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Let me tell you aout the only gym membership I ever had. It was a little place around the corner that was open late and rarely full. I enjoyed my time there up until I had to leave to the cold north on a work contract.
There were no memes to warn me about what happened next.
First they asked me where I was going so they could find town near my camp. There's no goddamn way I thought a town, pop. 3000, had a gym along with it's one main road and rocky woodland, but their franchise had spread that far. They said I could use that location instead. When I explained I'd only be spending one day a week in a town that was 250km from camp, they were like "Well one day a week is still a good deal!"
The rest of my week would be in the woods doing long days of manual labour, like carrying 30lbs of equipment and supplies for ten hours a day, but they insisted. I insisted not.
They tried shame: Was I not interested in maintaining physical health?
They tried to appeal to my budget: One month at half off.
They tried guilt: But I'd been with them for so long.
They tried hanging up so I had to call them back.
In the end I had to threaten to contest the charge to get them to cancel.
In the real end I had to call them from the woods to ask why I was still charged for the next month. They pleaded with me to suspend my membership until I came back, so I said I was moving to another country. And that was the end.
Learn from my mistakes, I thought I was taking care of my body but that's just the illusion they cast over their gaping maw of a snake's mouth. Their tactics have only gotten more sophisticated since then, making escape even more impossible.
Please, for your own sake, never go to gym.
What in the world. Do people really have a hard time dis-enrolling from gyms?
They make the vast majority of their money from memberships that aren't used.
I read a while back that the average Planet Fitness has 6,000 members. If you assume half are paying the minimum $10 and the other the "black card" $25, that means average revenue is around $1.5 million a year (counting annual fees). But it's pretty obvious there's no way any gym could accommodate 6,000 daily users.