How I'd choose a gym without signing my life away

If I were choosing a gym, I'd read how the contract ends before I looked at a single treadmill. Then I'd do one small sum about myself. The treadmills are easy to judge later, and the exit is the only part I can't fix after signing.

The sum comes first

I wrote about why your gym is fine with you staying home, so I'll keep this short. People are bad at guessing their own visits, and the plan they buy is priced for that guess.

In one well-known American study, members paying over US$70 a month went about 4.3 times a month. A ten-visit pass would have saved them money.¹

So I'd take the number of visits in my head and knock some off. Say a gym wants a hundred and eighty ringgit a month, a figure I've made up. At twelve visits that's fifteen ringgit each, and at four it's forty-five.

Then I'd ask what a walk-in costs, or a pack of ten. If that beats my honest number, I've already got my answer, and it isn't the membership the person at the desk wants to talk about.

The order I'd do this in

How long I'd sign for

As short as I could stand, even at a worse monthly rate. A longer term is a discount for taking on a risk, and I'd want to know which risk.

The first is me: I move, I get injured, I go off the whole idea. The second is the gym, and that one gets less attention. A chain closed all its Malaysian gyms in June 2017, its statement said it was no longer financially viable, and members heard by email.⁴

Paying monthly, you've lost a month or so. Paying for two years upfront, you've made an unsecured loan to a gym, at no interest, without looking at its accounts.

Lifetime deals I'd skip. In 2020, over 30 members of one franchise took disputes to the consumer tribunal, saying their memberships had ended over missed yearly payments of about RM100.⁵ They'd reportedly paid RM4,000 to RM11,000, and the gym hadn't replied when that report ran.⁵

The clause I'd read first

This is where Malaysia is better than most people assume, me included. The Consumer Protection Act has a section on "future services" contracts, the kind you pay for now and use later, and The Star's 2024 report lists gyms among them.³

Under section 17, someone who cancels can be charged 5% of the full contract price, the cost of any goods they used or are keeping, or the part of the price covering services already received. Anything paid beyond that comes back within 14 days.²

The Act puts an "or" between those items. A legal adviser to the consumer group Fomca told The Star it's the 5% plus the sessions used, and I'd assume that reading, since it's the less cheerful one.³

The Act also says its provisions apply whatever an agreement says, and that trying to contract out of them is an offence.² So a line reading "no refunds, no cancellation" would make me suspicious of the rest of the contract. A lock-in fee would make me read twice.

Leaving a made-up RM180 plan after three months, in ringgit

I can't tell you how a court would treat every monthly-debit contract with a lock-in. I'm not a lawyer, and the wording matters. What I can do is put the sum in front of the person selling it and watch their face.

What I'd ask at the desk

I'd want each answer shown to me in the contract, because a nice person's promise leaves with the nice person.

• If I leave in month four, what do I pay? Show me the line.
• How do I cancel, and to whom? The Act lets a contract insist on writing, so I'd want the address.²
• Does it renew by itself, and when does the card stop being charged?
• If you close or move, what happens to what I've paid?
• Can I take this home and read it?
• Can I come in once at 7pm on a weekday, my actual hour?

That cancel question matters more than it sounds. Those American members took a little over two months on average to cancel after their last visit, and paid about US$187 for the delay.¹ The easier the door, the less that costs.

I'd walk away if the discount only exists until I leave the building. A contract that's fine on Tuesday is fine on Thursday. I'd also walk away if nobody could find the cancellation clause, which I'd take as a fair preview of the day I need it.

And a fair price?

I couldn't find one. I looked for a survey of Malaysian gym fees and found listing sites with no dates on them, so I won't give you a range I can't stand behind.

That's fine, since the per-visit sum does the job. A fair price is one that beats a pass at the number of times I'll truly go, and that number is different for you.

If it goes wrong anyway

Keep the contract and every receipt. Members in that 2017 closure were told to bring proof of payment and proof of membership to the tribunal.⁴

The tribunal can hear claims up to RM50,000 under the current Act, up from the RM25,000 those members faced.² But getting a ruling and getting paid by a business that's gone are different things, and the minister said in 2017 that anything above the ceiling couldn't be recovered there.⁴

So my last test is about money, not fitness. I wouldn't prepay more than I could lose without being angry about it for a year.