Woman goes to Anytime Fitness and asks for their cheapest plan. Then a worker bamboozles her: ‘I just need to use their treadmill’

Aimee (@aimee.elizabeth47) says she signed up for an Anytime Fitness in Stafford, Virginia, just to run on treadmills through the winter—and now she can't get out.

What Happened With Anytime Fitness?

Aimee isn't a regular gym-goer.

“I am training for a marathon… I don't have a treadmill or a gym very close to my house,” she says. The nearest Anytime Fitness was 20 minutes away, so she walked in and asked for the cheapest plan available.

The manager, per her account, told her the chain doesn't offer short-term options and rolled her into a standard membership. She admits she should have read the fine print.

“Hindsight, yes. I should have read the terms and conditions very intently, but I was hoping that this really nice guy would let me know how hard it is to cancel an Anytime Fitness membership,” she added.

She Tries To Cancel

By June, she'd stopped going. Since she was moving soon, she tried to cancel. The location kept irregular office hours—she claims she watched the sole employee leave the building at 11:15am during posted staffed hours. When she reached the billing office, she was told that cancellation required a move of more than 25 miles from any Anytime Fitness location or a documented medical condition—all of that seems illegal or in some gray area for enforcement.

“I will not be paying for a membership for which I do not want anymore. Cancel it,” she recalls telling them. The response, she says, pointed to her signature on the contract.

Aimee says she'd pay a cancellation fee if offered one. Instead, she's stuck choosing between forging medical paperwork and eating six more months of dues.

People Say She's Not The Only One

One commenter said they experienced a similar situation with another gym brand. “Planet Fitness is the same way,” they said. “I saw that someone said they had their home gym switched to California because their laws are different, then canceled.”

Another went into detail. “I'm in Minnesota and very similar experience. I paid for 4.25 years of a membership without knowing because the gym nearby me said they ‘paused' my membership and the fine print said it wasn't a payment pause,” they wrote. “So I never used the gym thinking I didn't have an active membership. Only caught it when doing the same thing & looking through charges for membership. Awful experience to get out of, to the point I sent an email to corporate. Never got a refund and ended up having to pay the rest of the year. 150% a scam.”

Locked In…Forever?

In an October 2025 ConsumerAffairs review, an Anytime Fitness member named Shane described a situation where he was enrolled in a training contract he'd never known he signed: “I wasn't even aware that there was a contract until I tried to cancel.”

Announcing the FTC's “click-to-cancel” rule in October 2024, then-Chair Lina Khan said businesses “make people jump through endless hoops just to cancel a subscription.”

@aimee.elizabeth47 @Anytime Fitness yall need a better business model, because wth is up with your cancellation policy. Absolutely ridiculous. #anytimefitnessscam #gymmembership #worstgymever ♬ original sound – Aimee Elizabeth

In August 2025, the FTC sued LA Fitness's operators over practices its bureau chief, Christopher Mufarrige, described as “a gym membership that seems impossible to cancel.” The complaint alleges customers paid hundreds of millions in unwanted fees, and cited tens of thousands of consumer reports basically reporting cancellation avoidance.

New York Attorney General Letitia James won $600,000 in a case against Equinox in May 2025. Three months later, the state settled with a Queens gym, arguing “clear contracts and simple cancellation processes protect consumers.”

Subplot reached out to Aimee (@aimee.elizabeth47) via TikTok message and comment, and to Anytime Fitness (Purpose Brands) via email.

The post Woman goes to Anytime Fitness and asks for their cheapest plan. Then a worker bamboozles her: ‘I just need to use their treadmill' appeared first on Subplot News.