Orangetheory Fitness — Local services in San Marcos

I've been coming here for 11 months, Here are the pros and cons:

Pro: Great workout ethic that made me understand fitness and lose weight

Cons: The staff does not communicate with eachother regarding in-studio matters; Staff are immature & do not know how to manage clients- when there is an issue, there is no one except the manager that can fix your problems, The music is terrible; as if I was dropped off at a middle school dance, the trainers get up in your personal space while you're working out, the towels are $4, They run out of toilet supplies often without re-stocking (deodorant, air-freshner..basics), They run out of water cups without restocking, if you sign up for a class and forget to go, that's an extra $12 no show fee on top of your $189 "unlimited" limited membership. They say it's unlimited but, of course, that's just another euphemism for them, because it is indeed limited. Love that "gotcha!" marketing.

Another "gotcha!" policy, is the membership cancellation policy: notification within a month of wanting to terminate membership. What if I just don't have the money?

My advice is to train your workers to do more than just sign ppl into class and answer phone calls; teach them about client retention, eithics, teach them how to problem solve and think for themselves upon how to solve an issue.

What good is a manager or an assistant manager if they can't put their heads together to accommodate a simple request from a long-standing client? How do you royally mess that up? Negligence, miscommunication, and laziness.

I thought OTF cared about members, and you present things like it's a resolution, but really, it's an insulting slap in the face considering how much money I have already spent at this studio.

I invested my time and money here, and I wish the people who worked here were more professional.

Signing into class is a joke. You don't need an associate to do that for you, that is something that clients can easily do themselves if you just leave the program table out with a pen. Ask OTF San Luis Obispo about it maybe they can give you some helpful pointers.

Cynthia, every time you danced in front of my bike it made me super uncomfortable. You're the head coach. You'd think you have an Instinct with people, but you don't.

Get it...

The place was overall a very good place to work out, but did notice the staff changing their word on the pricing, they definitely seem to be very nice prior to signing up and portray that they are very flexible, but in reality they are not at all. I was promised to downgrade my membership if I am not able to make the unlimited classes due to my personal case right after the first month, yet when I called to downgrade right after the first month, I was told they have 30 day cancellation policy, and that I had to pay for 3 months the unlimited price since I called on the 31st day, in their mind, since I called then on the 31st day, my cancellation policy kicks in after next legit 30 days, so they were expecting me to pay for 90 days at the unlimited price even though few of the team members knew our case and offered that we can downgrade right away after the first month. It took several attempts to talk to the manager and finally when i talked, she agreed to downgrade after the first month, and i was asked to come in to sign for paper work, when i did go i wad told the prev manager left the company and as per the notes in the system they can only help me so that i pay for 2 instead of 3 months. We attended the classes thrice in 60 days but i had to pay full amount for my family for 2 unlimited months. On the other hand I was not even cancelling, I just wanted to downgrade to their second tier, but yet they treat this as a cancellation and starting a new contract. The same behaviour was also seen when selling their heart monitor sensors, we were promised 50% off on the sensors, but when we were ready to purchase they made a big deal about the pricing, at last I had to show them to a text message from one the agents from the location, when this deal was offered, to get the promised pricing. I understand policy, and abiding to policy makes any business prosper, but i was just confused with information from different people from the same location. On the positive note, I liked all their work outs and coaches though, hence...

I decided to give this gym a try and scheduled a work out for free to check it out. I decided to sign up for a month to truly get to experience the gym, as one day doesn’t really tell you much. I made it clear that I wanted to sign up for their unlimited membership for one month ($180). I reassured if this was possible and the staff member that signed me up assured me that this was possible and signed me up. She came across as really friendly. After one month of going to the gym, I decided that this wasn’t the right gym for me and I decided I wasn’t going to continue going. Then, I noticed that they had charged my card $180 for a second time, so I called them gym to let them know that I had only signed up for a month and my card had been charged again. The manager, Erica Rezvani, said that their policy required a minimum of 2 months and I informed her that I had spoken to their staff member about this when I signed up and assured me that I was able to sign up for one month. She then said she couldn’t do anything to help me as this was their policy and I had signed their contract. I told her that this information was never brought to my attention when I was signing up even though I had asked her staff about it and she seemed to get irritated with me. She was very apathetic and unhelpful and just kept emphasizing that I had already signed the contract and that there was nothing that could be done. After a while, she then mentioned that their accounting system did not allow them to reimburse me my money because there was a minimum membership requirement of two months. As an accountant myself, I found this incredibly hard to believe. I’m upset at how nice and helpful they were during the sign-up stage, but after the sale, this was not the case. I was even charged a THIRD time. Be very careful when signing up, as information was concealed from me when signing up. I hope this review can save someone the headache I had to deal with. Overall, it’s just unfair...