A Gym Created A Fake Membership And It Is Now In Collections And It Has Been Hellish To Fight

So, my husband and I used to belong to a local gym but canceled our membership early in the pandemic. Why? Because they were trying to charge us for a closed gym. They said they were charging members because they needed to pay their employees. That sounded like something PPP was for. And that if they needed the money, they would be better off asking members instead of charging them and hoping folks wouldn't notice.

I had to go in person to cancel because you can’t cancel over the phone. It was annoying, but I was done with them, and once gyms opened again, we got a membership at LA Fitness and never returned. Oh, I’m sorry; we went back once because they tried to reopen our memberships, and I got everything in writing because, at that point, I didn't trust them.

Fast forward to last month when we started the home-buying process, and our lender says my husband has a collections account for a membership at the gym. Wild because we had to cancel the account. Twice. Even wilder is that they claim he opened an account while we were in the middle of a move over an hour away from the gym.

So we contacted the gym to find out what was up, and they said he had no balance. However, the gym said that I had a balance for a membership that I apparently opened early in my pregnancy. Silly enough, because I already had a membership somewhere else. But if any of you have been in the early stages of pregnancy, you can understand how getting a new gym membership may not be on the list of things you feel like doing.

We contacted the collection agency and explained it was fraud, so they said to send proof from the gym. I had to drive an hour with a toddler to the gym to get proof because they said they couldn't email or fax anything. I tell them someone made a fraudulent account, and they blame it on previous ownership. After they fumbled around trying to figure out how to print the proof, I discovered another person called about the same issue. Again, they blamed the previous owner for it. So I took the proof home, my husband sent it out, and we waited.

Last night, we checked up on the dispute we filed through Credit Karma, and there was a note stating it had been resolved and that we owed it. We followed up with the collections agency, and they said they got our documentation but that the gym followed up with proof that we owed, which was sent to us.

I looked through the mail, found the letter, and opened it, seeing a statement noting he opened an account on October 3rd, 2018, a few days after we came home from Italy. Strange because the credit report said we opened the account in October of 2022, the month we were moving. Even stranger was that the “proof” the collections agency sent us was a complete stranger's account information. It had all his information, including the last four digits of his credit card.

So now the debt collectors' supervisors are all “busy,” and none of the agents we talked to know what to do about it. I contacted the person whose information was sent to us and let him know that this collection agency gave me his personal information. I filed a report through consumer protection. I’m beyond annoyed because I refuse to pay for a membership we didn't have.