You know all the stories you heard about Pressure sales for gym memberships and difficulty in dropping the membership.... yeah like all those stories probably came from LA fitness. You talk to them about joining, it is like you are buying a used car.. pressure to sign up NOW!, talking to the manager to get a better price, saying if you pay $5 per month you will get a sweat towel.... the endless phone calls if you leave without joining....
Once you are beyond that, the peak hours are PACKED, and they last late at night, my wife (who was a teacher in the inner-city and knows karate) stopped going there after dinner time as it was not a good place to be then. Lots of obnoxious people on free weights, Young people who seem to be there to impress their friends and hook up.
We joined about 3 or 4 years ago (2010) and it was decent then, but it has gone down hill now in 2013, the carpet in the Mens locker room is just gross, they have no towels, they have remove the bathing suit dryer, a few times the pool, hot tub or basketball courts will be shut down for weeks.
If the people working there are not selling you a membership, they do not give a sh1t about you. Honestly they do not even check you in, most of the time you can just walk past the front desk and wave. Do not bother asking them question, they will not know the answer.
The good part, if you like to swim and do basketball and racquet ball, and can be there in off hours (though it is close to full some times at lunch), and you can get a deal for less then $25 a month... sure this would work for you....but be aware, if you are paying $40 there are better deals in the valley.
Also, the final insult: when I called there to cancel, the process that I was told to do was
1) go to the gym
2) receive a form they had to print out for me (after a grilling of why i was leaving)
3) Mail (yes, USPS only, no email, no web site, no fax) the form that I signed to California.
4) hope that the form is processed in California before the 25th of the month, or I will be charged for the next month, then my membership would be canceled on the 25th OF THE NEXT MONTH. So I mailed the form in on June 10th and my membership expired on July 25th. This was what a friend of mine had to do also.
When my wife canceled, she was there already. So she went to the front desk, they told her to talk to the manager, she gave the manager an earful of the cr@p she put up with and the manager canceled her membership on his computer immediately.
Go figure... read more