Watch Video: National Fitness…late payments crippling health clubs across country say owners

Layton company’s late payments crippling health clubs across country say owners.
A Layton, Utah company is in the spotlight after 2News received several calls and emails from health clubs across the country who say National Fitness owes them thousands of dollars in back payments.

If you’ve ever had a gym membership, chances are you’ve dealt with a company like National Fitness. They are the owners who collect your automatic monthly payment, they then pass that money onto the gyms with which they contract. Several gyms say that is not happening.

“Every time I would contact them, I would get the same story,” said Richard Sharon of Big Bear Total Fitness in California.

He says National Fitness is supposed to pass along collected dues electronically almost every day, but he says some months National would be weeks late and thousands of dollars behind in payments.

“In August they were four payments behind, it roughly ran about $4000.”

Julian Amedee owns Sports Fitness Xperience in Roswell, Ga, and says National Fitness is behind in paying him by weeks. It is defiantly affecting his business.

“We haven’t received a deposit from them since probably early in September,” said Amedee. Another gym owner in Big Bear City, Jonni Robillard, said there would be times when National owned her thousands of dollars.

“Missing chunks of money like $3,500 might seem like a tiny pittance to big businesses, but as a small business owner in Big Bear City, that was a huge sum for us,” says Robillard.

Sharon says he has filed a complaint with the Layton Police department and there have been several complaints filed with The Utah Division of Consumer Protection.

This is what they said about this case: “The Division of Consumer Protection has received calls regarding National Fitness. The Division of Consumer Protection does not have jurisdiction in these gym owner complaints. They are considered a business-to-business transactions. If National Fitness is not remitting payment in the time frame agreed upon under their contract with the gym, the gym’s recourse is to sue for breach of that contract.”

We tried to get in contact with the owners of the company they did not get back to us.