Fitness First: Saga Quest

So, today was the do-or-die day with Fitness First. A few days ago, Siti had called to set an appointment with me and my brother today to settle all our billing complaints. We set the appointment for today, anytime after 2.30pm because my brother was working and I’m not quite coherent first thing in the morning.

Today after his work, bro came to pick me up and we drove to the Curve to settle everything. Bear in mind, I do owe Fitness First some outstanding bills totalling up to RM331. As a recap, the issues I had with Fitness First were:

Rebates were processed extremely slowly.
When I first signed up with Fitness First, I was obliged to pay for the Bodyfirst program, the total of which would be refunded to me after I had gone to Fitness First at least 8 times within the first 60 days of signup. Once I had done so, I needed to fill a form stating that I wanted my rebate back. Now, when my brother and me did so, there are two things to take into account. They told us that as long as we submitted the form before the 20th, it should be reflected in the following month’s bill.

Conclusion? We found out from Amanda Cook today that the actual process takes at least one month, so the rebate would be reflected the 2nd month AFTER we submitted the form. This means that when I submitted my form in April, it was only reflected in June. For my account, that was fine, but for my brother’s account? It was only reflected in AUGUST. Something doesn’t quite seem right there, does it? However, since we did get the issue resolved in the end, I consider the matter solved. However, I hold it up as an example of billing gone completely and utterly wrong.

Updating billing details? Not done
As I mentioned in the previous entries, my brother and me submitted our billing details in September 2010 to update our accounts. Now, apparently according to the system, my change was done; Fitness First reflects the billing details of my Public Bank account. HOWEVER, it does not reflect my brother’s updated billing details, which should be pointing instead to his RHB account. This resulted in my Maybank account being debited, which was the reason why I went to Fitness First to complain.

Conclusion? A check in the Fitness First action logs showed that requests to update billing details to RHB was received and processed. However, the following deduction was still done to my Maybank account. For this, Club Manager Amanda Cook apologised to us. This followed:

Brother: So, who’s supposed to get shot?

Cook: That’s what I intend to find out.

My money is not my own
I went to Fitness First on Friday, 4 November 2010 to clear this up. The biggest issue I had with the Front of House manager I spoke to was that she implied that my money was not my own, that I could not cancel my direct debit without express permission from Fitness First. This was later clarified by Amanda Cook and her explanation made far more sense than the other girl’s.

Conclusion? Be very, very careful of what you say to a English speaker. There is a lot of difference between the word “right” and “control” in this context.

Saga’s TLDR report?
My Fitness First membership and my brother’s has been cancelled with effect from 1 December 2010. We’ve signed the forms and it’s all been submitted. Now to see if they will actually honour it.

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