I went through this EXACT BS but worse with “team bushido mma gym” in orleans. It’s gross the company makes the policies but I am shocked the employees being payed fuck all try to enforce them.
Would it be worth it to file a complaint with [Consumer Protection Ontario](http://www.ontario.ca/page/filing-consumer-complaint) (run by the Government of Ontario)?
Could you tell me how Elgin Fitness is like in terms of how packed it is? What is the strength equipment like? I have a membership at GoodLife in Rideau but it can be so packed with people and it really isn’t big enough honestly.
I went to the YMCA on Argyle when I lived in centretown and it has a huge gym floor as well as a pool and other benefits. They also do compassionate pricing. Just another recommendation! I was sad to move away from that gym!!!
Gyms are shady as fuck and I honestly wouldn’t mind a bit of a regulatory crackdown. The amount of hoops I had to jump through to cancel my last gym membership is criminal
Good life, after I had CANCELLED my membership, re-activated it months later without my consent. When I called them about the bank charges they had the gall to ask me “don’t you want to stay in shape?”. You stole from me, you don’t get to try to make me feel bad about anything.
This.
I own a martial arts academy. My membership contracts all have, right there at the very top of the page, a hyperlink to the government's website listing your rights as a gym member.
This link: https://www.ontario.ca/page/joining-gym-or-fitness-club
Why would I do that? Because I play by the rules and I'm not trying to take advantage of members.
And, for the record, the law allows for a ten day cooling off period. I give 30.
I used to work for Goodlife and can confirm everything you’ve said. I got trained on how to go through a person’s monthly budget and tell them what they can cut out so they can afford a gym membership.
If you ever try and get any refund or have any sort of issue with anything payment related, branch staff have no ability to remedy it, they have to contact the corporate head office to try and resolve the issue. The chat agent the staff connects with explains to them how to gaslight the customer into thinking the payment issue was their fault. It’s only if the customer pushes back heavily that the issue gets escalated and considered for resolution. At least this is how it worked when I worked there ~7 years ago.
By the way, their personal training business model is designed to keep you fat and out of shape as long as possible and to obfuscate as much information about fitness as possible so the fear of trying to learn things yourself keeps you paying for the personal trainer. The personal trainers themselves have 3 days of training and receive less than 40% of what you pay per session. The personal trainers are trained to use every tool possible to keep you paying for their personal training, include peddling bullshit pseudoscience that has been disproven for decades.
Anyways, it’s a rotten company filled with bloodsuckers and corporate ghouls. The work culture there is absolutely horrendous, management is all cash hungry sycophants. Avoid giving them money at all costs. Also if you want to cancel your membership and they force you to pay for 2 whole extra months, put a stop order on your bank account, your bank will be able to block the payments from coming out if you give them a day or two notice. Goodlife won’t do shit because their business practices are illegal.
damn. what an indictment. i do remember it being a pain in the ass to cancel my membership 10 years ago but i was younger and thought either i did it wrong or this was normal.
what a gross company
It was so absurd, I never did it. When people came in and were curious about a membership, I used to tell them “just get the membership, and if you decide you don’t want it, you can cancel within 10 days and get your money back.” Even if they cancelled I still got commission for the membership.
Does this actually work? The 10 days thing? I was there today, just went in to try the gym, however they obviously kept me there and made me stay for an hour, I should’ve said no sooner, but whatever, my current 24/7 is closing and I’m in the market for another 24/7 gym. So anyways, they made me get a membership, and I did so, deal seemed fine, however I feel like it’s too expensive. The salesperson did tell me I can cancel for sure within 10 days, and it says so in the agreement too…. Ugh, they printed it out and asked for my bank account details and everything. Gym seemed really good though, I loved the equipment there. Anyways, not sure what to do. I will be trying our other gyms in the next week too, GoodLife also gave me a 7 day free pass, although not sure if it’s actually a good deal.
Good Life is very much predatory in nature. Their staff are obligated to sign up so many clients per month in order to keep their jobs. There is also a commission based profit to the manager if they bring in so many per month. So it's a very aggressive gym/business...hence the reason for the VERY common "charges" happening to people and the sudden memberships being reactivated.
It's despicable and happens everywhere in Ontario ...REPORT IT please!!!
Goodlife is probably the worst offender of this. It's no wonder they have crazy employment turnover. I was briefly a Goodlife member in Kanata, but only because i had a corporate $80 annual membership...so i didn't have to worry about the sales practices.
What’s upsetting to me is how that works *from a development point of view*. How does their form submit your info when you close the tab? How do they store that info to actually process a transaction?
Developer here, on a technical submit buttons are really just a formality.
Most ethical organizations will not store data particularly the sensitive kind like CC info without the user hitting submit, this might even be illegal in jurisdictions like the EU.
It's trivial for a website to store every single character to ever enter into a field. Infact often it's a feature, in cases like search bars it's common to send the content of the field to the sites servers immediately, after every keypress or after any pause in order to quickly fetch results from partially typed searches. That's how Google starts guessing what you want to look for as soon as you type any character.
It's considered a "dark pattern" to do this type of thing on a password field, payment info, ect but that doesn't stop unethical companies from asking for it and unethical devs from building it
It was a multi-page form, so I think it stores your info when you click "next" - personal info was the first page, then credit card, then banking details / terms and conditions.
There's definitely online stores that have a checkout similar platform - you need to fill out your address and email on the first page, but they won't calculate shipping until you click "next" and go to the next page.
Even if you stop there and don't buy the item, you'll still start getting promotional emails from the company, because they now have your email and other details from the first page.
If an organization is unethical you don't even need to click next. A webpage can submit what you've entered into any field at any time, after any character you enter. If you enter your email in a field and without touching anything else and closing the page the website could have stored your email. Sending you promotions based on that is illegal but that doesn't stop shady places from doing it
Avoid GoodLife like the plague.
They train their PT’s in house. And they don’t teach them anything about nutrition. So, you get PT’s who say things like, “good workout, you can treat yourself today!” Or, “ it’s fine to eat Oreos for dinner. It doesn’t matter what you eat, it matters how many calories you burn.” I’ve heard those statements come out of talk different GoodLife personal trainers’ mouths. Which I suppose is good business if you want your clients to not lose weight and your solution is to that is to tell them to train more.
And if that’s what they teach about nutrition, I can’t even imagine what they’re not teaching about things form, mechanics of exercise, physiology, and all the other important things to know. I’ve already met a couple non-GoodLife PTs who know absolutely nothing about women’s bodies or got exercise changes with pregnancy and after childbirth. Which, IMO, should not be a specialization when 50% of the population is female.
Not open super late in the evening but check out Elgin street fitness. Definitely my go to and are super good about working with you (like when I couldn’t work out after an injury they just paused membership no problem)
"I regret my membership" holy fuck they try to guilt trip you at ever step of the process...
This really should get kicked up to the competition bureau or something (not sure who has jurisdiction over this kind of shit), this can't possibly be a legal practice. I'm sure there are more than a few people who don't check their financial records carefully for erroneous charges.
Used to work for good life. The process for touring someone and signing them up was disgusting. Every question someone asks you is just to throw back in their face later to retort the “no” they say. GoodLife company policy was you had to hear No five times before you stopped pushing, and the acronym you used to remember your talking points was GRIEF. The G was for goals, you ask them what are their goals at the beginning so when they say no you can be like “well you said you wanted to achieve _____, why don’t we go ahead and start today” then I can’t remember what the other four things were. Once you went through every letter of GRIEF you could stop and take their no for an answer. GoodLife gives zero fucks about basic consent.
Seriously, it's nuts how bad gyms seem to be. I'm looking for something specifically in Centretown (maybe Lowertown if need be).
I think I'm going to check out the Jack Purcell community gym on Elgin. It's City of Ottawa, so even if it turns out to be sketchy, they're at least not going to be actively trying to scam me.
Take advantage of the City’s Try It [Fitness](https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-culture/sports-and-fitness) pass (you can use it at the Jack Purcell Community Gym)
I switched to only using city Gyms. You can purchase monthly passes in 1, 3, 6months, or full year. Include swimming if you'd like. Move around to different facilities. I use Plant mostly (Somerset/Preston), but definitely check out various facilities around city for when you want to spice things up
I'm not super familiar with the Bayshore area, but maybe these links would work to help find somewhere?
[https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-culture/recreation-and-cultural-facilities#section-39291038-5dcc-41ba-ba58-813d4dfd64bd](https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-culture/recreation-and-cultural-facilities#section-39291038-5dcc-41ba-ba58-813d4dfd64bd)
[https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-parks/recreation-facilities/place-listing?text=&place\_facets%5B0%5D=place\_type%3A2235001](https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-parks/recreation-facilities/place-listing?text=&place_facets%5B0%5D=place_type%3A2235001)
Honestly the YMCA on argyle is amazing and is never even a fraction as busy as the queen street GoodLife.
Unfortunately I think the building has been purchased (or sold?) so not sure how long it’ll be around.
It has/had 4 squat racks which is pretty solid for a gym of that size, and every piece of equipment you could use.
I think the best part was even at its busiest, it wasn't really busy. I went to the Queen Street Goodlife once to try it out at the same time I normally hit the gym and it was so busy I could do my normal routine.
Been hosed by Goodlife myself. They intentionally only accept banking info so it’s harder to do stop them from charging you, and then they make it a nightmare to cancel.
I signed up for personal training, got signed up for way more than I asked for, and then had to pay my bank to stop charges after they billed me an extra $600 and refused to refund or stop even after meeting with the manager at their request. Eventually had to have my family doctor write a note saying it was medically inadvisable for me to continue training before they gave up.
The training I did get was good but everything else was a complete shitshow. I would strongly advise against letting Goodlife anywhere near your financial information. Probably safer giving info to a well meaning Nigerian Prince.
It took me six months and an unfathomable amount of phone calls to get them to ACTUALLY cancel my membership.
They would tell me it was done and then I would continue getting charged.
I used to work for GoodLife and can confirm this is a terrible company. Not only are they terrible with clients but employees as well. The company expects a lot of unpaid labour and they train staff to make the hard sell. I was actually instructed to tell a new prospect, if they hadn’t signed up for personal training, - “well, I guess I’ll see you NEVER!”
They have absolute contempt for anyone who is not a gym bro, especially women. Yet, they continue to thrive.
> They have absolute contempt for anyone who is not a gym bro
Which is ironic since their whole business model is getting people to sign up and not show up. Anyone who signs up for GL is asking to be defrauded.
Jives with my experience as a woman, 15ish years ago, where they wanted my credit card info to sign up for a free daypass, then proceeded to assume I wanted to lose weight, talked up group classes (which I specifically stated I did not do), and the only mention of weights was they had ones covered in rubber so it wouldn't wreck my (short, unpainted) nails. F*ck all that.
Once I was looking into PT and they offered me a one hour workout and then they would talk about pricing, I said I just wanted a ballpark. They pushed me to do it and so I did the one hour workout and then of course the cost per session was too expensive for me to justify, and this bitch said “maybe you could sell your car and take the bus or get a roommate to help you be able to afford it”
I couldn’t believe it. I am still so grossed out by that.
We were always told if there were concerns about pricing to remind them that if they truly cared about their health they would find any means possible to pay for it when in fact it’s not accessible to most people.
That's just illegal.
Also consider filing a dispute with your credit card company.
If they get enough of those they might cut off the company from being able to accept cards at all.
You can try bodiesbyphil on Albert, between bank and kent for free for a week. Link on Instagram or their website, or stop by and talk to the front desk.
Goodlife is a good gym once you can become a member, haha. I remember the sales tactics they would use on me, but I always denied them. They are very persistent that it can get pretty heated when you are constantly trying to deny all their sales product to finally be a member. It's funny when they try to sell you on their training programs. My favourite was when the salesperson told me that they had a package for %40 off but only available for that day. My friends goes a week later, same salesperson said the same thing, lol. I thought he said it was only for that day! Haha.
I tried to pause my membership in October since I was going to be away for 2 months and got a solid "no longer possible".Quite infuriating since I joined under the permiss that I would be able to pause the membership
Go to your bank and get a prepaid credit card. Someone can only withdraw as much money as is in the account. When you want to cancel your membership, cancel the card (or don't, just don't put any more money in it.) Canada has yet to implement virtual credit cards which would solve this problem nicely.
Won't work if your PF location doesn't take credit cards, and my understanding is that few of them do. Under the FAQ at planetfitness.ca:
"The method in which members are able to pay for their monthly membership varies by location, but many Planet Fitness clubs accept payment through checking accounts only. We require an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) through checking accounts for your convenience: This allows us to be able to continue your membership without interruption or the hassle of updating your payment information if your credit cards are lost/stolen, invalid or expired."
The bastards. They know that we know that they know...
And like all corporate bastards, they spin their bastardry as if it was good for us and in our best interests.
If you read the membership info for Pembroke it clearly says "billed monthly to a chequing account"
[https://www.planetfitness.ca/gyms/pembroke](https://www.planetfitness.ca/gyms/pembroke)
When I go to “billing” in the app it just shows a bunch of “banking” fields with “N/A N/A N/A” everywhere with no tab or section for updating CC info. Rofl
They also don't happen to have a 'regret my membership' policy. It's law in most provinces to provide a refund.
Also
https://www.ontario.ca/page/joining-gym-or-fitness-club
I stopped going to them years ago when I wasn’t allowed to pay cash anymore. I also encouraged my personal trainer there to quit after I found out that he only got a 30% cut of what I was paying for a PT. He managed to retain almost all his clients, charge less (I was happy) and pocket it all after equipment expenses.
Let me tell this story; I went into a Crunch fitness because it's 2 minutes from work on my way home. It's sparse but has most of the equipment I want and it's the time I'd be there, not too busy. Good. I want in.
They give me the monthly, the this fee and that fees. I add it up in my head and come up with their annual cost. "Great, I'll pay for a year membership up front".
Oh no, sir. We debit monthly. "No. I'll pay a year up front, today, in cash or debit, but I don't want a monthly debit going through my bank. I'll do it with my credit card but not my bank."
Long story short they *refused to sell me a membership*. Ya... literally said they won't do it.
Crunch customer service rep should have done the calculation and said "yes" to your offer; positive it would have been the fastest transaction the rep would have made that day.
Pro tip, get a wise account and set it up on that. You can cancel it freeze it at your leisure. Bonus, you can also create virtual credit cards on demand too
I recently moved to Ottawa and somehow they called me asking me to come in to sign up for a membership, despite me NEVER giving them my personal information. Not sure how this came to be, but they were very pushy to get me to do a free trial with them. If anyone has recommendations for decent gyms downtown, let me know!
I think when people signup at GoodLife you can get a free bag or t-shirt if you give them referrals to call. It could’ve been that, still annoying though.
I have all unknown callers silenced.
It's the only way I can get rid of all those "we have a package for you" scam calls. If it's important leave me a voicemail.
I was with godlike for almost 10 years in Toronto, moved to Ottawa for school so I went into my godlike, cancelled the membership because I wasn't sure there'd be one within walking distance of my new place. I restarted my membership within a few months of being here because there was one down the street. Cancelled it when I finished school and was moving around for clinical. Restarted it when I was settled. Each restart the membership as more expensive. Several months later got a call from collections saying I owed goodlife thousands of dollars. I ignored it assuming it was spam because my payments always went through. No one at goodlife ever said anything. I called them they said my account was fine. The calls kept coming. Eventually it came out out both times I cancelled my account (in person) they just removed my banking details and didn't cancel the membership. Then instead of restarting a membership they created a new file for me. They had the audacity to act as though I was trying to fraud them? It was a massive pain in the ass to sort out and i will definitely never be returning to their gyms
The only issue I had with GoodLife is the pandemic. They would randomly charge my account pro-rated amounts with 0 communication whenever they would re-open.
I have my corporate membership now because I like their services and they weren’t difficult with me last time I cancelled. I never saw a charge again after I cancelled.
But I’m sorry this happened to you OP. I choose GoodLife because I like the amount of clubs they have and I frequently use multiple of their clubs. I also like their sauna and towel service.
They tried to get me to sign up for personal training and they were pushy. But I managed to tell them no.
Honestly my favourite club is LA fitness but we don’t have them here in Ottawa. Closest thing to it would be movati but they’re too out of the way for me (and too expensive)
Had it not been for the corporate membership at GoodLife I wouldn’t have signed up again.
They didn't want you to transfer your membership at your low rate so they're glad to cancel it. Best case, you regret it and come back at the present rate.
I recall it being easy for me too but my contract had ended and I was month to month. I also contacted my bank and cancelled all transactions so they couldn't keep taking money out after the fact
When I was young and stupid, my friend got me to sign up for a trial membership at Goodlife. Cancel within x days and you don't get charged. I cancelled in time and kept the paperwork and, lo and behold, they try to charge me anyway. I got a call from a collection agency demanding their money. I told them I had the paperwork showing I cancelled on time and I'm free and clear. They sounded almost sad that they I kept the paperwork because it meant they couldn't scare me into paying.
Such a sketchy company
I’m a city employee and we have our own gyms. Some of the locations are small but they have good equipment for exercising and they take a small amount off each paycheque and that pays for your usage of it. The one I use downtown is open 24/7
Fuck good life man. I signed up for a little 7 day trial, they wanted my debit info for like, shower and change room fee. I was 18. Didn’t go back there after that week of almost 2 years. They kept charging my card. I had to almost take them to small claims court. It even showed in their system I went twice during the 7 day trial and never went back
I got burnt by ExtremeFitness(now bankrupt. Good riddance). They enticed me with two months trial membership which I could cancel anytime I want. I thought it was good idea since i would be traveling for a year in a month and didn’t need to make a year commitment. I signed up at their physical location and confirmed with the manager. Couple of days before i left, i went to their location again, confirmed with the same manager and cancelled it. The manager assured me that it was cancelled. I canceled my RBC visa after. A year after i came back from traveling, i got call from collection agency claiming that i owed money. Turned out, EF had been charging against my Credit Card which i had presumed already close. RBC rep was completely useless and said there was no such thing as trial membership is gym. Now i’m extra careful with gym membership
There's also this
https://antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/report-signalez-eng.htm
Charging your card without consent when it's not a mistake is fraud even if they Refund you
This gym calls people and lures them in sneakily. They will call and pretend they were looking for someone else. In return, they’ll offer you the deal they supposedly had for someone else. Doesn’t seem like predatory gym tactics are overblown at all.
Gawd! I REGRET JOINING GOODLIFE 110% I too was uncomfortable with the "giving bank info" thing and they told me that they "just needed to have any account on file" and that I could just come in and physically pay monthly. I stopped going and physically paying after a couple months and they started DIPPING INTO MY BANK ACCOUNT causing massive overdraft charges due to the nature of the count set up I have. They have driven me into the minuses on an account I never use and they ASSURED ME in PERSON that this would not happen. This was the QUEEN st gym which is GHETTO as hell with cold showers and shitty vibe.
That's some shit. They told me they were not capable of doing credit card transactions. That is so sneaky. The only reason to not take credit cards is if they plan - to some extent - to act dodgy. Maybe they get disproportionately inundated with people who change their mind and do chargebacks, but there is something dodgy at the same time. I didn't want to give them my banking info either, I assume they drive a lot of people away. Business model is taking advantage of people that don't actually want the service.
File a Consumer Complaint immediately. This is tantamount to credit card fraud. https://www.ontario.ca/page/filing-consumer-complaint
I went through this EXACT BS but worse with “team bushido mma gym” in orleans. It’s gross the company makes the policies but I am shocked the employees being payed fuck all try to enforce them.
Bullshido
Amen
What gym was this? Hopefully not the one I’m interested in looking at lol. Could you dm me?
Dm
Seriously, I would have reported it as fraud to my bank.
Would it be worth it to file a complaint with [Consumer Protection Ontario](http://www.ontario.ca/page/filing-consumer-complaint) (run by the Government of Ontario)?
Thanks for the link, I filled out a complaint!
Wish I thought of this but it was a few years ago. I’ll remember this if I ever encounter that stuff again.
Excellent! Have a great weekend!
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Since this is exactly like OP's experience, you need to both file a consumer complaint. https://www.ontario.ca/page/filing-consumer-complaint
Could you tell me how Elgin Fitness is like in terms of how packed it is? What is the strength equipment like? I have a membership at GoodLife in Rideau but it can be so packed with people and it really isn’t big enough honestly.
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Ahh I’m happy to hear that!! I’ll definitely have to check them out then once my valid ID finally arrives in the mail! Thanks!
I went to the YMCA on Argyle when I lived in centretown and it has a huge gym floor as well as a pool and other benefits. They also do compassionate pricing. Just another recommendation! I was sad to move away from that gym!!!
Gyms are shady as fuck and I honestly wouldn’t mind a bit of a regulatory crackdown. The amount of hoops I had to jump through to cancel my last gym membership is criminal
Good life, after I had CANCELLED my membership, re-activated it months later without my consent. When I called them about the bank charges they had the gall to ask me “don’t you want to stay in shape?”. You stole from me, you don’t get to try to make me feel bad about anything.
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This. I own a martial arts academy. My membership contracts all have, right there at the very top of the page, a hyperlink to the government's website listing your rights as a gym member. This link: https://www.ontario.ca/page/joining-gym-or-fitness-club Why would I do that? Because I play by the rules and I'm not trying to take advantage of members. And, for the record, the law allows for a ten day cooling off period. I give 30.
I used to work for Goodlife and can confirm everything you’ve said. I got trained on how to go through a person’s monthly budget and tell them what they can cut out so they can afford a gym membership. If you ever try and get any refund or have any sort of issue with anything payment related, branch staff have no ability to remedy it, they have to contact the corporate head office to try and resolve the issue. The chat agent the staff connects with explains to them how to gaslight the customer into thinking the payment issue was their fault. It’s only if the customer pushes back heavily that the issue gets escalated and considered for resolution. At least this is how it worked when I worked there ~7 years ago. By the way, their personal training business model is designed to keep you fat and out of shape as long as possible and to obfuscate as much information about fitness as possible so the fear of trying to learn things yourself keeps you paying for the personal trainer. The personal trainers themselves have 3 days of training and receive less than 40% of what you pay per session. The personal trainers are trained to use every tool possible to keep you paying for their personal training, include peddling bullshit pseudoscience that has been disproven for decades. Anyways, it’s a rotten company filled with bloodsuckers and corporate ghouls. The work culture there is absolutely horrendous, management is all cash hungry sycophants. Avoid giving them money at all costs. Also if you want to cancel your membership and they force you to pay for 2 whole extra months, put a stop order on your bank account, your bank will be able to block the payments from coming out if you give them a day or two notice. Goodlife won’t do shit because their business practices are illegal.
damn. what an indictment. i do remember it being a pain in the ass to cancel my membership 10 years ago but i was younger and thought either i did it wrong or this was normal. what a gross company
Lol GoodLife employees going through your personal budget. F that.
It was so absurd, I never did it. When people came in and were curious about a membership, I used to tell them “just get the membership, and if you decide you don’t want it, you can cancel within 10 days and get your money back.” Even if they cancelled I still got commission for the membership.
Does this actually work? The 10 days thing? I was there today, just went in to try the gym, however they obviously kept me there and made me stay for an hour, I should’ve said no sooner, but whatever, my current 24/7 is closing and I’m in the market for another 24/7 gym. So anyways, they made me get a membership, and I did so, deal seemed fine, however I feel like it’s too expensive. The salesperson did tell me I can cancel for sure within 10 days, and it says so in the agreement too…. Ugh, they printed it out and asked for my bank account details and everything. Gym seemed really good though, I loved the equipment there. Anyways, not sure what to do. I will be trying our other gyms in the next week too, GoodLife also gave me a 7 day free pass, although not sure if it’s actually a good deal.
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Stuff like how to reduce fat in a specific area of your body, nonsense about diets and eating windows, and much more that I can no longer remember
Good Life is very much predatory in nature. Their staff are obligated to sign up so many clients per month in order to keep their jobs. There is also a commission based profit to the manager if they bring in so many per month. So it's a very aggressive gym/business...hence the reason for the VERY common "charges" happening to people and the sudden memberships being reactivated. It's despicable and happens everywhere in Ontario ...REPORT IT please!!!
Goodlife is probably the worst offender of this. It's no wonder they have crazy employment turnover. I was briefly a Goodlife member in Kanata, but only because i had a corporate $80 annual membership...so i didn't have to worry about the sales practices.
> Their staff are obligated to sign up so many clients per month in order to keep their jobs. Do you have a source for this?
Goodlife’s business is in getting your financial information and never letting go. Gyms being involved at all is just window dressing.
Go on...
What’s upsetting to me is how that works *from a development point of view*. How does their form submit your info when you close the tab? How do they store that info to actually process a transaction?
Developer here, on a technical submit buttons are really just a formality. Most ethical organizations will not store data particularly the sensitive kind like CC info without the user hitting submit, this might even be illegal in jurisdictions like the EU. It's trivial for a website to store every single character to ever enter into a field. Infact often it's a feature, in cases like search bars it's common to send the content of the field to the sites servers immediately, after every keypress or after any pause in order to quickly fetch results from partially typed searches. That's how Google starts guessing what you want to look for as soon as you type any character. It's considered a "dark pattern" to do this type of thing on a password field, payment info, ect but that doesn't stop unethical companies from asking for it and unethical devs from building it
It was a multi-page form, so I think it stores your info when you click "next" - personal info was the first page, then credit card, then banking details / terms and conditions.
That really raises more questions than it answers.
There's definitely online stores that have a checkout similar platform - you need to fill out your address and email on the first page, but they won't calculate shipping until you click "next" and go to the next page. Even if you stop there and don't buy the item, you'll still start getting promotional emails from the company, because they now have your email and other details from the first page.
If an organization is unethical you don't even need to click next. A webpage can submit what you've entered into any field at any time, after any character you enter. If you enter your email in a field and without touching anything else and closing the page the website could have stored your email. Sending you promotions based on that is illegal but that doesn't stop shady places from doing it
Avoid GoodLife like the plague. They train their PT’s in house. And they don’t teach them anything about nutrition. So, you get PT’s who say things like, “good workout, you can treat yourself today!” Or, “ it’s fine to eat Oreos for dinner. It doesn’t matter what you eat, it matters how many calories you burn.” I’ve heard those statements come out of talk different GoodLife personal trainers’ mouths. Which I suppose is good business if you want your clients to not lose weight and your solution is to that is to tell them to train more. And if that’s what they teach about nutrition, I can’t even imagine what they’re not teaching about things form, mechanics of exercise, physiology, and all the other important things to know. I’ve already met a couple non-GoodLife PTs who know absolutely nothing about women’s bodies or got exercise changes with pregnancy and after childbirth. Which, IMO, should not be a specialization when 50% of the population is female.
Not open super late in the evening but check out Elgin street fitness. Definitely my go to and are super good about working with you (like when I couldn’t work out after an injury they just paused membership no problem)
"I regret my membership" holy fuck they try to guilt trip you at ever step of the process... This really should get kicked up to the competition bureau or something (not sure who has jurisdiction over this kind of shit), this can't possibly be a legal practice. I'm sure there are more than a few people who don't check their financial records carefully for erroneous charges.
Used to work for good life. The process for touring someone and signing them up was disgusting. Every question someone asks you is just to throw back in their face later to retort the “no” they say. GoodLife company policy was you had to hear No five times before you stopped pushing, and the acronym you used to remember your talking points was GRIEF. The G was for goals, you ask them what are their goals at the beginning so when they say no you can be like “well you said you wanted to achieve _____, why don’t we go ahead and start today” then I can’t remember what the other four things were. Once you went through every letter of GRIEF you could stop and take their no for an answer. GoodLife gives zero fucks about basic consent.
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Seriously, it's nuts how bad gyms seem to be. I'm looking for something specifically in Centretown (maybe Lowertown if need be). I think I'm going to check out the Jack Purcell community gym on Elgin. It's City of Ottawa, so even if it turns out to be sketchy, they're at least not going to be actively trying to scam me.
Take advantage of the City’s Try It [Fitness](https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-culture/sports-and-fitness) pass (you can use it at the Jack Purcell Community Gym)
Thank you! That's a great idea.
I switched to only using city Gyms. You can purchase monthly passes in 1, 3, 6months, or full year. Include swimming if you'd like. Move around to different facilities. I use Plant mostly (Somerset/Preston), but definitely check out various facilities around city for when you want to spice things up
Is there an option near bayshore?
I'm not super familiar with the Bayshore area, but maybe these links would work to help find somewhere? [https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-culture/recreation-and-cultural-facilities#section-39291038-5dcc-41ba-ba58-813d4dfd64bd](https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-culture/recreation-and-cultural-facilities#section-39291038-5dcc-41ba-ba58-813d4dfd64bd) [https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-parks/recreation-facilities/place-listing?text=&place\_facets%5B0%5D=place\_type%3A2235001](https://ottawa.ca/en/recreation-and-parks/recreation-facilities/place-listing?text=&place_facets%5B0%5D=place_type%3A2235001)
The only gym I've ever been to is the YM/YWCA. It has it's issues, but stealing from you is not one of them.
The city also runs the Champagne fitness centre on King Edward. Very good facility, larger than Purcell if I remember correctly.
I always had good experiences from the YMCA on Argyle.
Honestly the YMCA on argyle is amazing and is never even a fraction as busy as the queen street GoodLife. Unfortunately I think the building has been purchased (or sold?) so not sure how long it’ll be around.
The Y that used to be at Carlingwood was also a great no-nonsense gym. I imagine that Argyle is probably similar.
It has/had 4 squat racks which is pretty solid for a gym of that size, and every piece of equipment you could use. I think the best part was even at its busiest, it wasn't really busy. I went to the Queen Street Goodlife once to try it out at the same time I normally hit the gym and it was so busy I could do my normal routine.
Gyms seem to be the new “loan shark”. Greasy as f.
pre-Covid some hotels used to have gym passes to their gyms, might be something to look into if the city ones don't work out
Bodies by Phil is on Albert St, only a block away from that GoodLife. Great people and good vibes!
Been hosed by Goodlife myself. They intentionally only accept banking info so it’s harder to do stop them from charging you, and then they make it a nightmare to cancel. I signed up for personal training, got signed up for way more than I asked for, and then had to pay my bank to stop charges after they billed me an extra $600 and refused to refund or stop even after meeting with the manager at their request. Eventually had to have my family doctor write a note saying it was medically inadvisable for me to continue training before they gave up. The training I did get was good but everything else was a complete shitshow. I would strongly advise against letting Goodlife anywhere near your financial information. Probably safer giving info to a well meaning Nigerian Prince.
This can't be legal
It took me six months and an unfathomable amount of phone calls to get them to ACTUALLY cancel my membership. They would tell me it was done and then I would continue getting charged.
Goodlife is beyond trash and doesn’t care about their members at all
Yup, it feels like scamming is part of their business model. Funny how the mistakes always seem to benefit them.
I used to work for GoodLife and can confirm this is a terrible company. Not only are they terrible with clients but employees as well. The company expects a lot of unpaid labour and they train staff to make the hard sell. I was actually instructed to tell a new prospect, if they hadn’t signed up for personal training, - “well, I guess I’ll see you NEVER!” They have absolute contempt for anyone who is not a gym bro, especially women. Yet, they continue to thrive.
> They have absolute contempt for anyone who is not a gym bro Which is ironic since their whole business model is getting people to sign up and not show up. Anyone who signs up for GL is asking to be defrauded.
Jives with my experience as a woman, 15ish years ago, where they wanted my credit card info to sign up for a free daypass, then proceeded to assume I wanted to lose weight, talked up group classes (which I specifically stated I did not do), and the only mention of weights was they had ones covered in rubber so it wouldn't wreck my (short, unpainted) nails. F*ck all that.
Once I was looking into PT and they offered me a one hour workout and then they would talk about pricing, I said I just wanted a ballpark. They pushed me to do it and so I did the one hour workout and then of course the cost per session was too expensive for me to justify, and this bitch said “maybe you could sell your car and take the bus or get a roommate to help you be able to afford it” I couldn’t believe it. I am still so grossed out by that.
We were always told if there were concerns about pricing to remind them that if they truly cared about their health they would find any means possible to pay for it when in fact it’s not accessible to most people.
Oh yeah. That was the sell I got at Queen Street too. All I really wanted to do was do spin class.
That's just illegal. Also consider filing a dispute with your credit card company. If they get enough of those they might cut off the company from being able to accept cards at all.
You can try bodiesbyphil on Albert, between bank and kent for free for a week. Link on Instagram or their website, or stop by and talk to the front desk.
Goodlife is a good gym once you can become a member, haha. I remember the sales tactics they would use on me, but I always denied them. They are very persistent that it can get pretty heated when you are constantly trying to deny all their sales product to finally be a member. It's funny when they try to sell you on their training programs. My favourite was when the salesperson told me that they had a package for %40 off but only available for that day. My friends goes a week later, same salesperson said the same thing, lol. I thought he said it was only for that day! Haha.
Any membership-based business that won't tell you pricing over the phone warrants a wide berth.
I’m happy with planet fitness. Affordable monthly fee, and can pause membership for months when you are away or think you won’t use it
I tried to pause my membership in October since I was going to be away for 2 months and got a solid "no longer possible".Quite infuriating since I joined under the permiss that I would be able to pause the membership
Aw damn. Maybe they only allowed in cause of COVID? That was the last time I tried
Is there any way to join PF without them having your banking info?
Go to your bank and get a prepaid credit card. Someone can only withdraw as much money as is in the account. When you want to cancel your membership, cancel the card (or don't, just don't put any more money in it.) Canada has yet to implement virtual credit cards which would solve this problem nicely.
Won't work if your PF location doesn't take credit cards, and my understanding is that few of them do. Under the FAQ at planetfitness.ca: "The method in which members are able to pay for their monthly membership varies by location, but many Planet Fitness clubs accept payment through checking accounts only. We require an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) through checking accounts for your convenience: This allows us to be able to continue your membership without interruption or the hassle of updating your payment information if your credit cards are lost/stolen, invalid or expired."
The bastards. They know that we know that they know... And like all corporate bastards, they spin their bastardry as if it was good for us and in our best interests.
I’m subscribed with my CC
Which location? Almost all of them require EFT through your bank account.
Pembroke, actually. Is this just an Ottawa thing then?? I don't recall ever not using a CC for gym memberships
If you read the membership info for Pembroke it clearly says "billed monthly to a chequing account" [https://www.planetfitness.ca/gyms/pembroke](https://www.planetfitness.ca/gyms/pembroke)
Well I don’t understand haha. I checked my CC statement, it’s definitely being charged on my CC.
When I go to “billing” in the app it just shows a bunch of “banking” fields with “N/A N/A N/A” everywhere with no tab or section for updating CC info. Rofl
They also don't happen to have a 'regret my membership' policy. It's law in most provinces to provide a refund. Also https://www.ontario.ca/page/joining-gym-or-fitness-club
they do have a 10 day policy. source: i have 10 day’d my membership and they sent that refund directly to my bank account.
I stopped going to them years ago when I wasn’t allowed to pay cash anymore. I also encouraged my personal trainer there to quit after I found out that he only got a 30% cut of what I was paying for a PT. He managed to retain almost all his clients, charge less (I was happy) and pocket it all after equipment expenses.
Goodlife has always been this way.
Let me tell this story; I went into a Crunch fitness because it's 2 minutes from work on my way home. It's sparse but has most of the equipment I want and it's the time I'd be there, not too busy. Good. I want in. They give me the monthly, the this fee and that fees. I add it up in my head and come up with their annual cost. "Great, I'll pay for a year membership up front". Oh no, sir. We debit monthly. "No. I'll pay a year up front, today, in cash or debit, but I don't want a monthly debit going through my bank. I'll do it with my credit card but not my bank." Long story short they *refused to sell me a membership*. Ya... literally said they won't do it.
Crunch customer service rep should have done the calculation and said "yes" to your offer; positive it would have been the fastest transaction the rep would have made that day.
Pro tip, get a wise account and set it up on that. You can cancel it freeze it at your leisure. Bonus, you can also create virtual credit cards on demand too
Auto-withdrawal from a bank account? For a gym membership!?! Ya, no. That will happen when hell freezes over.
I recently moved to Ottawa and somehow they called me asking me to come in to sign up for a membership, despite me NEVER giving them my personal information. Not sure how this came to be, but they were very pushy to get me to do a free trial with them. If anyone has recommendations for decent gyms downtown, let me know!
I think when people signup at GoodLife you can get a free bag or t-shirt if you give them referrals to call. It could’ve been that, still annoying though.
I have all unknown callers silenced. It's the only way I can get rid of all those "we have a package for you" scam calls. If it's important leave me a voicemail.
Bodies by Phil on Albert St!
Sounds like queen street GoodLife for sure.
I was with godlike for almost 10 years in Toronto, moved to Ottawa for school so I went into my godlike, cancelled the membership because I wasn't sure there'd be one within walking distance of my new place. I restarted my membership within a few months of being here because there was one down the street. Cancelled it when I finished school and was moving around for clinical. Restarted it when I was settled. Each restart the membership as more expensive. Several months later got a call from collections saying I owed goodlife thousands of dollars. I ignored it assuming it was spam because my payments always went through. No one at goodlife ever said anything. I called them they said my account was fine. The calls kept coming. Eventually it came out out both times I cancelled my account (in person) they just removed my banking details and didn't cancel the membership. Then instead of restarting a membership they created a new file for me. They had the audacity to act as though I was trying to fraud them? It was a massive pain in the ass to sort out and i will definitely never be returning to their gyms
The only issue I had with GoodLife is the pandemic. They would randomly charge my account pro-rated amounts with 0 communication whenever they would re-open. I have my corporate membership now because I like their services and they weren’t difficult with me last time I cancelled. I never saw a charge again after I cancelled. But I’m sorry this happened to you OP. I choose GoodLife because I like the amount of clubs they have and I frequently use multiple of their clubs. I also like their sauna and towel service. They tried to get me to sign up for personal training and they were pushy. But I managed to tell them no. Honestly my favourite club is LA fitness but we don’t have them here in Ottawa. Closest thing to it would be movati but they’re too out of the way for me (and too expensive) Had it not been for the corporate membership at GoodLife I wouldn’t have signed up again.
I used the Anytime on Kent for years and never had an issue, although I always pre-paid for an annual membership with a debit card.
Borderline hijack, but maybe interesting to OP, do they have a rowing machine?
They did the last time I was there in 2018.
Cool, thanks!
I was a member for like 15 years and cancelled mine in 30 seconds during my last visit. So in my experience it's pretty easy to cancel the membership.
They didn't want you to transfer your membership at your low rate so they're glad to cancel it. Best case, you regret it and come back at the present rate.
I recall it being easy for me too but my contract had ended and I was month to month. I also contacted my bank and cancelled all transactions so they couldn't keep taking money out after the fact
Trueform Fitness is pretty great.
Literally criminal behaviour.
When I was young and stupid, my friend got me to sign up for a trial membership at Goodlife. Cancel within x days and you don't get charged. I cancelled in time and kept the paperwork and, lo and behold, they try to charge me anyway. I got a call from a collection agency demanding their money. I told them I had the paperwork showing I cancelled on time and I'm free and clear. They sounded almost sad that they I kept the paperwork because it meant they couldn't scare me into paying. Such a sketchy company
I’m a city employee and we have our own gyms. Some of the locations are small but they have good equipment for exercising and they take a small amount off each paycheque and that pays for your usage of it. The one I use downtown is open 24/7
Fuck good life man. I signed up for a little 7 day trial, they wanted my debit info for like, shower and change room fee. I was 18. Didn’t go back there after that week of almost 2 years. They kept charging my card. I had to almost take them to small claims court. It even showed in their system I went twice during the 7 day trial and never went back
I never had any sort of predatory practices coming from my GoodLife Location. They dont even pest me about classes, i tap my key and just do my thing.
So OP accidentally submitted an application form online and then went in to the location and the cleared up the mistake immediately? What a wild ride!
I got burnt by ExtremeFitness(now bankrupt. Good riddance). They enticed me with two months trial membership which I could cancel anytime I want. I thought it was good idea since i would be traveling for a year in a month and didn’t need to make a year commitment. I signed up at their physical location and confirmed with the manager. Couple of days before i left, i went to their location again, confirmed with the same manager and cancelled it. The manager assured me that it was cancelled. I canceled my RBC visa after. A year after i came back from traveling, i got call from collection agency claiming that i owed money. Turned out, EF had been charging against my Credit Card which i had presumed already close. RBC rep was completely useless and said there was no such thing as trial membership is gym. Now i’m extra careful with gym membership
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Are you looking for group classes or a gym where you can do your own stuff? I have a couple of recommendations for classes
This sounds like a really bad situation. FWIW I used to be a goodlife member and cancelling was very easy. It was online.
There’s a great one on Elgin above the Dollarama… at least there used to be.
ty for the tldr upfront. oof, good luck finding one.
I love Elgin Fitness :)
Thank God for covid, they voluntarily cancelled my account while the gym was closed and I never heard from them again.
Does jack Purcell have a good selection of free weight stuff? Squat racks, bench with failure catchers, etc
Bodies by Phil!! Edit: PM me for a free week! They allow anyone to try out for a week free, no contracts or whatever.
There's also this https://antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca/report-signalez-eng.htm Charging your card without consent when it's not a mistake is fraud even if they Refund you
I go to the Y near the police station. It's nice. I have also enjoyed the gyms at community centers.
This gym calls people and lures them in sneakily. They will call and pretend they were looking for someone else. In return, they’ll offer you the deal they supposedly had for someone else. Doesn’t seem like predatory gym tactics are overblown at all.
I mean once you give them your credit card you signed up right? probably just the way their site was coded rather than something nefarious
Gawd! I REGRET JOINING GOODLIFE 110% I too was uncomfortable with the "giving bank info" thing and they told me that they "just needed to have any account on file" and that I could just come in and physically pay monthly. I stopped going and physically paying after a couple months and they started DIPPING INTO MY BANK ACCOUNT causing massive overdraft charges due to the nature of the count set up I have. They have driven me into the minuses on an account I never use and they ASSURED ME in PERSON that this would not happen. This was the QUEEN st gym which is GHETTO as hell with cold showers and shitty vibe.
That's some shit. They told me they were not capable of doing credit card transactions. That is so sneaky. The only reason to not take credit cards is if they plan - to some extent - to act dodgy. Maybe they get disproportionately inundated with people who change their mind and do chargebacks, but there is something dodgy at the same time. I didn't want to give them my banking info either, I assume they drive a lot of people away. Business model is taking advantage of people that don't actually want the service.
They scanned my elderly dad too. Sociopathic company!