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.