Woman tries to cancel her Planet Fitness membership, but says the gym found a way to keep taking her money: ‘Did I dream that conversation?’

A woman says she continued to see charges from Planet Fitness after trying to cancel her gym membership. She contacted her bank after another charge appeared and is now trying to recover the money.

In a video posted to TikTok by Phebe, the woman recalled she walked into her local Planet Fitness ready to end her contract. “I don’t need a fitness membership anymore. Cancel my membership,” she told an employee, according to the video. She said the employee told her she had a past due balance of $42.11 that had to be paid first. She paid it and left. 

One week later, a new charge from Planet Fitness showed up on her account. She called her bank right away. “I called my bank. I said don’t let Planet Fitness take anything else out of my account,” she recalls. The bank agreed to place a stop payment on the gym chain, according to Phebe. That wasn’t the first time a gym customer reported ongoing charges after trying to cancel. An Anytime Fitness member recently reported unexpected charges after canceling her membership.

The second charge raised more questions

The stop payment did not hold for long, she said. The next morning, another pending charge from Planet Fitness appeared on her account. She called the bank again, confused about how the charge went through. “I thought we had a deal,” she said. “Did I dream that conversation?”

The bank told her what happened next. Planet Fitness had changed its merchant name from “Planet Fitness” to “ABC Planet Fitness,” she said, and that change let the new charge slip past the stop payment. The reported merchant-name change is one part of a broader dispute over Planet Fitness charges, with a Louisiana woman previously saying she was told she owed $500 without being given an explanation for the amount.

Planet Fitness says on its customer service page that cancellation requests can take up to seven business days to affect billing. The company also says members must request cancellation by the 10th of the month. This prevents the next monthly payment, which is scheduled for the 17th.

The “ABC Planet Fitness” name also appears in billing records associated with the gym. Credit Proud lists “ABC*PLANET FITNESS” and “ABC PLANET FITNESS” among the descriptors used for Planet Fitness charges and identifies ABC Fitness as a billing and member-account service provider for participating locations. Planet Fitness has not said that the merchant name was changed to bypass a stop payment. Phebe’s account of what happened is based on what she says her bank told her.

The comment section under her video also included people describing similar experiences. One person wrote, “no bc planet fitness KEPT taking $40 off my card ALONG with the monthly $25.” Another commented, “They’ve done this to me before.. class action lawsuit otw smh.” A third said, “I had to place an expired card on my profile to get them to cancel my membership.”

For now, the woman says she is still trying to recover the money and wants Planet Fitness to know she is not letting the matter go. “I’m getting all my money back,” she said, adding that she plans to “tell everybody” about what happened.