I joined WOW gym in 2003 and joined my boyfriend also on my credit card in 2004. When I joined wow, I signed a contract and agreed to make payments to ABC financial because that was the company that wow chose to collect membership dues through. ABC financial has scam after scam, and I felt violated by wow since I came to get a gym membership, not intending for wow to give a company like ABC financial the opportunity to continuously scam me by making excess charges to my account. This is what ABC was doing and according to them this was legal and was actually in my contract that I signed with a wow in front of a wow supervisor who never bothered to inform me of this. When my credit card (like all other members' credit cards) expired and I automatically got a new card in the mail and activated it, it had a new expiration date. This is a normal occurance with credit cards and no other company I have ever dealt with has penalized me for it. The numbers are the same... only the expiration date has changed. That month and every month after, ABC charged my account an extra 20 dollars... so my statement would have a 39.99 charge (19.99 dues plus 20.00 fee). Now, my boyfriend's membership fee was doing the same thing. Our billing dates were different, so ultimately my card was being charged two additional 20.00 fees per month for several months. ABC wanted to do nothing about it since they say I agreed to the terms in my contract. I still don't know if that is true. Also, randomly throughout the year this extra 20.00 fee would show up the same way. ABC told me that I had insufficient funds at those times. Surprisingly,I actually could prove that on those specific dates, there was plenty of money in my account. The way that they finally corrected my account made no sense and I got so frustrated and gave up. I have spoken to others who have had this problem. See, the purpose of the fees is because a business cannot collect money due when it is due, but ABC always collected the money just plus 20.00. And when my card expired, the reasoning behind the penalties was that they couldn't process the transaction. But they did process the transaction but added 20.00 extra on both memberships each month. When I moved, I canceled both accounts on my credit card and both WOW and ABC financial scammed me out of 2 months dues as well as last month (which was already paid) for both my membership and my boyfriends. Any person reading this should beware of both companies... they do not do fair business. Their only corporate contact number is a voice mail, and so far, nobody has returned my calls. If this has happened to anybody else, I would be willing to take action as a group.
I Have been a victim of this scam as well. ABC financial service is a scam. I had a gift package for Natulius GYM where it said that i would get a year free subscription and they charged me $99 as for my gift pack again. When i went to cancel my subscription they told me that i had to talk with ABC financial and they would help me out to get rid of the subscription BUT They didn't. I signed up in summer and now my classes started and i cannot use the club since then. but I dont understand, If i wish to cancel the contract why do i have to pay $750 as they stated for 60% of the term lease? I told them that i just cant use the membership and want to cancel and i am ready to provide my school schedule but they told me that i am gonna have to pay this amount for the ABC Financial since i have signed the contract.
I was a customer of WOW for over a year. I paid my 20 bucks a month, and my yearly $50.00 fee on time. I have advance notice when I canceled. I thought it was odd when they told me that they (WOW) couldn't cancel my membership and that I needed to contact ABCFinancial directly. So, I followed their instructions and called ABCfinancial and waited on hold. After holding for 20 minutes, I finally got ahold of a woman that rudely said "You gots to mail us a formal letter. We ain't cancel no account without no formal letter. We gots to know its from you." This wasn't ideal, but I need to cancel the account because I moved, and there isn't a WOW in my new town. So, I drafted a formal request to cancel and sent it certified mail. After a month of not hearing back from them, I call the same number, wait on hold again, and after 15 minutes get ahold of another rude woman. I told her I sent a letter last month, she accused me of lying. I told her that I would send her a second letter and requested a copy be sent to her electronically. She made it sound that they preferred old fashion hand written snail mail, but reluctantly gave me an email address to send instructions and "authorization" to cancel my account. A week later, they inform me that they are not only billing me for the following month and previous month, but I'm being charged a "cancelation fee" of $49.00. A grand total of $89.00.
Screw WOW and ABCFinancial. I'm tired of big business taking advantage of the little people!