VERY BAD service from Planet Fitness

I recently joined Planet fitness with my boyfriend on the R99 per month (for 3 months) deal. We were very excited to receive our free bags after 10 days of joining as promised by the consultant but never received our bags. We then decided to rather complete the 16 sessions within 8 weeks to get our bags, only to be told that we did not attend the gym the requested 16 times during the period. This is DEFINITELY NOT the case. and when we in fact raised concerns regarding the "offline system" on numerous occasions when attending during the 8 week period, we were assured that our visits were being 'logged' and that we were still within the requested time limit to get our bags.

A couple of days ago, our accounts were debited with R599 each. We believe it is to do with some sort of levy for the improvement of PF clubs over the country. We were never warned that this "levy" would be going off in July and it was, in fact, indicated to us that, in our circumstances the "levy" will only be debited in December this year. According to what we were told, the levy would be exactly double our monthly fee. Our fee in July was still R99 and therefore we do not understand that if our fee was R99, why our levy isR599??

As you will appreciate we joined PF with the clear mind set of only having to pay R99 for the first 3 months. This was the major motivating factor behind us joining PF instead of Virgin Active at the time. To now pay R599 for an unknown "levy" on top of the R99 is therefore, with respect, disingenuous and opportunistic of PF. We were extremely disappointed and aggrieved. Our monthly budgets have now been seriously jeopardized.

We also feel let down by PF for not informing and adequately explain the black tag option. We were told that it was only for kids joining their parents, which is in fact, not the case as I only found out a few weeks later after discussing this with a friend who uses this option for her husband. We would definitely have utilized the benefit had we known about it when joining.

In conclusion, and instead of considering nationwide memberships with PF and/or activating our vitality memberships ( both of which we were considered doing in August), we are constrained to rather consider a move to Virgin Active , alternatively seeing the remainder of our contract term with PF out and then moving to Virgin Active. We would however like to consider your response, if any, before doing so.

On the website PF assures that they will respond within 72 hours of the complaint. It is now more than 72 hours and we still received no response.