Would you lie to get out of your gym membership!

Would you lie to get out of your gym membership!….ALEXIS Poindexter-Jenkins was set to become an adult. She had a brand-new college degree, an impressive-sounding job in an advertising agency in New York City and a spot in an apartment near Wall Street.

The last box she checked? Becoming a member of Equinox, a high-end fitness company with a location right by her apartment. “It wasn’t only a gym; it was a lifestyle,” Poindexter-Jenkins, now 25, recalls thinking. Her friends went there, her company had a corporate membership and, to sweeten the deal, the locker rooms were stocked with luxurious lotions and shower products from cosmetics retailer Kiehl’s. Never mind that she didn’t have the salary or savings to fund the nearly $200 monthly cost.

“I loved it,” says Poindexter-Jenkins, who ended up signing on for a 12-month membership since her division of her company didn’t qualify her for the company’s deal on the less-committal month-to-month option. “I was probably in the best shape of my life.”

[See: How to Be the New Kid in Fitness Class.]

But a few months in, Poindexter-Jenkins fell out of her routine for a day, then a week, then a month. By the time she’d been a member for five or six months, she’d gone into debt and realized Equinox was one expense that had to go. Equinox disagreed. Because she had signed on for a year, her choices were limited: Show proof from a doctor that she was too injured to use the gym fox six months, prove that she was moving somewhere more than 25 miles away from the closest Equinox or show that she’d lost her job….

So Poindexter-Jenkins did what any broke recent grad and disillusioned New Yorker would do: She lied. “I told them I got laid off and am moving back home,” Poindexter-Jenkins says. Her mom sent her bills from their home in Virginia and her colleagues helped her photoshop her name onto them. All in all, she estimates she saved more than $1,000 bucks by bailing early.

“It’s the worst type of brand loyalty because it’s forced and then they actually rob you when you finally get out,” says Poindexter-Jenkins, who now belongs to a Pilates studio she loves that charges three months at a time for unlimited classes.

Equinox didn’t respond in time to repeated requests for comment, but the company websiteconfirms that members within their first year can only cancel due to relocation outside of 25 miles of an Equinox, a doctor-verified medical problem that puts them out of commission for six monthsor job loss. “All cancellations must be done in club with a club manager or via registered or certified mail,” the site reports. “Cancellations are processed this way to ensure you will get a receipt that your cancellation was received.”

A ‘legendary’ Issue

Poindexter-Jenkins is far from the only one who’s found that ethically questionable tactics like forging doctor’s notes, faking moves and canceling credit cards are cheaper than continuing to pay fees for gyms they’re no longer using and less of a headache than obliging the cancellation terms stipulated in the fine print of their contracts.

“Speaking only from my experience, the history of the cancellation process in the health club industry is legendary for its desire to make things harder on the consumer,” says Josh Leve, the founder and CEO of the Association of Fitness Studios, a trade organization based in Evanston, Illinois. “Heck, there’s even a ‘Friends’ episode about it.”

[See: 10 Signs You Should Break Up With Your Gym.]

Consider Michael D’Hondt, a dentist in La Crosse, Wisconsin, who recalls being unable to get out of an athletic club membership unless he found someone who’d pay $100 to take it over. “I ended up offering to pay that fee for someone who was walking in to sign up,” he remembers. Then there’s Emma Kennedy, a 29-year-old social worker in Somerville, Massachusetts, who didn’t think she could cancel her Planet Fitness membership she’d used in Michigan until she visited the state a year after moving away, though the company told U.S. News members can also request cancellation via certified mail.

Snail-mailing cancellation wasn’t a great option, either, though for John, a 35-year-old lawyer in Chicago who requested his last name not be used since he didn’t have permission from his firm to speak to the media. When he tried to cancel his XSport Fitness membership in person, he was denied. “They require that you send them a letter via certified or registered mail,” he says, and the company’s website concurs. “Seems unnecessary.”

A method to the madness?

Of course, many fitness facilities view such policies as reasonable for consumers who’ve signed contracts and as necessary for their bottom lines. “At the end of the day, these facilities … aren’t really trying to make it that much more difficult,” Leve says. Like signing up for cable, he adds, “a consumer needs to understand they are signing an agreement for services and what’s important to note is that all the cancellation lingo is always contained within the contract when you first sign up.”

Brian McGee, the head trainer and owner of FIT360DC, a boutique fitness studio in the District of Columbia. explains that his facility’s cancellation fee – which is only charged to members who’ve signed up for the 12-month option and therefore didn’t incur an initiation fee – ensures his company’s checkbooks stay balanced. “It is important to be reasonable but consistent and firm with our policy, as our monthly expenses would be adversely affected every time someone cancels days before we anticipate membership revenue,” says McGee, who requires 30 days notice before or up to the billing date for non-year-long memberships.

Bigger fitness chains, meanwhile, “do everything they can to prevent cancellations” to avoid losing members to smaller studios and to “help them absorb the hit of lost revenue,” says McGee, who began his career at Washington Sports Clubs. “Those dinosaur industry policies die hard.”

One of those big chains, Planet Fitness, though, contends that the company has “one of the easiest cancellation policies in the industry,” according to a statement provided to U.S. News. “We understand that our members have busy schedules and lives that change throughout the year, along with their goals. With this understanding, we offer extremely low membership prices at just $10 a month and require all of our clubs to offer no-commitment membership options that members can cancel at any time for any reason without a long-term contact.”