Bally's Wants Me Back... But I'm Not Going!
Written: Jun 21 '00 (Updated Jul 17 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great marketing, good classes, lots of locations
Cons: Bait & Switch tactics, contract problems, unclean facilities, poor trainers, internal security problems
The Bottom Line: Good classes and equipment, but use caution when signing agreements. Highly recommend trying the pay-by-the-month program versus signing a contract. Avoid personal trainers.
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| WorkingMomof2's Full Review: Bally Total Fitness |
I was a member of Bally Total Fitness for almost six years, and was increasingly disenchanted with them. When my membership expired, and I tried to renew, they were rude, unpleasant and unyielding – not to mention a little error on their part that required police involvement to resolve! This is why I find it so humorous that they are now almost banging on my door to get me back… but believe me, I’m not going. Nonetheless, I’d like to try to present a relatively unbiased review of Bally’s, and share my personal experience (both the good and the bad) so you can make your own decision.
A Little History of Bally’s
(Some data courtesy of the Bally’s Website: www.ballysfitness.com)
Bally’s is the largest chain of health clubs in the US, with over 4 million members, and about 360 clubs in the US and Canada. There are several levels of Bally’s clubs – Bally Total Fitness, Bally Sports Clubs, Gorilla Sports, Pinnacle Fitness, and Sports Clubs of Canada. There are 65 clubs in California alone!
Bally’s does a good job with their marketing campaigns. We’ve all seen the fit babes and buff guys on their commercials (“Will my abs look like that if I join?”). They have also launched a proprietary supplement line, begun a distribution agreement with Target for home-gym equipment and supplies, and signed co-marketing agreements with Proctor & Gamble, Time Warner, Sports Display Inc, MBNAmerica, and others. They also now offer Personal Training in every club, and have in-club retail stores in about half of their clubs.
Perusing their website, I am impressed by the quality I see. They not only describe each of the classes offered, but even offer an online schedule for each gym. Specific memberships are described (although not priced) and there is an easy gym locator. You can take a virtual “tour” of the gym, although bear in mind that nothing will replace an actual trial of the gym. You can get a trial membership form online, though. Before you go in to try out Bally’s, though, you should put together a checklist of criteria to evaluate the gym (you can check out mine, if you wish, at http://research.epinions.com/well-review-943-E7908E0-394FFDBC-prod5).
My Experience as a Member
I joined Bally’s back when it was Nautilus. Within the first two years of my membership, Nautilus was acquired by Bally’s, and I became a Bally’s Member. I didn’t, however, “instantly” become a member – rather, in the conversion, all existing members were required to complete new contracts to transfer their Nautilus memberships over to Bally’s. Assured that this was just a paperwork requirement, but would not change the terms of my membership, I of course complied. This blind faith, as it turned out, was my undoing. More on that later (see Bally’s Membership Scams, below).
I worked out at one relatively small gym most of the time, which was older and had less equipment but was uncrowded and had a friendly (and primarily female) environment. I also went over to the nearby larger gym for certain classes, because the offerings were more varied and often coordinated more effectively with my schedule.
I did enjoy the variety of gyms available – there are three Bally’s Gyms within 30 minutes of my home, and two that were close to my office at that time. I also worked out in Bally’s across the nation, as I was travelling pretty extensively back then, and found a pretty consistent flavor to the gyms. That is, pretty new and well-maintained equipment, good availability of staff to answer questions, and a good offering of aerobics classes. I also found that most of the gyms were extremely crowded (especially during peak after-work hours, 4:30-6:30 p.m.) and the staff was relatively untrained.
Classes at Bally’s
I enjoyed the classes I took at Bally’s, and found that they were fairly consistently well taught. The instructors were fun and friendly, and the class quality was pretty high overall. The classes were also generally overcrowded and some of the gyms had inadequate ventilation (so by 5 p.m. on a summer day, you were sweating before the class even started). Since at least three of the gyms I went to had this problem, I don’t think it was an isolated problem – more likely, it was a reflection on the design of the facilities.
Bally’s is good about offering fun and new classes. They have recently introduced Pilates, Spinning and Kwando (kickboxing) to their schedules, as well as the more traditional Yoga, aerobics and Body Flex classes. One really neat feature that I like is the ability to view any club’s aerobics schedule’s online (click on the link above to go to Bally’s). This is a very nice website feature and makes going to classes at different clubs convenient! One note on the classes: depending on the level of membership you have, there may be a fee for many of the higher-end classes (like Yoga, PowerFlex, Tai Chi, Kwando, Spinning, etc.). While this is not atypical for certain classes (like Spinning), it appeared that there are a large number of classes that would require a fee for an average membership.
I did attend the Body Flex classes when they were first introduced at Bally’s, and enjoyed these. This is a choreographed weightlifting class, using a bar with adjustable weights instead of free weights. These had a mixed male/female attendance, and Bally’s did a nice job of having roving staff members on the floor for the first two months of these classes to assist members who needed help with changing their weights or getting their form right.
One observation I would have on the instructors is that they seemed to turn over very quickly, and so the classes would change dramatically from week to week. There was also less emphasis on timeliness and it was not only common but expected for the instructors to be late (versus 24 Hour Fitness where I now belong, where I have only seen one late instructor in the last year). I cannot count the number of times the office manager would wander out and say, “(Insert Instructors Name Here) is running late, she’ll be here in 15 minutes… do you (looking at me, or any one of the other “regulars”) want to help get everyone warmed up?” Well, heck – I’m not a certified instructor, nor do I want to be….
Equipment
Bally’s does have a fairly nice range of equipment. Although it varies from gym to gym, they typically have a separate aerobics floor, plus a weight room (or area) for free weights, plus a large selection of equipment. Nautilus equipment obviously is featured, as are several other brands. I found the equipment to be in good condition, generally, although during peak hours there was often a significant wait for almost anything (I found this at all three of the gyms I went to, as well as when I traveled).
There is also a nice selection of cardiovascular equipment, including bikes (upright and recumbent), Stairmasters, elliptical trainers and treadmills available. These are usually crowded as well, and some have a waiting list during prime time. I thought they were a little crowded together; however, I happen to like a lot of space when I work out so that could just be me. Nonetheless the selection is good and there were often new pieces of equipment brought in to trial, which was fun.
General Environment
I also found that there was more of a “meat market” environment at Bally’s than at some of the other gyms – perhaps because of the corporate surroundings, but I was approached and ogled more than I cared for. I’m a “get in, get sweaty, get it done, and get out” kindof gal – I don’t mind socializing as long as I know you and there is no ulterior motivation. But I don’t go to the gym looking for dates, and the big sparkly ring on my left hand should be a clear indicator. Perhaps it’s my icy veneer (GRIN) or just my extra butt-spread from that second child, but I haven’t had this problem at all at any of the 24 Hour Fitness clubs I’ve gone to. I will admit that I have a good friend (who’s younger than I am, and single) who loves Bally’s just because of what she calls the singles opportunity. Go figure, to each their own.
Other Amenities
The amenities vary significantly by gym, but generally include childcare, massages, and free initial training assistance, and paid personal training at least. I took advantage of all of these at one time or another.
•Childcare
Each Bally’s gym has their own childcare facility. Some are staffed by dedicated childcare personnel; most are staffed by regular staff members who are pulled in to work in the child care area on a rotating basis. What I found was that the Bally’s childcare employees generally were not terribly participative with the kids (put in a movie or drag out the Lego’s, then sit behind a desk and read a book). The childcare areas were generally clean but not spotless, and I do know food and drinks were allowed in.
I found my son’s pacifier stuffed in another child’s mouth one time (it probably had fallen out of the bag, but still… ewwwwww!) and a friend told me that she came in and found her baby (who was about 6 months old at the time) being held by the other kids there (4-5 year olds). Of course I would never take my kids to Bally’s childcare until they were at least a year old, after that, and I checked in on them constantly. Since joining 24-Hour Fitness, I have realized how shoddy Bally’s childcare really was… although I didn’t know any better back then.
•Personal Trainers at Bally’s
I worked out with four different personal trainers during my tenure as a Bally’s member. The first was a private, certified trainer, who truly was an incredible partner. She helped me define my routine, kept me motivated, assisted me with weights, spotted me, and talked with me about diet, cardiovascular health, etc. She measured my body and body fat regularly, and was quick to help me change my routine when I hit plateaus. I was thrilled with her; however, when Bally’s cracked down on personal trainers (you have to use their trainers exclusively) she quit training.
The next two trainers I had only lasted three sessions each. You can expect to pay $20-40 per hour for a session with a personal trainer at Bally’s (of which the trainer only gets about ¼-1/3 – hence the quality of the trainers). Since I had experienced such wonderful results with a trainer before, I signed up for 20 sessions after my first baby. “I need to whip this body back into shape, and I need some help…” I told the trainer. The trainer then proceeded to walk with me around the floor, and stand there while I worked on each machine. Occasionally he would change the weight settings for me, but mostly he just took me to the next machine, filled out the little card for me, and stood there, whistling and looking off into space.
While this was insulting enough, the fact that he was late showing up for 2 of the first three sessions (the second and third, to be precise) and then still had to end on time (gotta get to another appointment, don’tcha know…) resulted in me asking for a new trainer. This one was nice, polite, and also had a problem with timeliness. In fact, she flaked out on the first session altogether (car trouble) and showed up 40 minutes late for the third session (wrote it down wrong, she said). On to trainer number three, Jennifer.
Jennifer was nice and cheery, took steroids, and kept trying to sell me Bally’s brand supplements. I didn’t want supplements, I wanted training. I did eventually complete all of my personal training with Jennifer; however, I will say that of the three Bally’s trainers I had all of them simply walked around with me on the weight floor, occasionally adjusting the machines. If and when we did free weights, they counted my reps for me, but did not assist me when I was hitting the wall, or even really spot me. From what I saw of other trainers, this is pretty much par for the course at Bally’s.
Furthermore, other than Jennifer’s continuous appeal to get me to buy the Bally’s diet supplement, not one of the three ever talked with me about nutrition, overall health, etc. Jennifer did measure my body fat (before and after, 10 sessions apart) upon my request. And their entire discussion of my exercise regime was comprised of “You should try to get more cardio into your routine”. Overall, I was incredibly disappointed in the personal trainers, and could never in good faith recommend Bally’s personal training to a friend.
•Free Training Assistance
I will qualify all of this by saying that at each of the three Bally’s that I went to routinely as a member, there were stations near the front of the gym where you could get free assistance. This included a “trainer” walking around with you and helping you decide which equipment to work out on, and helping you complete a little card that documented what your routine was supposed to be and what weight levels to use. This card was kept in the front and you could pull it each time you worked out, so you didn’t forget what to do or how to set the equipment. This is a nice feature for a newbie, and amazingly the only real difference I saw between the new member intro and the paid personal training sessions was that the paid trainers walked around with you each time, while the free session only happened once. Hey, for $30 an hour, I can carry my own card, thank you very much!
Cleanliness of Facilities and Equipment
This is a pretty big issue for me. I walked out of one gym when the bathrooms and locker areas were dirty, and never went back (it was a different chain). Bally’s did a good job in general of keeping their locker rooms clean, and of maintaining the equipment. Out-of-service equipment was usually repaired within a few days, and there was almost always a housekeeping staff member in the locker area. The showers, however, were consistently less-than-desirable in terms of cleanliness (in the three different gyms I visited) and I saw roaches in one of them, as well as a trail of ants in the sauna. When I reported this, I was told “Yes, we know, but they can’t get anyone out here for a week.” Yuck! The next week when I was there, there were still bugs-aplenty in the shower area and I decided that I’d rather drive home sweaty every day than shower in fear…..
Joining Bally’s: The Membership Scam
Bally’s offers a huge menu of membership choices. Most of these involve an upfront fee, plus a monthly maintenance charge; however, you can join (for a fee) on a month-by-month membership if you prefer. In addition, there are a number of options to upgrade your membership, add family members, etc. If you want, you can get a one-month membership for $49 online; this personally seems pretty pricey to me as the month-to-month memberships are usually far less than that with a (negotiable) small fee up front.
You should be aware that almost any change you make in your membership will require a new contract, with a new expiration date, etc. Typically these also include an additional fee, which your friendly sales rep may “waive”, making a fairly big production of this (despite the “no fees promotion” posters all over the building!) If your rep doesn’t offer to waive the fee, ask him/her to – or to give you another incentive (an additional year at no cost, or whatever). They have an amazing amount of latitude in what they can offer, if they want to.
Be sure you look at the term rate you are getting. My $4 per month maintenance fee was somehow switched to a $12 per month maintenance fee when the Nautilus contract was converted to a Bally’s membership. Since I had the old contract, and confronted them on this, they honored my old rate… for the three-year term of the Nautilus contract. After that, they said, it would go up a small percentage per year, based on the national index.
This is key: Bally’s rates are almost always for a fixed period of time, only! At the end of that time, your rate will go up to a periodically adjusting rate. And despite 8 years of college education, I somehow could just not comprehend (although four different Bally’s employees tried to explain to me) how my $4 rate went up to $29 a month in three years. Hmmm – prime plus what %? Oops, they said, it’s not $29, it’s supposed to be $15 a month.
Color me confused, I still just couldn’t get the math to work. Imagine their dismay when I whipped out my HP12C financial calculator and started talking amortization, etc…. And yet they stubbornly clung to their claim that I owed them $15 a month now, due to the 15% (more or less) per year increases in rates over the last three years off of my $4 fee. After a few colorful conversations, where I dragged out my old contracts, whipped out my calculator and asked them to explain the price increase (they couldn’t, it just “was what it was”), and finally a notice threatening to close my membership if I didn’t pay them my $15 fee (past due for the last 2 months), I cancelled my membership.
Amazingly, within 2 weeks of canceling, I received a “Please Come Back” FORM LETTER with a printed promotion. Seems they were offering a reinstatement membership for $12 a month (with a small fee)… Which, amazingly, they had been unwilling to offer me during my negotiations. I declined. Three months later, I received a similar letter; again, a promotion offering only $12 a month, with no fees! Gee, where were these when I was a member? And to my great amusement, I received not one but two more letters last month, this time offering me $7 a month, if I would just please come back. I did notice, as well, that in these new documents, after the first year my monthly fee can increase by no more than $12 a month – far clearer than a percentage, which the Bally’s financial folks seemed unable to accurately calculate. One of my neighbors’s was a Bally’s executive for many years and told me that this bait and switch is a common Bally’s tactic.
In terms of bad business decisions I’ve seen, this is fairly high on the list. Not only did Bally’s lose me when they tried to run my rates through the roof (unethically, I might add), but they also lost my husband and my sister-in-law, who were add-ons to my membership. However, to be fair, they got the $249 I paid to add each of these two people on – and they would get an additional $249 each if I wanted to rejoin and add them on again. And yet I cannot help but wonder, why, oh why, the management (and I did speak with about six different people, including corporate folks) wouldn’t make more of an effort to retain their current customers.
A Personal Security Issue
I also had one very, very negative experience with Bally’s internal security. I can’t comment on how specific this is to Bally’s; however, I can state that there was a major breach of security at Bally’s which resulted in great cost to me, police involvement and no apologies from Bally’s. What happened is this: when I upgraded my membership to add my husband on, I had to re-submit an entire new contract. This paperwork included my name, address, social security number, driver’s license number, etc.
Shortly afterwards, I received a new membership card mailed to my home address. There was a typo on both the name (wrong middle initial) and on the street address (misspelled). About two months after that, I got my first letter in the mail from a local store, with a cancelled (“bounced”) check bearing my name (with the wrong middle initial) and address (with the street name misspelled). This was the first of many checks that came back to me, written on a fictitious account, in my name. Eventually this required me filing a police report, including the Bally’s paperwork that documented clearly that this was the source that the stolen information had clearly been taken from.
Bally’s denied all knowledge of this (probably honestly, how would they know where it was appropriated from?); however, they did admit that this was the obvious source of the information. Clearly, somewhere in the submission/processing/data entry process that information was copied, and someone printed up their own checks with my private information on it. Had there not been two typos in the Bally’s record, the source of the fictitious check writer would have been a complete mystery.
In the end, the fictitious check writer moved three times, and wrote checks in my name in four different cities. Each time I had to send a letter, with a copy of the police report (documenting that this was a reported police case) and a notarized letter to the corporations involved, stating I was not responsible for these charges. In the end, this cost me over $150 in notary charges, not to mention hours and hours of time and frustration. The police case was never solved, as the individual was never caught. And although Bally’s apparently admitted it was clearly one of their employees, they never apologized and were appallingly rude when I called them to discuss it. I just tucked this away as one more reason not to renew my membership there.
Summary
If you are looking for a large, impersonal chain to work out in, Bally’s may meet your needs. The gyms are typically larger, with relatively new (but not brand new) equipment, and offering a good variety of classes. In my experience, however, the classes are crowded, and if you plan to work out during prime “after work” hours, the equipment and weight rooms are crowded as well. Two of the three gyms I frequented as a member were “meat markets” – with more emphasis on showing off and socializing than on working out. While one of my younger single friends loves this, I did not. I was also unimpressed with the sanitary condition of some of the shower/sauna areas, as well as the staff’s cavalier treatment of this.
Personal training is a joke, and clearly not worth your money. There are a lot of highly qualified personal trainers out there, I would advise working with one outside of the gym if you want to go this route. And the bait-and-switch financial tactics, not to mention the questionable security process, is enough to make me say that I could not in good faith recommend Bally’s to a friend.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
WorkingMomof2
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 - Top 200 |
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Member: Amy
Location: Southern California
Reviews written: 313
Trusted by: 539 members
About Me:
Every time I close the door on reality it comes in through the windows.
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