An Anytime Fitness customer on TikTok says that when she tried to cancel her gym membership, a worker may have fat-shamed her.
Lexie Rowe @lexiemarierowe made the allegations in TikTok that received over 600,000 views.
@lexiemarierowe Hey @Anytime Fitness we’ve got beef #foryoupage #fyp ♬ original sound – lexie rowe💚
In her video, she explains how she tried to cancel her Anytime Fitness gym membership a few years ago because bought day passes at the YMCA since all of her friends had memberships there.
Rowe says that when she went in to cancel her membership, a worker told her she would not cancel it until she has at least three sessions with a trainer. She says the trainer said she would like to see Rowe try first and mentioned again that it would not be canceled until those three sessions were complete.
The worker also said that the sessions would be free but insisted that the TikToker “try first.”
“I’m pretty sure Anytime Fitness fat-shamed me,” Rowe says in the clip. “Is that legal? Is that in their policy? Can they ask me to do that?”
Anytime Fitness reached out to Rowe via a comment on the video.
“Hi, Lexie. Thank you for bringing your experience to our attention. As you can imagine, with our purpose to help people reach their total health and wellness goals, we take these situations seriously,” Anytime Fitness wrote.
It said that while its records indicate she canceled her membership in 2019, returning members get three free training sessions. “However, no one should be forced to take the training sessions when attempting to cancel their membership – that is absolutely not our policy, nor a practice we endorse,” the account continued before apologizing to the TikToker and noting “there has been a total turnover of staff at that particular location.”
Lexi later revealed in a follow-up she went in for one of the free training sessions. “She made me feel so bad and guilty about it,” she says. She says she threw up due to how hard the trainer pushed her.
“It was like he was pushing me harder than he knew I could take on purpose to like show that I couldn’t do it” she says.
She also says she eventually got the membership canceled. “But then they charged my bank,” she says. She says she did a “stop payment” at her bank.
Laxie also revealed she was made to feel uncomfortable by a male Anytime Fitness member and that the worker still wouldn’t cancel her membership after learning this.
“They weren’t going to do anything about his membership—he was still going to be allowed back,” she says. “And they were expecting me to keep my membership as well and keep coming to the same gym, whether he was going to be there or not.”
Lexie says Anytime Fitness hasn’t reached out to her directly. “They’ve only put things on my TikTok,” she says.
“I have very mixed feelings about this,” she says of Anytime Fitness’ comment. “I was simply on here to share what happened to me because I thought it was messed up. … What I don’t like is that it was never handled with me directly. … That very much says … ‘We want to make this very public so that we don’t look like the bad person, even if we are.'”
@lexiemarierowe Replying to @jiggyjasss #greenscreen ♬ original sound – lexie rowe💚
The Daily Dot reached out to Rowe via TikTok comment and to Anytime Fitness via phone.
Source: https://www.dailydot.com/irl/anytime-fitness-fat-shame-cancel-gym-membership/