FTC complaint accuses LA Fitness parent companies of blocking easy membership exits

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced it filed a complaint against the parent companies of the gym chain LA Fitness. At the heart of the complaint is the difficulty of canceling gym memberships, which comes a month after an appeals court blocked the agency’s click-to-cancel rule that would have made canceling gym memberships much easier.

LA Fitness allegedly violated multiple rules and ”illegally charged hundreds of millions of dollars in unwanted recurring fees,” according to the FTC complaint filed in the Central District Court of California. Many of the issues laid out in the lawsuit could have been avoided if the FTC’s click-to-cancel rule had been instituted back in January.

The agency claims LA Fitness members who tried to cancel their memberships were forced to go through obstacles, including requiring membership cancellations to be done with only one particular employee at a location and at certain times, according to an FTC press release published Wednesday. Other forms of cancellation were viewed as being a “challenge,” such as requiring mail-in requests to cancel to be sent by certified or registered mail, and an extensive process to reset login credentials for the gym’s website.