I originally signed up for a year with a personal trainer and the payment was to be automatically deducted from my account. After my third session i was informed that the sessions weren't being paid for. When i called to find out what was going on they told me they forgot to submit the automatic deductions but they couldn't take off the fees for not paying. Being that it was their mistake i was upset and decided i wanted to cancel the membership. They ended up charging me over $800 for early termination. I got tired of fighting it because it wasn't doing any good and i've been paying it off since. When i called a few days ago to make another payment i was informed that the account was "paid off" and that National Fitness didn't handle Professional Fitness' accounts any more. Today, i noticed some issues with my bank account and discovered that Professional Fitness deducted $165 without being authorized.

I signed for personal training last year for 6 months through Professional Fitness out of Niagara Falls World Gym. After the 6 months was already over, the trainer told me that I would need to send a certified letter to the Corporate Office to cancel the contract if I no longer wanted it. Well, my first mistake was signing with them in the first place. The second was asking my husband to put it in the mail for me. He sent it to the gym instead of to the Corporate Office. We never got any information from the trainers or the staff at the gym to say that they got the letter in error until I got a bill, which was a month later. Well, I concede that it was done wrong. I was willing to pay for that last month and then sent another letter correctly asking them to cancel it. Where I got angry was that they are now asking me to pay for an additional 2 months because it was in my 'contract' that it should have gone there and that it takes 30 days to cancel.

I feel that they just have terrible business practices, they are not in it for the customer and their cancellation policy is just awful. I have never heard of not cancelling something for 30 days but the problem is that they put this in the 'contract' and hold you to that. I don't know if I have a leg to stand on legally but I did fill out a Better Business Bureau complaint which when I told the so called Floor Manager I was doing that, she laughed at me. They obviously don't care about that. But I would hope anyone who wants a trainer would definitely not look to them. The BBB rating is a 'F' for this company. Surprise, surprise.

I am going to send my husband to take my place with the training sessions because we have bought them at this point. They will never see my face again and I hope they choke on that money.

If you are thinking of getting a personal trainer be careful if you select Professional Fitness Trainers. They will have you sign a contract. Once the contract expires, if you don't cancel the contract their way you'll be automatically renewed.

My contract with Professional Fitness Trainers expired in December of 2008. The manager in the Peak Fitness Downtown Raleigh location informed me that it was about to expire and asked me if I wanted to renew. I emphatically told him that I could not afford to renew. I told him that when things were better for me financially I would revisit the possibility of renewal then. I was never billed in the month of December. Then today I went on my on-line bank account and realized that they had debited my account for a month of personal training. I called the Personal Fitness Trainers office at the Peak Fitness location in Downtown Raleigh. They gave me the number for the corporate office. I called the corporate office on Six Forks Road in Raleigh. They told me that I did not cancel the contract in the “right way". They explained to me that I needed to send them a certified letter telling them I wanted to cancel or else my contract would automatically renew. I told them I wanted to cancel the contract and get my $240 back. They told me that they would not refund my money but that I could have training sessions instead.

I find this to be an unethical, dishonest way of trying to retain customers.

I've contacted the Better Business Bureau, Monica Laliberty with 5 On Your Side of WRAL and Attorney General Roy Coopers office.

The trainer was good, it's just to bad he works for such a dishonest company.