Crunch Fitness

Joined: november 2018
Incident date: 1/14/2019
Member id: abc279861
Resolution: change of membership with no fee.

I signed up for a member a couple months ago and selected the peak membership as I was told I could downgrade or cancel at any time. I called today to change my membership to the basic package because I don't have the time to take advantage of the classes due to my second child being born recently. It turns out I would need to pay a downgrade fee of $69.99! The monthly fee is $29.99 and the annual fee is $59.99.

The rep or manager on the phone just told me that I can't cancel the membership unless I pay the annual fee even though I opted for the month to month membership in case I wanted to leave at any point. So now my options are continue to pay for services that don't interest me, pay an absurd downgrade fee that was not brought to my attention at the time of registration, or basically still pay that amount and lose my membership.

How can a company get away with practices like this? I was willing to downgrade and continue to go when I have the time, but this has kinda it for me. Why should I stay with a company like this?