Gold's Gym Chapel Hill — Attraction in Durham

This is the nicest gym of which I’ve been a member. They have a ton of great equipment, including more specialized machines for both bodybuilding and powerlifting than you would expect to find at your average commercial gym.

The community that works out at Gold’s Chapel Hill is both friendly and dedicated. I’m there most days of the week, and I see a large group of people who go very consistently and are clearly making great progress. Everyone I’ve talked to has been very nice. It is kept clean and well-air conditioned as well, which is a great plus. Also, the snacks at the front desk are very well curated. The staff are friendly and seem to always be at the gym—they’re working out if they aren’t at the desk, which might help explain why the equipment is always in great shape and why they always make great decisions on what machines to acquire.

Membership pricing is competitive—their student rate (which I have) is cheaper than the equivalent rate at the only real local competitor, O2 Fitness. They also have 24-hour keycard access, which sets them apart positively from other options in the area.

My only knock against this location is that they’re a bit limited by their square footage in terms of the spaces they can have in the gym. I think they’ve made the correct decision, which is to pack in as much actual lifting equipment as they can, sacrificing little-used areas like the dance/yoga studio to more power racks and leg machines. On the other hand, this means that their turf areas aren’t nearly as usable as they could be, so you’ll probably want to do your farmer walks somewhere else (or come when no one else is around, which might be a tall order). Maybe at some point they’ll manifest destiny more of the building, though that doesn’t seem imminently likely.

I’ve never used the personal training, though my friends who have gave positive feedback.

This is a franchise location, so you don’t have a national Gold’s membership, but you can still work out at any Gold’s location nationwide by filling out a card at check-in, so I’ve appreciated having good gym options when I’m out of town and in a city which still has a Gold’s. Sadly a lot of cities no longer have their Gold’s locations post-pandemic.

TL,DR: It’s...

DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT sign up for a personal training session at this Gold's Gym. I'm a member here and have been before they fully opened up; now going on 3 years. All of the management staff are professional and helpful from my experience, but the PTs are not all the same. Against my reluctance I tried a 6-month PT training and asked about cancelling procedures. I was told that if I wanted to cancel early it would have to be with a doctors note - cool. Nothing else around the cancellation was mentioned. The 6 month training or any other, apparently auto renews. For me this is at $250 every two weeks. My trainer had nothing to do with this but the other one that signed me up was the one I sat in front of, looked in his eyes and asked these questions and he choose to mention that I needed to cancel a 6 month contract. Here is why this is slimy. If I agree to 1, 2, 3 or 6 months of PT, why would a supposedly reputable establishment think of only pulling in more money from a member who has agreed to spend extra cash with them? If it was reputable the PT signing you up would also be trained to mention this important detail, unless of course, they get paid extra on this - HINT: they sure do!!

After being told that I needed to read my 4-plus page fine print agreement and it states I needed to cancel it myself, the Peak Payment company still refuses to stop the PT training but wants to charge me 3 more payments and to top it off, I have not worked with my trainer for some time. This disregard for loyal or simply, any loyal member's hard earned money is disgusting.

I will NOT recommend Gold's Gym in Chapel Hill NC PT services. The amenities are top-notch however the PT services and all that is involved in it, is a bait-and-switch offering that I am hoping to warn...

Really disappointed. I have been coming here since they first opened basically. Had a normal membership and then was convinced to SWITCH to active and fit through them. Their manager convinced me. So I did. Fast forward to this month, my membership randomly stopped working and I was told by the owner that they no longer take active and fit so I don’t have a membership. Apparently I was the 10th person THAT WEEK. I have one month left of college so I won’t be here much longer. Begged the owner to honor my original member price just for one month ($35) since I had not been notified of this change (I checked) and since I had never finished my annual plan because the manager convinced me to switch and cancel my annual plan. Owner said best he could do is $70 with a 20% discount which brought it to $56. Their system wasn’t working well and after about an hour and about 7 swipes of my CC, the owner told the worker to keep trying because he would rather me pay then just giving me a day pass. Then the owner tried and my card had a fraud alert from all the attempted swipes. In the end the owner gave me one day pass for all my troubles. He told me I could pay for daily passes each day of the weekend since this occurred on a Friday or I could not workout for the weekend and he would try again Monday when he was in again.

I used to love this gym and I came here every day basically but the customer service/ greediness is really what got me. I’m glad my card put the fraud alert on because I will never pay another cent to them...