Turning the table on my local gym

[FrozenCanuck]

So today I got home and I had a letter in my mailbox from my gym. They wanted to let me know that they couldn't process my monthly payment, so the letter was a softly worded request to have me call them to update payment info.

They also tacked on an extra fee, presumably, for the trouble of them having to do this.

Basically, my VISA had expired in August and I had a new one to replace it. Every other business that was taking payments from me simply sends me email saying "Hey your card is about to expire, please login here to update your payment info". For all those businesses, I did update my info. All went well.

No, but not this gym. They live in the dark ages.

They send a frikkin' LETTER asking me to call them at their call center.
I am on hold for a few minutes missing my chance to play with my kids. When it becomes obvious that I'm 15th in line and it is counting down at about 1 per minute, I hang up.

I go to the website and contact them via their contact form. The short version is this:

"Here is my membership number. Call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx to get my updated credit card expiry number. Reverse the extra charge that you tried to charge me. I know you want me to call your call center but the wait is unacceptable to me. Either call me to make this change or consider this my cancellation notice for my membership".

I will not contact them again.
If they bother to reach out I'll make them jump through all the hoops to keep me.

Part of this is 4HWW elimination. Part of this is changing the rules. Inspired by a book I got "The Art of Non Conformity". Highly recommended. It's new.

[phil]

Nice! And thanks for the The Art of Non Conformity tip - downloading now


I've done this:
If I receive billing requests like this in the mail, I just mail them back a quick letter with the details. Takes all of 30 seconds to type their address and hit send. I've got a system that takes my online message and physically prints / mails the letter.


Say I'm working on the weekend, or a different time zone. I don't have to wait until they are open, and don't have to wait on hold, or don't have to worry the message gets lost in their email system.


And just for fun, I put some barcodes on the letter so they think I'm a bit of a tweaker