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New Year's resolutions probably started out as some sort of gym propaganda to up membership. Every new year, fitness centers worldwide bulk up their ad campaigns, promote "deals" and promise a better body in just months. With so many options, how does one choose a suitable establishment in which to "get physical"?
The Post points to Consumer Reports' new list of gym ratings...and it's slim pickins! Bally Total Fitness scored the lowest with a 66 out of possible 100 points, getting weak rates for cleanliness, crowds, staff, and just about everything else. They racked up 2,704 complaints in 3 years, and have been known to lure people in with deceptive advertising. At $20/month, you get what you pay for...and possibly a little bit that you didn't bargain for. Turns out the company fools customers into signing long-term contracts and has been known to destroy customers credit, sometimes suing to garnish wages! Luckily (then Attorney General) Eliot Spitzer put an end to some of their shady dealings in 2004.
Next up is the New York Sports Club, scoring a 69 and holding the silver medal for most complaints to the city's Better Business Bureau (Crunch took home the gold). They've saturated New York with their clubs, charge around $95/month, and have denied Consumer Reports' findings. Since gym memberships are often negotiable, bringing in a copy of the mag may be a good haggling strategy.
On the positive side, Consumer Reports says "Independents rule. Studios for yoga, dance, or Pilates; work gyms; community centers; school gyms; and nonprofit Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) and YMCAs or YWCAs outscored most of the big chains. Usually, the main draw was value." Independently run yoga and Pilates studios often received 80 points, about 6 points higher than Curves and Gold's Gym ranked. To gauge some other New York clubs, we turned to Yelp. Dolphin Fitness on East 4th received 3 stars, Chelsea Piers Sports Center got 4.5 stars and the UWS Equinox got a whopping 5 stars. For more, here's a best gyms in New York thread.
As for Bally's, they're making a resolution too, and promising "A New Better Bally" in 2008.
Chart from NY Post.
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I got suckered once by Crunch, a Bally's affiliate.
I can't really go into how I got free from their BS gym membership loan scam, but it was pretty cloak and dagger.
They are scam artists at best. They will destroy your credit, and really freak you out once you are seeing them from the wrong side of a contract.
gyms are the biggest scam in the world right now.
here's a good tip for anyone looking to lose weight in the new year: check out Baruch College's gym. 50 bucks a month for non-students, no contract or sign up fee or anything. you give them 50 dollars on the first of the month, they give you a pass.
they've got 3 racquetball courts (that are always always always open), a full lap pool, and a big, new gym (that even sometimes has free weekly aerobics classes, even for non-students!)..hell, they even have towel service. bring flip flops though.
best place to get fit in manhattan. easy walk from union square. always pretty empty.
::edit:: nevermind! fuck! just checked the website and they dont offer month-to-month anymore. way to ruin a good thing.
http://athletics.baruch.cuny.edu/Sports/gen/2006/Membership%20and%20Rentals.asp
you should still try to contact them, see if its available, just not on the website..its a pretty laid back place.
Look at the low scores at all the clubs for equipment. What do they expect to find at these places?
The worst part of every health club is the other members, anyway. Especially the people who don't wipe down the machines after using them. Those people are the dregs of society.
Ballys is without a doubt the most evil company and should be shut down. I signed up for Ballys last year because there was one right across from my office and thought it would be convenient to go after work. The gym was horrible. Their were 2 hour lines to get on a machine, and people were brutal if u stayed on anything longer then your 15 minutes. I seriously saw an old women pull a grown man off an elliptical because his time was up. You also needed to show up an hour before any class to get in. I was not getting much of a workout at all and called to cancel. I was never told that i only have 30 days to cancel and of course, i wound up calling the 31st day. The person i spoke with at Ballys told me "well ma'am, maybe you should re-work your schedule to go at a better time when it was less crowed" . I fought with them for months and wound up being sent to collections. I now have one more month left to finish off my $700 payment. Its disgusting that they are allowed to screw people the way they do. They should be shut down and the people who own ballys should burn in hell.
Wanna work out and loose weight, buy some workout videos. they are cheap and you don't have to deal with other people.
whenever i go to bigger gyms like Bally or Crunch, all i see is chubby people on elliptical machines. that doesn't motivate my chubby ass to do anything but hop on the elliptical and be chubby too.
going to cheap gyms is where you see the actually fit people that are also willing to help you and motivate you.
people get the idea (and gyms prey on this) that it costs money to lose weight and get fit. in the past 6 months i've lost 40 pounds and spent under 300 dollars on it. that includes work out clothes and gym access.
the most genius thing the gym does is convince people that since they signed up for a year, the fear of throwing money away will keep them motivated for the entire year. if everyone with a gym membership actually went to the gym as regularly as the sales representatives convinces you during their schpeil, every gym would be packed to capacity.
JOG, PEOPLE.
Five years ago my stepdaughter and I decided to join a gym. There were two fairly close to where we live in Suffolk County. One of them was part of a well-known national chain. We went there first, and immediately got hit with a sales pitch from a smarmy "membership consultant." He told us that we had to sign up Right Now! in order to take advantage of a Special New Membership Offer! because prices would be Much Higher Tomorrow! I think the dude must've peddled timeshares or used cars before his current job.
Disgusted, we beat a hasty retreat and went to the other nearby gym, part of a small local chain. No membership consultants here. The girl behind the desk was watching TV when we arrived and took no notice of us. I finally spoke up and told her that we were interested in membership. She sort of inclined her head in the direction of a sign listing membership rates and sort of grunted. I doubt she would've noticed anything amiss if we were wearing gorilla suits.
I immediately knew we'd come to the right place. I've been a regular member ever since.
Only four complaints for Equinox? I wonder if they were for slipping on spunk in the men's sauna:
http://gothamist.com/2007/01/04/janitors_say_eq.php
Bally Total Fitness = Scammers. Avoid at all costs.
I explained my specific situation to their rep (only needed the gym for a few months) and he looked me straight in the eye and lied that I could quit at any time for a fee of $50. This is not true… a fact he happily shared when I called him just a couple of days later trying to cancel after reading the fine print. (Yes, I should have read the contract fully to begin with, and yes, I have learned my lesson, but that does not negate the fact that I asked him specific questions and he straight up lied to me.)
…google Bally Total Fitness scam for dozens of stories…
For years I rode my bicycle in either Central Park or Prospect Park, but with increased traffic and construction, the minor thrill that once was the ride to and from the park has become a big pain in the *ss. And the unpredictability of automobiles in either park was not very inviting.
So I started to jog at an outdoor track. Unfortunately, in the "greatest" city in the world, I can find only one publicly accessible track, in East River Park. Which is fine, when the track is not being ripped up. However, there's no night-lighting at the track, so running after work (after dark) is out of the question. It's the NY Park Dept.'s way of saying: here's your taxpayer-funded track, just only plan to use it during daylight hours.
So, at my wife's urging, I joined Equinox Soho. It's not cheap, but it's a nice, new-ish facility with lots of equipment and classes. I miss exercising outdoors, but as one poster points out, you are motivated to exercise at a gym because you paid big $ for a membership. And despite minor complaints (too hot, too cold, no towels) Equinox Soho has served me well. As long as I stay away from the sauna and the men’s showers.
I understand David Barton is opening a gym in the old B&N at Astor Place, so that should give some of the downtown gyms a little (always welcome) competition.
Dolphin's on E. 4th got 3 stars??? What a joke. The place used to be nice when it first opened in 2001, but gradually fell into disrepair and filth. The staff couldn't even be bothered to replace the light bulbs in the studio, which also had huge dustballs on the floor.
The free weights gradually disappeared and were not replaced. Various instructors also grew disgruntled and quit. Fortunately some of them found a new employer in Ludlow Fitness where I've been a member for the past year. So much better than Dolphin!!
printing house is awesome.
not crowded. nice facility. rooftop deck and pool. no music playing.
and a trainer who looks like he's straight out of a starsky and hutch episode.
the real starsky and hutch, not the ben stiller nonsense.
can't beat it.
I've never had a problem with Crunch. Yes, it's $80, but I can always get a machine and it's clean.
NYSC on 94th street is DISGUSTING! The staff are not a class act, using obscenities as they speak to each other at the greeting counter, and the machines are dirty. The women's locker room is filthy, there's always hair in the drainholes of the showers. They're constantly losing the "key" to their paper towel dispenser. And the most annoying thing of all was the times they tried to discipline their clientele by denying them free access to towels! Yes, they decided that the clientele were "sloppy" and throwing their towels on the floor, and "using too many", so they decided to ration out towels at the door.
Of course, if the place wasn't so filthy, one wouldn't need to use one towel to use in the gym (to wipe the equipment you use) , one to sit on, on the filthy benches in the locker room while you put your knickers on, one towel or two to dry oneself (and hair), and one towel to cover up with. The dirtier the gym, the more likely you are to want to get rid of your towel quick.
The carpet in the locker room smells like Nacho Cheeze Chips!
And the staff ignore all the fat, older women, and run to "help" all the pretty, skinny women. (I happen to be of the skinnier, constantly "helped" variety).
Great article.
Your readers might want to try www.Measuredup.com a customer service review website where people share reviews with other users and with companies. Companies that are involved with and value customer service read Measuredup to keep up on what people are saying and to be able to improve customer service.
It is free and easy to use.
Great article.
Your readers might want to try www.Measuredup.com a customer service review website where people share reviews with other users and with companies. Companies that are involved with and value customer service read Measuredup to keep up on what people are saying and to be able to improve customer service.
It is free and easy to use.
Great article.
Your readers might want to try www.Measuredup.com a leading customer service review website where people share reviews with other users and with companies. Companies that are involved with and value customer service read Measuredup to keep up on what people are saying and to be able to improve customer service.
It is free and easy to use.
Read a recent opinion by a Cook County, IL court allowing a lawsuit to proceed finding in Fowler v. Bally Total Fitness “Plaintiff has more than met her burden of demonstrating GROSS NEGLIGENCE ON THE PART OF BALLY in refusing to maintain or deploy an AED at its Gaithersburg, Maryland facility....” (www.w-g-law.com/cases/)
There is a homosexual rep in Ballys Medford by name Andrei Marina who hits on every person who enters the locker room. Beware of him!
OMG I'm in the middle of a scam I think. Shoooot! First of all, Ballys in NYC is the most ghetto club in the US. I've seen roaches three times since I've started working out at the Penta facility a year ago. In addition, they are nasty about customer service, except for the people who try to clean and maintain a filthy facility -- it's not their fault that the owner of Ballys is acting like a slum lord and not fixing up the mildew/mold/roach infested locker room.
I am going to try to go through the better business bureau and some other channels because they keep trying to say that the contract this and the contract that. Where the heck are ROACHES in the contract???
Plus, the contract I signed gives me the right to cut off when I move out of the Manhattan borough, which I have. If they don't let me out of the contract, I'll raise us up some he%% realll fast.
Ballys should face some lawsuits and be driven to bankruptcy for all of the people they have screwed over -- take a look at them on Google, it's one complaint and disappointment after another. In my case, I don't think there is a question about validity if you see roaches ... that is unless you are a robot/mindless member of their staff!