Trying to cancel a membership with Gold's Gym (or the parent company ABC Financial) is a chore at best. The practice of allowing you to get a membership for a year paid up front then they threw on an extra 6 months. WOW, what a great deal... Until you try to quit.

What kind of scam says that the only way to cancel your membership is to write a letter and send it to somebody (certified so that it can be verified). Wow a phone call and an e-mail won't work in the year 2009???

You'll understand why when you look at ABC Financials mission statement:

"Our company mission is two-fold: to be the resource for cutting edge technology in the health and fitness industry, and to collect the most money from the most members, every day."

This in alone tells you why you can't cancel your membership in a timely manner.

When we called ABC Financial, thier "Customer Service Representative" told my wife that they e-mailed her, unfortunately he didn't account for her not having a job since 2/2009. Because the e-mail would have bounced back. Then of course the "Customer Service Representative" manager told me that it doesn't send reminders to anybody very often. (What is very often?).

Not only that but the local Gym added on an additional month to our contract due to a promotion with our company. ABC Financial didn't have the updated paper, however our local Gym did.

I plan on fighting these charges with our credit card company and will be contacting the BBB both locally and nationally. If I have to pay the money (which coincidentally our monthly charge went from $42 a month to $65 a month roughly a 150% increase.

I urge everybody who has to deal with these people to fight them and make them spend $100's for every dime they recoup.

As for people who are looking at Gym's please investigate and stay away from ABC Financial, Gold's Gym and all the rest that they own.