HOTWORX - New Albany OH - N Hamilton Rd — Local services in Columbus

Undecided if I will do a membership here, but leaving this info here for anyone else curious. If I do decide to do it and change my opinion, I will update my rating. Hotworx seems like a really cool concept, but I’m not sure if I’m sold yet.

You can do one free class. I did one yoga class and genuinely really enjoyed it— I could see myself loving Hotworx. It was kind of hard to look up at the video with the TV screen being so high while you’re doing yoga on the ground. If you aren’t familiar with yoga and have to look up to see what poses are/don’t know their names, I can see it being a little difficult for a beginner to follow along.

Long story short: I was prepared to pay for a $55/month membership, but you have to pay a $99 “start up fee”, + a prorated rate for the month you’re starting in and then the full payment the following month. They had a special that ended today where the start up fee was $5, but I wasn’t ready to make a decision because there are some other hotworx locations I wanted to investigate and the $55 membership is only for one location. There is a ~$75 monthly membership where you can access all hotworx in the US.

For me, with just the one location membership, that would have been close to $200 up front (or within like my first week since the month ends soon) for a gym membership. You have to commit to 6 months and if you cancel early, there’s another $99 fee. You also are required to use their mat and towel, which are $5 (for both) to rent. I did not ask and they did not mention how much it would be to buy those items.

And maybe I wasn’t understanding the employee’s explanation very well, but she said they get 3 new videos a month but they don’t know what type of class those will be? So you could potentially be doing the same few yoga videos for over a month? I definitely enjoy doing some of my favorite yoga videos a few times, but that seems a little bit like excessive repetition for the membership price. But the few people I know who go to a hotworx gym love it!! It was just a little pricier than I was...

Beware of signing any contract. While the actual yoga experience is good, the contract is terrible. Though it's not easy to find at all, in the fine print it states that you can't cancel your membership until you've been a member for at least 60 days, and after that, you need to give a minimum 60 days notice. This notice also has to be in person, and there's often no workers present. So essentially, we planned to sign up for a one month membership but are now roped into 4 months minimum, and the charge to terminate this contract is over $100.

Some other negatives: Safety-There's rarely any workers there. Members just get in through a unique access code on the front door. But this was not working on several occasions, so the door was unlocked and literally anyone could walk into the building when there's no employee present.

Towels-You have to use a special mat and towel that's $5 to rent each time on top of the membership. Last time we rented a towel from the dispenser, it was absolutely disgusting. Covered in hair and sweat. But since there were no workers present there was nothing that...

I was really excited for this membership initially but it was an absolute waste. The workouts are the exact same every single day and they only swap a couple of workouts each month for new ones. So for example if you go in to do yoga it will be the exact same yoga workout 24/7 for a minimum of 30 days. After discovering this I immediately put in my 60 day notice to cancel as per the agreement. I had to make about 5 phone calls to actually get the cancellation on file, and I was told that since my cancellation fell on the 6th of the month I would be charged on the 1st but then they would credit me back for the remainder of the month beyond my cancellation date. Then after having to make yet another phone call I was told that I still had to pay for the full month even though I followed all the appropriate steps to cancel. The staff is polite but the customer service here is some of the worst I have ever received. I wouldn’t give this place one dime of your money, every time you talk to someone it’s a different story. Absolutely do...