and over when he was home, and the manager was not in.”
— Better Business Bureau complaint quoted in Paragraph 58, Amended Complaint

• This account documents a member who was structurally excluded from both available cancellation methods. The in-person option required weekday hours he couldn’t access. The mail option required a post office trip he also couldn’t access during the post office’s operating hours.
• The complaint makes clear this was not an edge case. LA Fitness’s system made it mathematically impossible for any person who works standard hours and lacks a home printer to cancel their membership using the available methods.

“The company requires that you mail in a cancelation form. I have mailed multiple forms. The first couple I mailed were apparently ‘not received'[.] [C]ustomer service would not allow me to cancel the membership any other way so I have mailed 3 more cancelation forms via certified mail and I have proof of tracking for all 3 showing delivered and the company is still charging me for membership and will not cancel the membership.”
— Consumer complaint quoted in Paragraph 63, Amended Complaint

• This is direct evidence that even members who completed every required step — including the certified mail requirement — continued to be billed. The existence of USPS tracking confirmation showing delivery removes any defense that the cancellation was not received.
• The complaint adds that another consumer sent three certified letters over four months only to remain actively billed. These are not isolated incidents; the FTC is presenting them as a documented pattern.

“Defendants have directed the managers to refuse them through prepared scripts. These scripts direct consumers to follow the cancellation process… However, Defendants authorize these managers to process cancellations only in-person, when submitted pursuant to Defendants’ policy. Defendants prohibit these same managers from processing cancellations that consumers submit by email.”
— Paragraph 70, Amended Complaint

• This is the most structurally damning passage in the complaint. The managers had the technical capability to cancel memberships in their computer systems. They were explicitly forbidden from using it to help members who contacted them by phone or email.
• The phrase “prepared scripts” confirms this was not individual employee behavior. It was company policy, designed and distributed from the top down, to refuse cancellation requests at every informal channel while maintaining the appearance of a customer service function.

“Defendants’ responses to state attorneys general generally report that Defendants have resolved the matter with the consumer and attempt to explain the cancellation policy by reassuring, ‘This cancellation policy is not designed to make it difficult for our members to cancel, but rather to ensure cancellations are handled properly.'”
— Paragraph 72, Amended Complaint

• This quote shows LA Fitness used a polished, pre-written defense with regulators while simultaneously resolving those specific complaints quickly, without requiring the onerous process they insisted was necessary for everyone else.
• The contrast is the proof: when state attorneys general filed complaints, LA Fitness cancelled memberships, issued refunds, and waived fees, no form, no manager, no certified mail required. The “proper handling” rationale collapses when the company demonstrably abandoned it the moment it faced legal accountability.

Who Gets Hurt and How

Public Health

Gym memberships are sold on the premise that access to fitness facilities improves physical health and wellbeing. When people are trapped in memberships they cannot escape, the financial drain produces real health consequences.

• The FTC alleges hundreds of millions of dollars were extracted from consumers as unwanted recurring charges. For members on tight budgets, each unauthorized monthly charge displaced money that would otherwise go toward food, medication, housing, or other health-relevant needs.
• The psychological cost is documented in the complaints included in the federal filing. Members describe feeling “helpless and frustrated.” One member’s documented experience shows being hung up on by corporate staff after explaining a situation that had gone unresolved through every available channel. That is not a neutral consumer experience; it is documented distress caused by an institutional bad actor.
• Personal training memberships ranged from $180 to $660 per month, with initial terms of six to twelve months and a mandatory early termination fee of 50% of the remaining balance if cancelled early. Members who wanted out of a program that wasn’t working for them faced punitive financial penalties for doing so, compounding the health harm.
• LA Fitness pushed consumers toward its mobile app by providing QR-code login assistance at sign-up. The app covered check-in, class booking, and training sessions. Deliberately excluding the app from the cancellation process meant members had no frictionless exit at the same point of contact they used to manage every other part of their membership.
• Consumers who tried to protect themselves by blocking LA Fitness charges with their banks found that the company reportedly obtained updated card numbers and resumed billing without authorization. This removed the last accessible self-help option available to trapped members.

Economic Inequality

The documented barriers to cancellation disproportionately punished people with fewer resources: no home printer, no weekday flexibility, no disposable income for repeated post office trips.

• The printer requirement is a class barrier. Accessing the cancellation form required a home printer or access to one. People who did not own printers, or who relied on library printers with limited hours and access requirements, faced an immediate structural obstacle that wealthier members were less likely to encounter.
• The 9AM–5PM, Monday–Friday cancellation window is a socioeconomic filter. Hourly workers, gig workers, service industry employees, and anyone without paid time off had no viable path to in-person cancellation without direct financial cost: using PTO, taking an unpaid absence, or rearranging shift coverage.
• The certified mail requirement cost money each time. Members who sent multiple letters, as several documented in the complaint did, spent additional out-of-pocket money on an administrative process that did not work. One member sent five certified letters. That is not a free exercise of a consumer right.
• Website login recovery required the original sign-up email address, the account key tag number, and the first five digits of the billing card. People who moved, changed email providers, changed banks, or simply lost track of account details from years earlier had no path to credential recovery and therefore no path to cancellation.
• The personal training early cancellation fee, at 50% of the remaining balance on terms up to twelve months at up to $660 per month, could represent thousands of dollars in penalty costs. The FTC alleges these fees were not disclosed before the membership agreement was populated. Low-income members who signed these agreements without understanding the exit costs faced a financial trap.
• LA Fitness offered streamlined cancellation in states with laws requiring it, demonstrating that simpler systems were always possible. Members in states without such protections, often states with weaker consumer protection infrastructure, received no equivalent treatment. Legal protection became geographically unequal.

What the Numbers Mean in Human Terms

How to Apply Pressure and Protect Yourself

The FTC has filed. But a complaint is the beginning of a legal process, not the end of a corporate pattern. Here is where accountability can come from and what you can do right now.

Who Is Being Held Accountable

The complaint names the following defendants. Both share full liability as a common enterprise per the FTC’s filing:

• Fitness International, LLC, d/b/a LA Fitness. Principal place of business: 3161 Michelson Drive, Suite 600, Irvine, CA 92612-4406.
• Fitness & Sports Clubs, LLC, d/b/a LA Fitness. Wholly owned subsidiary of Fitness International, LLC. Same principal address.

Regulatory Watchlist

• FTC Federal Trade Commission: The lead agency on this case. Case No. 8:25-cv-1841. Attorneys Serena Mosley-Day, Reid Tepfer, Edward Hynes (Dallas), and David L. Hankin (Los Angeles). The FTC’s consumer complaint portal at reportfraud.ftc.gov accepts reports on negative option billing practices.
• CFPB Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Relevant to unauthorized recurring charges applied to bank accounts and credit cards. If LA Fitness obtained and billed a new card number without your authorization, that is a separate potential violation reportable to the CFPB at consumerfinance.gov/complaint.
• State AG Your State Attorney General: The complaint specifically notes that LA Fitness resolved consumer complaints when state attorneys general got involved. File a complaint with your state AG’s consumer protection office. This is the action the company has historically responded to.
• BBB Better Business Bureau: The FTC complaint cites BBB complaints as documented evidence. Filing there creates a public record and, based on the complaint, prompted direct resolution responses from LA Fitness.
• DOJ Department of Justice: The FTC Act violations at issue here are subject to federal court jurisdiction. The DOJ Civil Division monitors FTC enforcement actions filed in federal district courts.

If You Are Currently a Member

• Document every cancellation attempt with date, method, and outcome. Screenshots, tracking numbers, email timestamps, and written notes all become evidence if you need to escalate to a state AG or the FTC.
• File a written complaint with your state attorney general’s consumer protection office. The pattern in this lawsuit shows LA Fitness responded to AG complaints by cancelling memberships and issuing refunds without requiring their standard process. Use this leverage.
• File a report with the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov. Individual reports contribute to the aggregate data the FTC uses to build enforcement cases and justify monetary judgment amounts.
• Contact your bank or credit card issuer and dispute unauthorized charges as “unauthorized recurring billing.” Keep records of which card was charged and when. If a new card was billed without your authorization, report it to your bank as unauthorized account access and to the CFPB.
• Share your documented experience publicly. State AG complaints, Better Business Bureau filings, and FTC reports all carry more weight when there is a visible volume of consistent harm. Your story, documented and reported, is part of the public accountability record.

For Mutual Aid and Organizing

• Connect with local consumer protection legal aid organizations. Many states have nonprofit legal aid societies that help consumers dispute unauthorized charges and navigate corporate cancellation traps at no cost.
• Organize with co-workers, neighbors, and community members who are current or former LA Fitness members. Coordinated, parallel complaint filing with the state AG creates the kind of volume that triggers formal investigations.
• Support legislative campaigns in your state for stronger gym membership consumer protection laws, specifically the right to cancel online or by email. The FTC complaint documents that LA Fitness already offered these options in the limited number of states that legally required them.