Canceling NYSC During a Pandemic

I think I've been a member of the New York Sports Club for 20 years. Always liked that there were a lot of locations around NYC that've made it convenient to access for wherever I've lived and worked over all that time. I've known that they've always been notorious about making it difficult to cancel a membership, but I never really had to deal with that... until a global pandemic hit. 

When Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered gyms shuttered toward the beginning of 2020, when the pandemic was hitting NYC the worst, it was the first time I had to be without access to a gym in a really long time. And a month in, I noticed that NYSC was still charging me the monthly membership fee.

After some calls and emails, I managed to get this direct response:

The generous deal they were offering: saving on the normal $89 a month, I would only be paying $15 a month for NO SERVICE WHATSOEVER.

The New York Attorney General Letitia James stepped in on behalf of all the members and pressured NYSC to stop charging fees.

When September hit, Cuomo allowed gyms to reopen to limited capacities -- but my regular club location (pictured at the top) remained shuttered.

This past week, I discovered that NYSC had quietly started charging me my regular monthly membership fee again.  They were also doing it under the new branding "TMPL".

Again, I wasn't the only one dealing with this.

The company previously promised to freeze memberships and provide credits for those illegally charged following demands from James this spring, but the company allegedly "ignored" members' requests. When gyms opened in recent weeks, members were billed around September 1st, even though their main gym location remained closed.

I've been taking these long hikes around Central Park to replace the gym membership during the pandemic, and Saturday I made an extra detour to an Upper East Side NYSC location to try to cancel my membership in person...

After getting my temperature taken and getting grilled on my recent history with potential COVID exposure, the woman at the desk informed me that she could NOT help me cancel my membership.  That I would have to call TMPL.

"Can you give me the number?"

"No, I cannot.  But you can just google it."

Annoyed but expecting this to be as cumbersome as possible, stepped out onto the sidewalk, googled the number and called TMPL.

The woman I spoke to on the TMPL hotline informed me that SHE could not cancel my membership, but she could give me her manager's email address -- that I could use to formally request a cancellation.

This was the ultimate response I received to my formal cancellation request:

They were so generous to waive the "cancel fee" and prorate the "notice charges" (eyeroll emoji).

Long story short, I'm done with the parasitic NYSC/TMPL.  I know that a lot of gyms operate this way so I'm a little cautious about the prospect of finding a new gym, but I know it's something I'll need to deal with eventually.  It's getting cold.