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LIFE | Noah Brier

Crunch Sucks Update

An update on my Crunch customer service story where this time Crunch employees bash me in the comments.

September 21, 2005 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 2 COMMENTS

For those of you that remember back in December when I told my story of the terrible customer service at Crunch gym, I just wanted to update the situation. Since December I have been a happy member of New York Sports Club and CrunchReallySucks.com has been getting about two comments a month. There are lots of good ones, many highlighting how Crunch sucks.

There are a few that are negative towards me, which I can deal with, but there were two that really stood out, mostly because they sounded quite similar. One was from a Bob Highlander (MysheI42@aol.com and read:

Whaaaa....
You all sound like whining crybabies! The 1st poster sounds like he was scamming his way into the club...when he knew full well that he was no longer a corporate member. THe way I see it...you owe CRUNCH MONEY!!!
I go to the gym to workout and mind my own business...quit your bitching and hit the iron!

The other was from Michael (burnt2o47@aol.com) and read:

If you had been working out there for six months, what was there to think about. Did you need to try out the gym again. Obviously no one here is a business owner. Think about this, you are one in how many people who try the same thing. If they let you in for free, then where is the value in someone elses membership that they paid for. You people should understand something that simple. I could understand if you were a potential customer, like NYSC just let you work out hoping you would join their health club. Does your landlord let you live in your apartment if you don't pay your rent? I'm not posting to bash you in anyway, and I can appreciate a person who will go to such lengths to put his/ her point across. But it just is another example of people; not just you, trying to take advantage of others. Good for you.

Now I can deal with people disagreeing with me, but there was a certain amount of similarity to the tone of the two comments and a quick look at the logs showed me that's because they came from the same IP: 206.205.135.11. At this point I figured something was up so I did a whois on the IP and wasn't overly surprised to get returned with this:

CustName: Bally Total Fitness, Inc.
Address: 300 East Joppa Road, 5th floor
City: Baltimore
StateProv: MD
PostalCode: 21204
Country: US
RegDate: 1995-10-24
Updated: 1995-10-24

Bally's owns Crunch. Crunch employees left me comments bashing me on their work computers. It's all pretty amusing and I thought everyone should know. Just reinforces the fact that Crunch really sucks.

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COMMENTS

1Andrew

I think we need to register a domain and start a collaborative blog regarding general stories of sucky customer service...kind of like a pimped out, blog style, epinions on steroids. I have so many of these stories that I could fill a large site on my own. In fact, I have three from the past week that I haven't even had time to write...

September 22, 2005

2Mack

DON'T JOIN CRUNCH!!! Any cardio benefit you get from working out there will be wiped out from dealing with the employees and management when you encounter a problem (it may give you the BIG ONE by the time they are finished with you.)

They must send thier employees to a**hole school. They are consistently bad across the board rude, uninformed there are disconnects at every turn. I don't know how they do it? It's as if they set out to create the worst organization they could. You need to go through 5 people to cancel your membership + faxing paperwork, can't resolve anything by phone or email and the people at the gyms don't have any information. It's a Jekyl and Hyde scenario. When they are selling you (and trying to rip you off as much as possible notice how they never have anything in writing on terms costs specials?) they are your best friend, giving you the best deal possible todays special, because I like you so much, let me ask my manager if I can give you this extra thing? It's sooo transparent but you get the best deal you can because this is the most convenient place for you to work out at and you join. Everthing is fine until one day you discover they have lost any record of the $800 you spent on personal training sessions - I'm sorry sir, I'm sorry sir, I'm sorry sir with the vacant look on their face. Now it's time for YOU to prove to them that you paid them. Digging through your records and finding the statement from 8 months ago is only the beginning believe me. And when you quit they do everything in thier power to make it inconvenient and miserable for you. If anybody in mangement is reading this - Dude - first rule of building the biz keep your customers happy and they will keep coming back. I'm just moving to the West Coast not dying! I've got a good 20-30 years of membership dues in me for the right organization and I can assure you Crunch won't see a dime of it!!

Wow that was cathartic - I'm starting to feel better already.

I am adding CRUNCH to my all time WORST companies to deal with right up there with Manhattan U-HAUL, Manhattan Toyota, Wirefly.com, Tekserve (Manhattan)

July 3, 2007