The Gym Kept Billing $29 for Four Months After It Closed

Twenty-nine dollars. Again. 6:52 a.m., June 5, phone on the nightstand, one notification sitting on top of my alarm: CARD PURCHASE $29.00 IRONLINE FITNESS. The gym chained its doors on February 28, and the charges have landed on the fifth of every month since, four of 'em, $116 in total, aimed at a business that no longer answers its phone. I lay there doing that arithmetic before my feet touched carpet.

Here is what the $116 competed with: my daughter's summer softball registration at $145, due June 15; a State Farm renewal that went up $11 a month for no reason anyone at the office would defend; and a checking account that ended May at $212. I joined Ironline in August 2023, $29 a month on a Visa thru my credit union, no contract length. The agreement said cancel anytime. It did not say how, and that omission cost me four months.

On February 27 at 8:03 p.m., Ironline's Instagram posted its own farewell: closed Sunday, thanks for three great years, and billing is paused for all members through March. Billing was not paused. That post is the reason I got my money back, and I will show you exactly where it sits.

the note taped to the glass

I drove by March 1 because my gym bag was still in my trunk. Chain on the doors, paper taped inside the glass: CLOSED PERMANENTLY, THANK YOU, and a flyer from an auction company running an equipment liquidation on March 14, cash only. The parking lot had maybe twenty members in it that morning comparing notes on their phones, and every single one of us had the same question about the fifth of the month.

four charges, one dispute

The charges landed March 5, April 5, May 5, and June 5, $29 each, from a billing processor in another state that still had my card number. I filed a dispute with my credit union on March 12 covering the first two: $58, the dispute code for canceled recurring billing, screenshots attached, the Instagram post included. On April 22 the credit union denied it in a letter that quoted the gym's terms of service, the ones requiring 30 days written cancellation, as if the business that was required to receive that letter had not spent March 14 auctioning its own treadmills to strangers.

the certified letter came back to me

I mailed the cancellation letter anyway, certified with return receipt, $7.90, to the address on my membership agreement. It came back March 30, stamped UNABLE TO FORWARD, and the dispute department treated that as me failing to cancel properly. The gym was a shell with a chain on the door, and the paper trail said the failure was mine. I sat with that one thru lunch and got angrier with every bite of a sandwich I could taste nothin' of.

the attorney general form took nine minutes

May 9, a Saturday, my wife told me to stop refreshing the credit union app and do something with all that. The state attorney general's office has a consumer complaint form online, and it took me nine minutes: merchant name, dates, amounts, the denial letter, the returned certified envelope, and the Instagram post from February 27 promising billing was paused, screenshot and timestamp and all. A case number arrived by email before dinner. That was the first time in two months anything about this felt like it had weight.

a letter with a seal

June 12, an envelope with the state seal went to the billing processor with a copy to my credit union, and I do not know exactly what it said. The credit union called June 24 and asked whether I would accept $116 as full resolution of the dispute. I said yeah before the representative finished the sentence. The credit posted June 26: $116, four months of $29, and they waived the $5 refile fee I did not know existed til they waived it.

the softball check cleared on june 16

I noted the $145 registration, so here is the end of that thread too. I mailed the check June 16 from the credit union drive-through, four days past the due date, with no note to the league treasurer cuz she is my neighbor and already knew the whole gym story. The $116 refund changes the math on paper. The registration clearing changes it in the kitchen, which is where the real bill for this mess had been sitting since March. My daughter starts third base in July. Her jersey says number 12 and cost $29, and I laughed at that longer than a grown man should.

the card that followed me out

One more thing, cuz it matters. On June 27 I had the credit union reissue the Visa with a new number, so the processor's file on me died with the old digits. July 5 came and went with no alert, and this mornin', July 8, 6:52 a.m., the phone showed nothing but the alarm. That is the whole scoreboard now: no alert, four months closed out, $116 back where it came from. The farewell post is still up on their page. I screenshot it again anyway.