Planet Fitness isn’t just known for lunk alarms, Pizza Mondays, and $10-a-month gym memberships, but also for taking a very Hotel California-esque approach to its member service agreements. Signing up may be easy, but actually canceling one’s membership and stopping the chain from billing you monthly is notoriously difficult, according to some customers. Just ask this guy who says he was charged $800 over the course of five years when Planet Fitness wouldn’t cancel his account.
And now yet another Planet Fitness member is hopping on social media to air their gripes with the gym chain. TikTok user Annais Paulo (@annaisspaulino) uploaded a viral clip that seemed to resonate with many others on the platform. Her video accrued 2.3 million views and in just 7 seconds, she encapsulated the hopelessness many Planet Fitness customers seem to feel when it comes to getting their memberships successfully canceled.
“You could probably escape prison easier than canceling a planet fitness membership,” Paulino writes in a text overlay of her clip, which shows her pantomiming weeping as she walks through the parking lot of one of the gym’s locations. She records herself walking through the front door and standing at a kiosk where an employee types away at a computer.
However, appears that Paulino’s attempt to get out of her Planet Fitness membership was ultimately unsuccessful as the very next shot is of her with her hand over her face, with the exterior of the gym behind her.
“THEY STILL DIDNT LET ME CANCEL” she pens in an additional caption.
Judging from the comments by other users, a number of other folks expressed their frustration in attempting to stop gyms they no longer want to attend from charging their credit cards.
“Cancelling gym memberships truly is the most unnecessarily complicated thing ever,” one person wrote.
For other viewers of Paulino’s clip, this type of gym-cancelling exasperation is a uniquely Planet Fitness experience. Some commenters discussed the various methods they tried in order to free themselves from the “No Judgment Zone” health club.
“I literlly changed my card bc they would not let me,” one person wrote. But, as some viewers remarked, this might not be the best course of action. This is because businesses can continue to bill someone even if they change their credit card if it is a contractual agreement.
In fact, there are numerous people who advise against doing this, which means that the best recourse is to either get Planet Fitness to agree to finally stop charging your credit card, and document all of your attempts at trying to do so in the event that any legal recourse needs to be taken.
@annaisspaulino Would you believe they still didnt let me cancel UGHHHHABBSNWMWMAM #rip ♬ original sound – Daily Relationship Memes
One TikTok user who said that they were a former Planet Fitness employee revealed there are some particular tricks folks can use when attempting to cancel their memberships. The best part is they don’t have to visit the gym in person to do it.
According to the ex-gym worker, all one has to do is call up and state that they are physically unable to go into the gym and that they need to go forward with the cancellation over the phone. He went on to say that at the gym where he worked out, workers were instructed to follow a “rule of 3,” policy: if a customer requested to cancel even after being told that they needed to come in person, a third request from the customer would prompt the Planet Fitness employee to cancel the membership.
Another commenter who responded to Paulino’s video also had a suggestion on how to successfully cancel, writing, “I work at planet fitness and the only way to cancel is to go to your home gym or mail them a letter.”
Someone else said that lying about moving seems to work fairly well. “They let me cancel it because I told them I was moving to Brazil,” they said.
“I even lied and told them I was moving five states over, and they asked if I wanted them to find a Planet Fitness near my new location so I could go,” another wrote, proving that some employees could be pretty dogged in attempting to retain you as a member.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Planet Fitness via email and Paulino via TikTok comment..
