Life Time — Attraction in Katy

Beautiful club but 5 very disappointing experiences which is why I now canceled my membership and will go to a competitor. 1.- When I went into "lifetime" for the first time. I asked for information and also asked to see if someone was available to tour the club. The gentleman at the front desk asked me to give him a minute so he could look for someone to tour us. He left and came back 15 minutes later with no acknowledgment of us standing there. Didn't assign anyone to us, and nothing happened. He went back to the front desk as if he had never seen us before in his life. So I approached another gentleman that had just arrived 2 min earlier to ask if we could go in and tour the place ourselves. He let us through so we went exploring... 2.- Once we came back from exploring the club, we came back to the same gentleman, and asked him for prices and information. I specifically asked all clubs in Houston. We were told that it was $159 for one person, $199 for two people and as long as we lived in the same household a third could be added to the account for just $49. (I could be off by $10) My partner and I live and take care of my mother (Senior) and since we saw they had some senior classes thought it would be good for her to go and enjoy it a couple of times a week. The next day my partner and I come back with my mother to get the ball rolling and they wanted to charge my mother as a separate account a full $159. Because contrary to what I was told, it's not only "under the same household" it's also if they are a minor. This was expressed to me specifically by the gentleman from the day before who left us standing there. 3.- If you recall in #2 I asked for information for all club access in Houston. I went to visit a club in Houston ( I live in Richmond) and I was told at the entrance I didn't have access and I needed to pay $50 or upgrade my membership completely which was an extra $200 per month. I explained the situation and the manager there was kind enough to let me through that one time. Truth is I'm going to the competitor that charges double the price for something similar. The value is there, but that's not what I was told from the beginning and it lead me to a few uncomfortable situations. 4.- One of the main reasons I became a member was because they had rock climbing which I was told that most likely would be available in the next couple of weeks... 3 months later, nothing. 5.- I left for a month for Mexico and asked about possibly suspending the membership if it's not something we were going to use. I WAS TOLD: You can suspend it, not pay anything, come back and reactivate it into the new year price or... Pay $15 a month while suspended to be grandfathered into the new year with your current membership price. I decided to pay the $15 to be grandfathered into the new year with my previous monthly. I come back one month later... and they increased the membership by $20. regardless if I paid those $15 or not... I decided to leave because I don't feel I can trust them with any type of information. So all around, the club is great, but the front desk is not properly trained, and one specific guy, from my perspective, is not fit to be client-facing at any level. To my belief as head of sales to one of the largest marketing companies in the US, these misunderstandings are not acceptable in a business of this caliber and frankly made the experience rather unpleasant.

Hopefully, they fix this. Unfortunately, I read similar reviews to this before going in the first time and I wanted to give it the benefit of the doubt and from our very first encounter, it was pretty bad. I never write reviews but this club is great and the people who pay those prices do not deserve that treatment or that level of...

Disclaimer - My job reimburses me for membership, so the admittedly lofty price of the club doesn't factor into my review.

I had $60 in cash stolen out of my wallet from one of the lockers! Oh well, things happen maybe someone watched me put in my combo, better be more careful next time. WRONG! the locker was simply BROKEN!!! as in the latch that was supposed to keep it lock had been BROKEN OFF. As soon as I noticed this I IMMEDIATELY notified the staff. Here we are 3 months later and there's NO OUT OF ORDER SIGN OF ANY KIND ON THE LOCKER. I check it every day I go to the gym and have found people's things stored in a locker they thought was locked MULTIPLE TIMES.

This place used to be a nice gym, but I guess they spent too much on the remodel and are trying to squeeze the most they can out of every customer. I've been a lifetime member since 2014, and go to the gym 4-6 days a week.

Off of peak hours, it's usually very quiet and clean. The crowds show up from around 4-8pm, and then it starts to get fairly crowded with people who don't get simple gym etiquette. Weights strewn all over the floor, loads of people who simply don't re-rack their weights, people doing curls in the squat rack and texting for 5 minutes between sets, etc, etc. I can forgive all that. They could have stricter rules in my opinion, but whatever don't want to piss off the customers, I get it.

The thing that really bothers me is the direction the club has been going in over the past year or so. I'm not big on group classes or anything like that, I prefer to work out on my own terms. Some people are, and that's fine to each their own. In the past 6 months however, they've made some big changes to the upstairs gym area in what feels like an attempt to focus more on their paid classes, at the expense of gym-goers like myself.

They used to have tons of weight machines in the main area, all sorted in rows by the part of the body they worked. Now all those machines are shoved in a corner, and the main area has some stupid cross-fit jungle gym I've never seen ANYONE use.

They used to have a whole row of machines dedicated to ab exercises. They have now been removed and replaced with these stupid body-weight row machines that are, you guessed it, only used by their cross-fit classes you have to pay extra for.

They used to have 5 squat racks, and added 5 more for a total of 10! Now all the new squat racks are constantly being used by their stupid cross-fit classes that cost extra. (notice a theme yet) and they took apart 3 of the remaining squat racks and didn't put them back together until a month later!!!

Long story short, if you're a cross-fit fan with more money than sense, who is willing to shell out $150+ a MONTH for a pretty gym and marble floors in the locker rooms, you'll love lifetime. If you're a bodybuilder, anyone who pays for their own gym membership, or just somebody who doesn't like to feel nickle and dimed at every turn, your money is best spent LITERALLY...

As nice as these facilities are (Cinco Ranch and City Centre), the people running them always manage to disappoint. I thought the problem was with the City Centre location, but in the last 2-3 years since I’ve been predominantly using Cinco Ranch, I find the same issues, maybe even worse.

I haven’t been to the gym in almost a year because of Covid. I was starting to think about reactivating the membership when I received an email saying they were not able to charge my account. I sent a message asking why they had been trying, because the membership was on hold and Instill had a credit for $160. I didn’t get an answer just a restatement of the original message.

The next day, someone from the club emailed talking about all the wonderful measures they’re taking to protect members from covid and asking to schedule a tour. I agreed and suggested a date.

Later that night someone else responded to the question about the charge and said they’d been charging $15/month to put the account on hold.

I know that they do charge a fee to put the account hold but when I went in to put the account on hold because of covid, they told that there would not be a charge because of Covid.

I had to go do this in person, btw. Like most interactions with member services or activities I was never able to get anything done unless 1 I showed up in person 2 during their work hours and 3 spent at least half an hour waiting.

So when I responded to the email about the monthly fees, I explained to Mable McCord and Muhammad Qadir that their employee told me there would not be a charge for putting the account on hold, that was why I put it on hold instead of cancelling.

McCord then responded letting me know that she canceled my membership. It wasn’t what I asked for. When they closed last March they owed me half a months worth of dues at $320 something.

I guess if there is never a time when you have to deal with management this place might work for you. But if you ever have a customer service, billing, or scheduling issue, or if you ever need to sign your kids up for activities, understand that you’re not going to win. They’re going to take your money first, and throw up every barrier imaginable to keep you from...