LA Fitness keeps billing me 3 months after cancellation - have proof of cancellation, what are my options?

I cancelled my LA Fitness membership in January by going to the gym in person and filling out their cancellation form. The employee gave me a stamped copy showing cancellation effective February 1st.

They charged me for February, March, and now April. That's $90 x 3 = $270 in unauthorized charges. I've called 6 times, emailed twice, and each time they say "we'll look into it" and nothing happens.

I disputed the charges with my credit card company but LA Fitness is fighting it saying I didn't properly cancel. I literally have their stamped form!

What can I do? Small claims? Report them somewhere? This is insane.

I've tested several virtual card services specifically for gym memberships:

• Privacy.com: Free, works great. Can set spending limits per merchant.
• Capital One Eno: Built into their card, generates virtual numbers easily
• Citi Virtual Account Numbers: Good but sometimes get flagged by gyms
• Apple Card: Unique number per device, but can't lock individual merchants

Privacy.com is my top choice because you can create a card just for "Gym Name" and then pause or close it instantly from the app. No phone calls, no disputes, just click and done.

Question about liquidated damages clauses: my contract has a clause that says if I terminate early, I owe 50% of the remaining contract value. Is this enforceable or would a court consider it a penalty? The distinction matters because penalty clauses are unenforceable in most jurisdictions.

Your fact pattern, a stamped cancellation form plus continued charges, is one of the cleaner consumer-protection cases the gym industry generates. Three California statutes stack in your favor, and your credit-card dispute is doing the right work in parallel. Here's how I'd structure the next move.

1. Three California laws give you separate, overlapping claims.

• Health Studio Services Contract Law (Cal. Civ. Code §§1812.80 et seq., specifically §1812.85): once the buyer cancels, "all moneys paid pursuant to a contract for health studio services shall be refunded within 10 days." Three months of post-cancellation charges with no refund is a direct violation.
• Automatic Renewal Law (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §17602): the gym must provide a "cost-effective, timely, and easy-to-use mechanism for cancellation." Your in-person, stamped cancellation form is exactly the mechanism the statute contemplates. Continuing to bill after that cancellation is what ARL was written to prevent.
• Unfair Competition Law (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §17200): both of the above qualify as "unlawful" predicates, and a "we'll look into it" stall after six calls and two emails is the textbook "unfair" practice that supports restitution and injunctive relief.

2. Your credit-card chargebacks are doing the right work in parallel.

If your card issuer ruled against LA Fitness for any month, that is admissible to show LA Fitness lacked authorization. If LA Fitness "won" the dispute by sending the original membership agreement without addressing the stamped cancellation form, that is itself a documented misrepresentation to the card network and worth attaching to a demand letter. Either way, ask the card issuer in writing for the full dispute correspondence: you are entitled to it.

3. Honest downside.

• Some LA Fitness contracts require 30 days written notice via certified mail to a specific address in addition to an in-person form. If the contract you signed had that language, the stamped form alone may not be a complete cancellation under the contract, even though §1812.85 and §17602 still protect you. Pull your original contract and check the cancellation paragraph.

4. Where a demand letter fits.

If they ignore it, you have a litigation-ready record for small claims plus a UCL public-enforcement complaint to the California Attorney General and Department of Consumer Affairs.

That stamped form is your whole case. Scan it, photograph it, email a copy to yourself so it is timestamped somewhere outside your own phone.

When I disputed mine, the bank initially sided with the gym because I only described the cancellation verbally on the phone. Once I uploaded the actual document the reversal went through.

Question for the OP, did your stamped form say cancellation effective Feb 1, or did it say your last billing date was Feb 1? Those can read differently and gyms love to argue the difference.

Mine said effective immediately and they still tried to bill a final month for notice period. Read the exact wording on the form.

One thing nobody mentioned, check whether your gym contract has an arbitration clause buried in it. A lot of the big chains do. It does not stop you from doing chargebacks or AG complaints, but it can affect small claims strategy.

I am not a lawyer, just learned this the annoying way when I read my own agreement.

For what it is worth, small claims generally cannot be forced into arbitration in a lot of states, so an arbitration clause does not always close that door. Varies by jurisdiction though.

Check your local court rules. In my county the small claims self help center walked me through it for free.

Does anyone know if a debit card chargeback works as well as a credit card one? I made the mistake of having mine on a debit card and I am worried the protections are weaker.

Debit disputes are generally weaker than credit card disputes because the money already left your account, but you can still file one. The timelines tend to be tighter too.

In my experience the bank moves faster when you frame it as unauthorized recurring charges after a cancellation, and you attach proof. Lead with the document.

Reading this thread at exactly the right time. Planet Fitness has hit me for two months past my cancellation and the app just keeps saying membership active.

Going to do the certified letter route. Do I send it to the local club address or to corporate?

Corporate, every time. The local club cannot process refunds and the letter just sits there. Find the registered agent or corporate HQ address and send it there with a copy to the club if you want.

I sent mine to the corporate legal address listed on their terms of service page and that is what got results.

Tip that saved my sanity: cancel the card or generate a new card number after you send your cancellation. The gym cannot charge a card that no longer exists, so the bleeding stops while you fight over the refund.

Your bank will issue a new number for free if you tell them there are unauthorized recurring charges.

Careful with just killing the card though. If you have other legit autopays on it you have to move those. Learned that when my insurance lapsed because I forgot it was on the same card.

A virtual or single use card number for the gym from the start avoids all of this.

get the cancellation in writing, send notice certified, keep copies of everything, and escalate to your state consumer agency if they ignore you.

California folks, the small claims limit went up and is pretty generous now for individuals, so even a few hundred in charges plus any statutory damages fits easily. The filing fee is small and you do not need a lawyer to appear.

I am not an attorney, but I filed against a gym last year and the judge was clearly familiar with this exact pattern. Bring the stamped form and a simple printout of every charge.

Has anyone had the gym actually show up to small claims? Curious whether they fight it or just no show and eat the default judgment.

OP, did your credit card company actually close the dispute against you or is it still open? If it is still open you can usually submit additional evidence. Send them the stamped form as a PDF and a one line cover note saying this proves cancellation effective Feb 1.

Mine got reopened once I escalated past the first line rep and asked for a supervisor in the disputes department.

OP here with an update. The card company reopened the dispute after I uploaded the stamped form like several of you suggested. Two of the three charges have been reversed so far.

I also sent a certified letter to their corporate office citing the cancellation and the state consumer protection law. Waiting on the green card to come back. Thank you all, this thread is genuinely helping.

Nice progress OP. For the third charge that has not reversed, ask the bank specifically why. Sometimes it is just outside their dispute window and they need you to re file it as a separate dispute rather than lumping all three together.

One subtlety people miss: a BBB complaint has no legal force, but the big chains seem to actively manage their BBB profile, so it gets a fast response. The state AG complaint is the one with actual teeth.

I filed both at the same time. The BBB one got a reply in days, the refund itself came after the AG acknowledgment.

What do people do when the gym claims you never cancelled at all because the employee never entered it in their system? I have a stamped form but their records show nothing, and they are leaning on their records.

Feels like my physical proof should beat their missing record but I am nervous.

General info, not legal advice. Maria, in most disputes a dated, stamped document the company itself issued is strong evidence and typically carries more weight than an absence in their own records, because they created the form and the form is the kind of thing people reasonably rely on.

Their internal data entry failure is their problem, not yours. I would put that exact point in writing to them: you accepted my cancellation, gave me a stamped receipt, and your failure to process it internally does not revive the contract. Keep it factual and unemotional.

If they still refuse, your stamped form is precisely the kind of evidence that does well in small claims and in a state agency complaint.

Does the three day cooling off thing apply to gym memberships? I signed up at a kiosk in a mall and immediately regretted it, then they said no refunds.

Not sure if that is a different situation from the cancel later crowd here.

It depends on your state and how you signed up. Some states give a short cancellation window specifically for health club contracts, separate from the general three day cooling off rules, and the rules for in person versus online signups can differ.

I would not assume the staff member who told you no refunds actually knows the statute. Look up your state health club or health studio law specifically. That is general info, not advice.

Adding a data point. Gold's Gym, four months of charges after I moved out of state. They tried to say I had to cancel in person at my home branch even though I no longer lived in the same time zone.

I sent the relocation documentation plus a cancellation letter certified. Many state gym laws let you cancel if you move beyond a certain distance from any of their locations. Refund came in about three weeks.

Following up on my own post. Sent the certified letter to corporate like you all said. Got an email back within a week confirming cancellation and a refund of both months.

I genuinely thought I would have to eat that money. This thread saved me about a hundred and twenty bucks and a lot of stress.

Genuine question, is it worth all this effort for like ninety dollars? Or do people mostly do it on principle at that point.

Not trying to be negative, just weighing the hours against the dollars.

For me it was not just the ninety, it was that it keeps recurring every single month until you stop it. Left alone, my charges would have hit several hundred by the time I noticed on a busy month.

The certified letter took maybe thirty minutes and one trip to the post office. The math worked out fine.

If the dollar amount is small, the order I would do it in: new card number to stop future charges, then a written cancellation demand with your proof attached, then a chargeback for what already hit. AG or small claims only if they ignore all of that.

Most people never get past step two because the written demand with proof usually does it. That is just my experience after going through it twice.

Quick procedural question. When you send the certified letter, do you also email a copy so there is a faster electronic record, or just rely on the mail?

I did both. Certified mail for the legal record of delivery, plus an email the same day so there was a timestamped electronic copy and they could not claim it got lost in the mail.

Belt and suspenders. The email also tends to get a human response faster than the letter.

Two practical notes. Keep the demand factual and specific: the cancellation date, the proof, each unauthorized charge by date and amount, and a firm deadline to refund and confirm cancellation in writing. And preserve everything, because the same documentation that wins a chargeback also supports a state agency complaint or a small claims filing if it comes to that.

If a chain refuses to honor an unambiguous cancellation, that refusal itself can strengthen your position rather than weaken it.

Adding my version: cancelled in writing in April, certified mail like this thread taught me, have the green card signature and everything. They've charged me $54.99 three more times since, and every call ends with "our system shows the account active." I did everything right on paper and it changed nothing.

At this point do I just dispute the charges with my credit card and let the bank deal with them?

FWIW once you win the chargeback you're safe, collections legally can't come after charges your bank already reversed. The reversal is a ruling that the charge was invalid, so any collection attempt after that is automatically bogus. That's how I understood it from a buddy in banking.

That's not right, and it's exactly the trap court_jester described from experience. General info, not legal advice. A chargeback resolves the payment dispute between you, your card issuer, and the merchant's processor. It is not a ruling on the underlying contract, and a merchant who believes the contract kept running can still bill you and refer the balance to collections, wrongly or not. The two tracks are independent, which is why people get blindsided.

The protection is the paper: when a collector makes contact, dispute the debt in writing promptly and include the cancellation proof, the certified mail receipt, and the charge history. A documented cancellation tends to end collection activity, and it also matters if anything ever touches your credit report. Keep it factual, keep copies, calendar the dates.

The recurring problem in this thread is proof of cancellation, and the pattern is always the same.

Cancellations made by phone or in person at the desk are the ones that vanish. Cancellations made in writing to an address, with a copy kept, are the ones that survive. If your gym contract specifies a cancellation method, use exactly that method, and then also keep proof that you used it.

If you are already past that point and only have a phone call, the next best evidence is usually your own bank record showing you also blocked the payment, plus any contemporaneous message to a friend or family member mentioning that you cancelled. Weak, but not nothing.