The day of reckoning...

So the time is soon coming where I will have to decide whether or not to pay Shapes their blackmail....

I return for $700 I get about a yearlong membership and I get a slanderous black mark removed from my credit.

On the one hand, I'm applying for a mortgage soon, so it will save me money in the long run. On the other, I hate the thought of these vile vultures getting a penny of my hard earned money.

An story e-mailed to me

Here's another Shapes horror story I've recently been informed of...


"A friend of mine worked at Shapes a few years ago. When she worked there, she recieved a call from the St. Amant centre asking why Shapes was debting one of thier client's account. (St. Amant is a centre of adults with physical/developmental disabilities). Long story short, someone at Shapes had signed up a developmentally disabled adult for a gym membership that they were unable to use. This person had wandered into Shapes while on a field trip to Petland. Obviously, this person was not competent to sign any kind of legal papers, nor were they able to use a gym membership.
Shapes refused to refund the money or cancell the membership.
St. Amant had to threaten legal action and contact the Free Press before the membership was cancelled. To my knowledge, no money was ever refunded."

They sound like a reputable company don't they...

E-mail them at fitness@shapes.ca and let them know your outrage about this incident which happened in 2008. Ask them if they still follow these shady business practices and tell them that you won't have anything to do with them until they clean up their act

So what can you do?

Well, the way I see it, if I cost them even one customer, I'm ahead. A 1999 revealed that a dissatisfied customer will tell 10 people and each of them in turn will tell 5 more. That's a total of 50 people. Now 11 years later, with the help of the internet, I can tell a heck of alot more than 10 people.

I would ask that you write to fitness@shapes.ca and let them know that you've read this. As I said, if I cost them 1 customer, I'm ahead. If I cost them more, maybe they'll stop blackmailing me.

By the way, I have all the necessary documents to prove I don't owe them money. They just don't care! If I could post my credit report on here, you'd see that it's perfect, other than this one thing; this isn't something I do regularly.

Shapes Fitness Center in Winnipeg is Evil

On October 4^th, 2010 I signed a one year long contract with Shapes Fitness at their location on Nairn Avenue. The contract contained a provision for a one week review period in which you could cancel the contract. I was given the contract to take home and review. After reading the terms on the back of the contract, I decided that I would rather opt for a monthly membership. I discussed this with one of the employees of Shapes the next time I was in their gym and they told me to write a cancellation notice which I did and hand-delivered on October 7^th to a gentleman at their Nairn Avenue location.

At the beginning of January of 2006, I attempted to cancel this membership and was informed that I could not as I was signed to a one year contract. I told the person working at the counter that originally I had signed a one year contract but that I cancelled it and opted instead for a monthly agreement, as outlined in my cancellation notice. I was informed that they hadn't received the notice that I hand-delivered and thus couldn't cancel the membership. I told the employee to just do it, and left. My credit card continued being billed, so I contacted Visa and had further charges from them blocked at the end of January.

Everything was fine, until I started getting letters from Citadel Credit of Canada.. I received one letter probably every 2 or 3 weeks in February, March and April. After each letter, I would call the number on the letter. No one would ever answer the phone so I left a series of messages explaining the situation. None of my calls were ever returned and my messages became ruder and ruder as time passed and I received no response. Finally, the letters stopped coming, and I assumed that perhaps they had gotten the message.

A few months down the road, I was doing a routine credit check and noticed an entry from Citadel under the collections section. I contacted them again, and again received no response. I appealed to the credit reporting agency (Equifax), explained the situation to them and asked them to remove the entry on my report, and they refused.

I attempted to get in contact with both Shapes and Citadel. Phone calls to Shapes were unhelpful, everyone just told me “we didn't get your notice”, even though I hand-delivered it. And phone calls to Citadel went unreturned.

Eventually, in July of 2008, I was made aware of my right to appeal to a review board at Shapes, via e-mail. I sent them an e-mail outlining my situation. They responded by denying my appeal and telling me to pay the money. I responded with a sharply worded e-mail.

Following that e-mail, someone actually called me with an offer that if I paid the full amount immediately, they would remove the mark on my credit report and would reactivate my membership for the remaining term. However, I declined this offer because I did not feel I could trust them. I felt that if I paid them the money, then I would have no leverage over them and it would be admitting that I was wrong, and I refuse to reward them for their bad behaviour.

So I called the so-called "consumer protection bureau of Manitoba." They were no help. They 'negotiated so that instead of paying the full amount, I could take $100 off of the cost and they would reactivate my membership (As if I'd go.... would they really want me there anyway?)... ooohhh, wow. So now Shapes is blackmailing me for less money.