My 3 year membership ended but Ballys has continued to charge my credit card on file each month. Per my contract I sent a written request to the address located on my contract with a $50 money order for the cancellation fee and have been waiting now almost 3 months for my cancellation to take effect - all the while they are still charging my credit card the monthly membership fee. I am shocked that a company as big as Ballys is essentially "trapping" consumers into these memberships and then structure the contracts in a way where they can continue charging the member even after the agreement term has ended and making it impossible to contact them to cancel. Literally, I have tried to contact them so many times but the customer service lines tell you to hang up and try again - it doesn't let you wait on hold even if you wanted to wait the 30-45 minutes. It has turned into one of the most frustrating experiences of my life.

The address to their cancellation department that is written on my contract where I mailed my cancellation letter and $50 cancellation fee is:

Attn: Cancellation Dept
12440 East Imperial Hwy
PO Box 1080
Norwalk, CA 90650

Frustrated Bally Fitness Member,
Antonino Ciappina

Hello viewers. Glad to know that I've sparked your curiosity once more. Please understand the purpose of this message is to inform any potential members or future employees of Bally Total Fitness Houston the dangers that I experienced first hand.

My previous posting explained how bad management in general caused the decline of this company but upon closer review, I came to realize that only a few corrupted officials are responsible. If I don't point them out by listing names, I'll be jeopardizing the image and reputation of the good ones.

Hard to believe, isn't it? But there are good management that exist within this company. I'll cover the good ones later but first you consumers need to realize the evil that also lies within. As a friendly reminder, please feel free to discontinue reading because you WILL get pissed.

There's basically two officials that comes to mind. I'll start with the male by the name of RYAN COLIN. Imagine a shady manager at Blockbuster Videos that conducts his employees by saying something like, "Every customer who walks in here better leave with at least 5 dvds. I don't care how you do it and I don't want to hear any excuses. We have thousands of selections among numerous categories so if anyone leaves without renting a damn thing, that tells me you're not doing your job by hustling the aisles. Go out there to each customer and personally recommend your favorites titles if you have to! Tell them what's good about these movies and build value into each film. If you do your job properly, there's no reason why they would ever turn you down! They'll be picking up titles left and right if you know how to sell. Besides movies, we also offer a variety of drinks, popcorn, posters and even memorabilia. So I don't want to hear any more whining about "they were just dropping off returns" routine. If I start to see people leaving empty handed because you can't close a deal by making a sale, that tells me you're in the wrong business and you're gonna get fired. We don't tolerate any excuses and when anyone leaves without renting or making some kind of purchase under your shift is totally unacceptable. I'm going to let you off easy this time so I better see you hustling even harder next time!"

Unbelievable, right? This shady manager doesn't exist at Blockbuster Videos because he's actually positioned very comfortably as a manager at Bally Total Fitness in Houston Texas. Instead of hustling dvds, he wants us hustling gym memberships to anyone walking in. He'll begin expressing to us by saying, "Everyone comes in here looking to buy a membership. Why else would they even walk in? Your job is to sell them a 3 year contract no matter what. It's your job to close these deals and sell memberships. If you're not closing these deals, that tells me you either screwed up on the tour by not building up enough value into the gym or you failed to convince them that our prices are affordable. If they walk out of here without a membership for whatever reason, you failed. It's your fault. You somehow dropped the ball one way or the other."

Here's the tricky thing. Not everyone comes in looking to buy a membership because there's free trial guest passes for 2 weeks available on line. People who download these passes are either from out of town visiting, trying the gym out because they already belong to another gym, repeat visitors trying to abuse the system or teenagers who are tagging along because their friends and families are members here at Bally's.

So here's where things get complicated. Our job as sales counselors is to close every single one of these visitors with free trial memberships that comes through the door. We're supposed to "flip" those passes into memberships by convincing them to sign early for a cheaper discounted price. Obviously we get rejected 99% of the time because people want to use what's free. Duh.

Another form of guest and perhaps the most annoying is the tag along guest of member. They're only here for a single visit because of their friend and hates to be bothered or hassled about getting a membership. Once again, you guessed it. Our job is to convince to them to buy a contract before they work out. Needless to mention at this point, you can easily conclude that these visitors are the most difficult ones to sell anything to because they're NOT HERE TO BUY!

Please keep in mind that Ryan Colin doesn't wastes his time on these dead ends and always tosses them over to me like left over scraps. He never takes 2 weeks passes or guest of members and continuously abuses me as his guest pass bitch. And each time we get rejected for obvious reasons, we have to report immediately to Ryan Colin why there was no sale and keep in mind he doesn't tolerate excuses.

So basically, I'm the garbage bin he tosses all the unwanted visitors to. Every single free pass, guest of member, people just price shopping or anyone he knows isn't going to buy, he calls me out from my office like some pet dog and expects me to deliver him a membership.

Based on commission like the rest of us, Ryan will remain all day at the front desk determining which visitor to take and which to discard in my direction. Naturally, he hogs all the easy walk ins who approach to sign up automatically because they don't require much effort. He'll shop the guest the instant they walk in verifying whether they're here to sign up or not.

Ryan will simply ask upfront, "Are you here to buy?" Suppose a yes is delivered. He'll respond by saying, "Hi. My name's Ryan."

Suppose a "no" is issued instead. Now he'll say, "Let me page someone to help you." Want to take a wild guess who always gets paged?

Basically, he gets fat on his commission check while I'm starving from receiving all his unwanted scraps. Ryan continuously takes all the walk ins who arrives to sign up and tosses me the remaining garbage while expecting me to close these deals that he wouldn't waste his time on because we all know how impossible they are to close!

HE takes the ones willing to buy on a tour and closes it easily because they were here to buy anyway then immediately comes back around to us and say, "You see how easy that was? I told you. Hard work and dedication. It never fails. If I can close my deals, you should be able to close yours! No excuses!" A magnificent creature, don't you think?

Unfortunately, I always get the ones not interested to buy because they're either price shopping or they simply belong to another gym already while freeloading us on a guest pass!

Believe it or not, what he's doing so far is only the tip of the iceberg. It gets much worse. How? Ryan Colin is a notorious con and a thief. He's infamously known for stealing deals from other employees. Here's a perfect example. I sold a done deal one evening prior to going on my paid vacation. Only thing was the lady did not currently have her credit card present at the time and asked if she could come back days later to complete the process. I naturally replied of course and even Ryan offered to help me finish the paperwork in my absence because he knew I was going on vacation. Upon returning from vacation, guess who stole that deal away by putting it under his commission check instead of mine?

When confronting him, he wouldn't look me in the eye and simply said, "Hey, she came back much later than we had anticipated so therefore the deal is up for grabs. She never came back days after like we discussed but rather a week after. So if she arrives late with her credit card, the deal is mine. The initial agreement was that she was to come back within 3 days. Since she exceeded the 3 day mark, THAT agreement is no longer valid and therefore this new deal becomes mine."
I suppose all his evil is not too difficult to grasp considering he has a tattoo of the CONFEDERATE FLAG on his upper arm.

Besides stealing deals, he would often create or write fake deals on days when there isn't a single sale. He does this so he won't get yelled at by another moron called Devin Verdon. One fake deal Ryan did in particular was put in my name on a Saturday which was my day off. After I threatened to report him, he later changed it. He put that in my name because he just did a fake deal on Thursday of January 08. So for any manager or employee curious enough to see what a fake deal looks like, go to your contact management page and pull up a Thursday where only 1 single deal was up Jan of 08. Check that Saturday deal within the same week as well.

Anyone not aware that forging signatures is against the law? Well, apparently that doesn't bother Ryan a single bit considering he was caught more than twice by corporate and STILL has a job.

Here's one of my personal favorites when he lied to the Houston Police Department back in November of 07 when trying to become an HPD officer. What did he lie about on the application? Ooh, nothing that big. Ryan told the cops he was never arrested. Oops. Eh Einstein, you didn't think they would check?

Naturally, he was immediately kicked out of training. Ryan explained that he simply forgot he was arrested because it was around 10 years ago. Gee, that's a good one. You remembered the incident occurred around 10 years ago but not the actual incident? OKAAAY.

I could go on and on but you get the idea. If you thought this was interesting, stay tuned for the other person that is just as diabolical.

Dec2009 I bought a 6 month membership a free 6 month membership. I bought the package on Dec 8. We walked up to the desk to redeem our new memberships and were quickly introduced to how things operate at Bally. The front desk girl was sitting on the desk with her feet up texting. She did not look up to acknowledge us but merely made a gesture for us to scan our membership cards ourselves. I then said we are new members and need cards. This is when I meet Scott. I began by explain my wallet was stolen and that I did not have the card I used originally to purchase the membership but it was already paid for. When I presented Scott with my new card he immediately said he could not accept it. The card was a temporary card until my new one arrived. I explained that the number, expiration date, security code and everything else are the same that will be printed on my official card. My concern here was that he told me that if I did not put a card on file at that location by Jan 3rd I would not be able to redeem my free guest membership. He completely refused to try to rug that card because he said, It doesnt always work. This led me to believe that it works sometimes and is worth a shot, he just utterly refused to even attempt. What he did do was write us a guest pass. I finally got my official card on Jan 1st. I would have worked out that day but I had to leave for Detroit by 2pm. I quickly ran out to Bally around noon and was met at the front desk by Joe. Joe ran my card said everything was good I just needed to sign something and everything would be all set I just had to sign a paper. I could not sign the paper because Scott was printing out something at that time. Joe went to talk to Scott and asked if he could do an interrupt function on the print job so I could sign my contract. Scott advised Joe to tell me to wait a moment. I happily waited but began to grow impatient as the minutes passed by. I had walked in at Noon and the time was now 12:30. I had been waiting a long time for a print job. I asked Joe if there was anything he could do. Joe sincerely apologized and went back to the office to ask Scott if I could get my contract printed out. Joe came back and told me Scott had advised me to wait. I had been waiting for 45 minutes at that point. I told Joe that I had a guest membership that had to be redeemed by the 3rd. I told Joe that I was heading out of town and did not want to lose a chance at that guest membership. I also explained that I was beginning to run late as the time was 1pm and I had to at 2pm. and I asked him, since I was here and had on two other occasions prior attempted to redeem my 6 month membership but was refused, if it was acceptable for me to come back on the day I returned and sign the contract that was scheduled to print sometime that day. I was told that would be fine. I returned on December 10th. I walked in and Joe was there and I asked if I could redeem my membership and get my card. Joe explained he would have to get a manager to do my free guest membership because it was above his rank level to authorize it. Joe went and got Scott. Scott came over, dismissed Joe when he attempted to explain the situation, and immediately said, This is expired, I cannot honor it. I explained that I knew it was expired but that I had made several attempts to redeem it but was never able to due to the fact that some condition was not able to be met up to Scotts satisfaction so I was unable to redeem it. Scott began to argue with me when I tried to tell him about the four times I had been in in December and how each time I tried to redeem my card. I then told Scott about the conversation Joe and I had and how that day I was in a hurry and was trying to meet and important deadline. This is when Scott uttered the words that changed to whole course of conversation. I am a busy man and I have a lot of things to do. I cant control your schedule. If you couldnt make it in to redeem that thing (guest membership) that has nothing to do with me. This is when I saw red. I had been in several times. I had attempted to redeem several times. I had been rejected several times. I had never caused a problem. I had paid for my membership. So the question is, why I was being treated like a man who walked in a disrespected his club? Scott showed me no respect from the very beginning. After this experience I came home and called and spoke to a customer service representative. I said that I would like to speak with a supervisor and was told by the agent he could most likely help me. I spoke with him and explained I wanted to file a complaint against Scott, file a testimonial for Joe and get my 6 month guest membership I was supposed to receive with my purchase. I spent over an hour on the phone explaining everything to the agent. The agent said a complaint will be filed, I would be sent a pass for me (Justin Beerup) to work out at the Mt Prospect, IL. I tried to call several days last week but was always told there were no available spots in the call queue and to try back later and was hung up on. January 27th, I was able to reach a supervisor, Angel ID# 1625, and explained my situation. He stated there were no records of a call and no record of a request for a 6 month guest membership. I then asked how I could get one and he explained the offer has expired and I could not redeem it. I am looking for a simple resolution. I want my money back and I think I am initialed to it.

HELLO MY NAME IS BRENDA V VILLA,

I SENT A WRITTEN REQUEST TO THE ADDRESS LOCATED ON MY CONTRACT WITH A CANCELATION FEE OF $50. I HAVE BEEN PAYING MY MONTHLY FEE STILL AND I HAVE BEEN WAITING A ALMOST TO MONTHS FOR MY CANCELATION TO TAKE EFFECT. WHY DID THEY TAKE MY MONEY AND STILL BILL ME. I FEEL LIKE I MAY HAVE TO TAKE LEGAL ACTION WITH A LAWYER. I REALLY HOPE YOU GUYS ARE NOT SCAMMING PEOPLE WHO WANT TO CANCEL. WHAT IS GOING ON? HERE IS THE ADDRESS TO THE CANCELATION DEPT THAT IS WRITTEN ON MY CONTRACT. IT SAYS FOR ME TO SEND A WRITTEN REQUEST TO CANCEL ALONG WITH MY FEE OF $50. AND THEY WOULD SEND ME A LETTER STATING MY AGREEMENT IS CANCLED. THIS WAS THE ADDRESS ON MY CONTRACT THAT I SENT MY INFO TO AND MONEY ODER : P.O. BOX 1080, NORWALK, CA 90651 I HAVE THE MONEY ODER STUB TO TRACK MY $50 MONEY ORDER I SENT.

after sending numerous e mails to be sure to stop auto withdraw from my bank account once membership expired Bally continued to take money and refuses to refund.