Ohio man takes drastic action after being trapped in gym membership

An Ohio man was forced to take drastic actions after he found himself stuck with a recurring gym membership payment and seemingly no way to stop it.

All Doug Mattison wanted to do was cancel the gym membership, which he told JNews he could no longer afford.

According to the news, the 59-year-old went to the gym’s website but found there was no way to cancel online, so he called the gym and was told that he must cancel in person.

He then went to the gym, but the employee told him they didn’t “have the ability to stop it or do anything on it” and that only the parent company was authorized to cancel the membership.

Mattison told JNews the only reason he chose that particular gym was because they did not have a binding contract, and he assumed he could cancel at any time easily.

But when he called the parent company, the customer service reps told him they couldn’t help him online or over the phone and did not offer an alternative route.

That is when JNews says Mattison went to his bank with his only other option, canceling the credit card he used to pay for the membership.

The bank employees told Mattison that many customers found themselves in similar situations when canceling subscriptions and automatic payments.

The bank told him that it was a good thing he only gave the gym his credit card number rather than the actual bank account number, as that is a lot more of a hassle.

Mattison told JNews that it took him three months to cancel the membership and stop the payments, saying it was “the worst experience I’ve ever had with any type of membership.”

JNews reports that he is not alone. Companies have gotten better at trapping customers in what is known as a “dark pattern.”

They say companies draw customers in with new products or discount subscriptions that are difficult to get out of.

They say in a world where people seldom read the fine print. Consumers find themselves without much recourse when they discover they can not cancel something they no longer want.

According to a survey from C+R Research, respondents ended up paying more than double for their monthly subscriptions than they estimated, with 42% saying they’d forgotten they were still paying for products they no longer used.

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