Gym Members Seeking Refunds After Closures

Carol Edmonston doesn’t dislike men. She just doesn’t want to work out next to them.

But when the women-only fitness center a mile from her Fullerton home closed in May, the company sent her to 24 Hour Fitness gyms in neighboring cities and told her it had fulfilled its contractual obligations. But the convenience wasn’t the same, she said, and more important, the comfort level was gone.

“We as women just feel much more comfortable being in a women’s-only facility,” said Edmonston, 56, who joined Linda Evans Fitness Center as a charter member in fall 2002. “To be given the option of going to a coed one is not cutting it with any of us.”

She believes she’s entitled to a refund of her prepaid $724 membership fee, but the company has denied her requests. Now she and 30 other disgruntled Linda Evans members have hired a lawyer to send a letter this week to ask again for refunds -- with possible court action to follow.

Calls to the chain’s San Ramon, Calif., headquarters seeking comment were not returned. Messages left at Butterfly Life, a new women-only fitness franchise being launched by Linda Evans’ chief executive and founder, also were not returned.

Edmonston has also tried to contact Evans, the “Dynasty” star who loaned her name to the California chain of gyms in the mid-1990s but who has since disaffiliated herself, in the hope that the celebrity might put some pressure on the company.

So far, she has not received a response.

Six of the seven Linda Evans Fitness locations in Orange County have closed since November, with two reopening as 24 Hour Fitness gyms. The Fountain Valley gym remains open, and a manager there said Tuesday that it will continue to operate.

Since Edmonston received a form letter from the company telling her about the gym closures -- several days after her gym locked its doors -- she has been walking a three-mile route on the horse trail by her home for exercise.

She has checked out the 24 Hour gyms, but said they don’t offer anything close to the yoga classes she had been taking at Linda Evans. When she joined Linda Evans, it was her first gym experience. The location was key, she said, but most appealing was the all-women factor.

“Women have all kinds of reasons: weight, religion, age,” said Edmonston, an inspirational speaker who talks to groups about her two battles with breast cancer. “I don’t want to be in those skintight clothes around men. I shouldn’t have to justify that.”

In the last two months, the Better Business Bureau has received at least five complaints about the company’s actions, said an official in the organization’s Colton office. Several other complaints about the company’s financial practices have been filed since it opened.

“If you look at the total picture,” said Bill Mitchell, head of the BBB’s Colton office, “this outfit seems to have a pattern of not holding up their end of the deal.”

In recent years, after many fitness centers have consolidated into the mammoth 24 Hour Fitness and Bally’s Total Fitness chains, Mitchell said complaints about smaller gyms ripping off consumers have dwindled. He said gym users should beware of putting a lot of money up front into smaller companies.

“With the smaller businesses, there’s no guarantee they will be here two years from now,” he said. “If they don’t make it, they’re likely to take your money with them.”

Even if Evans officials open more women-only gyms under the new company name, members of the old gym said, their experience has soured them.

“Based on my experience, I will steer wide and clear of them,” said Sally Zivitz, 63, who joined the Fullerton location 18 months ago. Lured by offers of a free massage and a personal training session, she recently signed a new 30-month contract for $400. Two months later, the gym closed.

“I got what I thought was a great deal at the time,” she said. “Now I wouldn’t dare give anyone associated with them my money. Although come to think of it, they already have it.”