Jeff Gelles: Health-club contracts can cause aches and pains

As any gym rat knows, January can be a crowded time as health clubs overflow with new year's resolve. But this January is especially tough on thousands of former Bally Total Fitness customers in Philadelphia and around the country, who are feeling a burn unlike the one they crave.

At the end of 2011, the oft-troubled Chicago chain sold 171 of its 271 health clubs for $153 million, and with them the contracts of hundreds of thousands of customers. The clubs' buyer, LA Fitness, apparently welcomed some with open arms. But not all.

The rough spots, which last week prompted a Marlton lawyer to pursue a class-action lawsuit in Pennsylvania and New Jersey over the deal, are a window into an industry that has often rankled consumers - when it hasn't left them totally in the lurch.

Consider the story of Blaise Tobia and Virginia Maksymowicz, two of the plaintiffs in the Pennsylvania suit filed Wednesday by Mark S. Guralnick.

Tobia signed up years ago when the couple lived in New York, buying a lifetime membership in 1990 at what was then a Jack LaLanne fitness center in Brooklyn. He paid more than $600 to join, but he says his "gold membership" - which became "premier plus" when LaLanne sold to Bally - was worth it.

One advantage was a promise that his annual fee would not rise above $72. Another was access to other clubs in the chain or a national affiliate, useful for when he traveled. Tobia was happy enough that in 1995, four years after the couple moved to Philadelphia, his wife joined as a family member at the club, by then a Bally.

Her deal was not quite as attractive. A lifetime membership cost $199, and her annual fee can rise. But Maksymowicz did not hesitate at the price on the 2012 bill that arrived in late December at the couple's Powelton home: $226.80.

Still, something seemed odd to Maksymowicz and Tobia, who are both artists and college professors.

The bill from Bally was postmarked Dec. 20. But for weeks they'd heard that Bally was being sold - not surprising, since the privately held companies announced their deal Nov. 18, saying it would close Nov. 30.

Each time they came in December, whether to their usual club at 15th and Walnut Streets or a second club they occasionally prefer in South Philadelphia, the advice was the same: Sweat over your exercise, not over the acquisition.

"They were saying nothing will change, don't worry," Maksymowicz recalls. "Pretty much the whole month of December, everybody just got waved in."

This month, though, LA Fitness delivered an odd bombshell: Yes, they were still lifetime members - of Bally. And they were welcome to visit one of its remaining clubs - but the nearest one was in New York.

Guralnick says many of his 100 plaintiffs had similar stories about being steered to faraway clubs and refused prorated refunds - one possible remedy under state statutes. He says he expects to hear more. By Friday afternoon, the suits had drawn more than 230 Facebook "likes."

Guralnick says LA Fitness staffers have repeatedly changed their stories when talking to ex-Bally members. Although neither Bally nor LA Fitness responded to my messages last week, an LA Fitness Web page about the deal lends him some support.

Under an "Update," it says that "LA Fitness has decided to simplify the access rules." Then it goes on to explain that Bally's "single-club," "local" and "national" members would have the same access under LA Fitness, and to promise that Bally's lifetime memberships would be honored.

But then it lists an inscrutable New York exception: "Except for New York clubs (unless you enrolled in NY) and clubs designated now or in the future as Signature and Athletic clubs."

I'll leave it to the lawyers to parse exactly what that means. No wonder they're so well-paid. But to Tobia and Maksymowicz, special terms affecting New York members seem as irrelevant as they come - especially since Tobia still has his original contract, which says that "Gold Plan Members are not considered to be a Member of any particular club."

For the last 20 years, Tobia has been using Philadelphia facilities, and getting bills at his Philadelphia address. Maksymowicz joined Bally here. "I've never set foot in a New York club," she says.

To Guralnick, the decision to treat the couple as New York members, or LA Fitness' waffling on whether to fully honor the terms of other plaintiffs' lifetime deals, reflect an oddly cavalier attitude toward a business model - urging customers to sign contracts - that the health-club industry has long embraced.

Guralnick says recent health-club laws have sought to outlaw lifetime contracts because of the difficulties they present to both parties. "I always ask, 'Do you mean your lifetime or my lifetime?' " he says. "I've outlived every health club I've ever joined."

But he doesn't fault the health-club industry for its basic business model: trying to get as much money as possible up front from customers, many of whom arrive gung-ho in January or February and then fade away as the weather warms or their new year's resolutions turn to mush.

A contract is a contract, Guralnick says. Bally's lawyers "needed to recognize the variety of deals they had with customers before they negotiated a sale of the business," and LA Fitness needs to honor them in good faith. "They made their bed. Now they have to lie in it."

And to live with the fact that not all health-club members are willing to just quietly fade away.