ILONA ANDREWS

#1 New York Times Bestselling Author

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Gym Membership

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Remember how I said that we had a lot of work on the book to do today?  Which is why we delegated some tasks.

Gym person with a sweet smile: Are you looking for me?

Me: Yes.  My daughter called to cancel her gym membership because we are moving to San Marcos.  She told you that we don’t have a bill yet, and you told her, “Not my problem, bye” and hung up. So good news.  I dropped what I was doing and came down here to make myself into your problem.

Gym person: Um, uh, I told her…

Me: Don’t. Here is a home warranty statement. Cancel the membership.

I am 100% sure she said what she said and was rude about it, not only because Kid 2 would not lie, but also because I never before had a gym membership cancelled in 20 seconds.

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Comments

      • I try to not be mean to the customer service people, because they work very hard, but there was just no need for the rudeness. She didn’t take the time to say, “Okay, here is what we will accept instead of a bill.” She heard Kid 2’s voice, judged her to be a young person or a child, and decided it was cool to be rude.

        • I have noticed there are people working in customer service that really shouldn’t, because they can no longer be not rude. They don’t have to be polite or friendly, just not rude. When you get to that point, you need a new job.

        • People who are mean to children or other people in weaker positions are bullies, what’s more, she didn’t think it was cool to be mean to a young girl, she thought she could afford to be mean to her, as she wouldn’t be able to stand up to her properly, which is worse. Also you weren’t mean to her, you were strict, and by the way, you sounded just like Kate Daniels would. Which is awesome!
          (If the lady in customer services, has an ounce of self awareness, she’ll have learnt a valuable lesson)

  10. Ilona…I will mention it to you….your books made it to the Semi-finalists on the Goodreads Best Books of 2017! Semi round just started today so get y’alls votes in. 🙂

  11. Nice! If I need support when someone gives me bad customer service, I use my sister. She spent 9 years in retail, working up to manager and knows the way to handle things, and doesn’t back down.

  12. Go Mama bear!! Why is customer service so hard for some people? This is the biggest thing I do no look forward to when we come home. I’ve gotten so used to exceptional customer service in Japan.

  13. Haha good on you! Gym memberships have changed in New Zealand for the better. My daughter works at one and she said the process of cancelling is so much more efficient. Quite cheap too only $7 per week which I’d say about $5 US ?

  16. I honestly don’t get why that gym membership would be that hard to drop. With gym’s in my town you can pay monthly and if you don’t pay then you are automatically cancelled. No fuss.

    • My late husband’s Y membership insisted on a link to a credit card for payments, so they could just “pull” the money to them when payment was due. I had to pay for an extra month when he died because it was “too close” to the due date and they had already scheduled payment. It wasn’t like he had used the services in months, but procedure must be followed…
      They did a good job of the cancellation – no accidental payments or requests for extra time, but no one could step up and think outside the box.

      • We had that with my Dad’s telephone line rental, it was too close to the direct debit date when I informed them he had died and I was too fragile to protest; but they, without any prompting from me, reimbursed the full cost the following month and rang me up to inform me they had done so and the lady was very considerate in her condolences – she was an example of a good customer relations person.

  17. Will you have room to set up a gym in your new house or do you need a gym for special equipment?

    • One of her last two posts about the house mentioned they were arguing about turning a room into a crafts room or a gym. (She wants a gym for him, he wants a crafts room for her. Awww.)

      Personally, I think the room above the garage should be turned into Ilona’s Yarn Barn. The kids can bunk with the yarn. 😉

  19. I went to cancel a gym membership. Read my contract, sent the cancel letter by registered mail to the required address plus one to my local gym location. Then I was told I had to send another letter elsewhere. “Please show me where in my contract that is required.” “It’s our policy.” “You can’t expand on the contract terms and conditions – your internal policy is not my concern.” They cancelled. They were just hoping to get another month worth of fees – in NYC that is around $80 a month.

  20. Kudos to you for taking care of it. Sometimes it just needs that Mom look & tone. But why is it always at the worst possible time?

    I do hope you were able to offload some of the other things on your plate (dishes? floors? laundry?) in exchange ~

    • Ooops, always read first then comment! Sorry about the repeat.

      Wonderful way you threw shade on the gym people. Retail earns their money but as someone said, if you can’t be not rude to the innocent customer (as opposed to the one that gave you grief for nothing for 20 minutes) then its time to get out.

  24. When I cancelled my gym membership, they tried to skew the terms in a very dodgy manner. I called them out on it, they refused to back down so I turned them into Fair Trade. Now they’re on a naughty list. Gym contracts are some of the worst offenders. They’re usually written deliberately badly and try to confuse!

  29. ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ plays in the background as momma bear delivers the snackdown. Bravo!

  30. Awesome! I feel the heat from here. Poor gym schmuck.
    Your books are ALWAYS worth the wait. That said, is it ready yet?

  31. Shades of both trying to cancel my deceased dad’s gym membership and trying to get a POD moved out of the driveway. That second one had me transferred four times between departments before being disconnected. When I called back, I was snarling. The person on the other end realized that transferring me again would likely result in whoever got me getting yelled at and chose not to escalate a tense situation any more than necessary.
    He did escalate though when he insisted that it was a commercial as opposed to residential situation and my contractor had to handle it. Meanwhile my contractor had been told that the card holder (me) had to handle it. When the representative finally got it through his head that it was my card paying directly for the PODS, he made arrangements to pick it up.

  32. I’m glad you confronted her. I really don’t like that she thought she could be rude to your kid because she is young!

  33. When I read this all I could think of was that you were channeling your inner Kate. lol. You go girl. Don’t dismiss my child!!

  35. Whoa! I’m so impressed by the badass way you handled it, at the same time appalled that person thought it’s ok to say to anyone “it’s not my problem, bye”.

  36. This reminds me of a time when I lived in Tulsa Oklahoma, and my mom was rushed to the hospital because she fainted in Walmart. My brother was with her when it happened. By the time I found out and had to walk to Walmart to get my car to go to the hospital, I was steaming. No one wanted to tell me what happened when I started asking rapid fire questions.

    At the hospital, after 2 hours in the emergency department, I had enough. My mom wanted to leave but the doctor was dragging his feet. I told the physician assistant who was helping the doctor that I had a masters degree in Health Administration and Policy, and did an internship in an ER so I knew what went on behind the scenes. The PA was shocked, and I got answers. The doctor came in, saw me in the room, looked at her vitals, and said she was free to go after being discharged. He knew I was not happy even though I was extremely polite. She was home 30 minutes later.

  37. My favorite part of this is imagining that the gym membership person was a fan of your books, and is reading this right about now and thinking, “WHAT HAVE I DONE??”

  41. Good job with the customer service (?) representative. There is a way to get in some of the better (higher priced pay forever) gyms without paying out of your pocket. Many health insurance companies provide Silver Sneakers memberships. You have to ask them. Silver Sneakers pays for basic membership in many gyms. A list is given to you. You have to listen to a long drawn out sales pitch. Decline them and say you only want the Silver Sneakers offering. The basic membership allows you to use the equipment, rest room and water fountain. You can’t use the pool, massage chairs, showers, juice/snack bar discount (full price for you) or personal trainer.

  42. WOW!!!! Way to go! I’m impressed how you deal with problems. Go Kate go, I mean go Ilona, go! Congratulations on a problem well solved AND correctly solved.

  43. Don’t be surprised if in one or two months, a final “lump” membership payment gets deducted from your account. When we cancelled our $10/month membership (each), 6 weeks later, two $40 final payments were withdrawn. When I called to ask why, I was told it was a final close out payment. Even though the contract stated if we moved more than 50 miles away from this or an affiliated gym and would have no consequences to closing the membership, they said it was an annual fee and we’d cancelled to close to our annual due date to cancel. No refunds. I could have driven the 250 miles back to argue to the manager, but I doubt I’d have gotten any further.

  46. I worked at Borders for 10+ years and there was no excuse for the way your daughter was treated. In most cases, IMHO, polite begets politeness and extra effort. We kept the numbers of the B&N Stores, independents, and record stores by our service desk if we didn’t have the item the customer needed. I know you are insanely busy with moving and working on the latest book and don’t want to waste any more time or energy on this rude waste of protoplasm but, she really needs to be reported to her manager especially if she upset your child. Rudeness is never acceptable.

  48. Only time I ever had to hire a lawyer to deal with someone was with a gym. Terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad people. They would not let me cancel and made harassing phone calls.

  49. Innkeeper chronicles made it to the next round of goodreads annual awards. Someone post a link to keep voting. Please.

  50. That story was so awesome that I literally laughed out loud, and then made my husband stop what he was doing so I could read it to him. He was duly impressed. And then he wanted to know more about who you are. 🙂

    • Shoot, that image thing didn’t turn out the way I thought it would, and there’s no edit/delete option that I can see. Sorry, newbie commenter here!

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