I signed up for a membership in July of 2025. For the first few months, my experience was great. I received good service, the food was good, and the bays were well-maintained.
Around the start of 2026, the service took a steep drop. They had a revolving door of staff, from wait staff up to managers, coming and going. Some days, the bartender wouldn't bother to show up, so the manager was running the bar. Other days, the cooks were AWOL, and the manager of the week was trying to serve a limited menu with long wait times. It got to the point where I wouldn't see a wait staff member for 20-30 minutes after setting up in my bay. When I would finally go looking for someone, I'd usually find them all hanging out by the bar socializing. One night, my wife and I sat at the bar after finishing up in our bay and were ignored for 10 minutes by the bartender 4 feet away while he flirted with the waitress and female manager.
The menu was never outstanding, but at least it was well-prepared...at first. By this spring, it wasn't unusual for food to come out room temperature because the wait staff was either gabbing with their friends, or they were swamped running 10 bays because 5 Iron can't seem to keep a full staff at any given time.
So by late May, I knew I was not going to renew. On three separate occasions, I point-blank asked the person at the front desk if memberships were auto-renew. I was told every time that they were not. I would then follow up and say, "So I don't need to do anything on my end?" and was told I did not.
Lo and behold, July rolls around, and I've got a new charge on my card for the *non-discounted* rate. So I call 5 Iron and naturally, it's a call center in India. I'm told that oh no, memberships automatically roll over to month-to-month. I said that I was told otherwise by multiple staff members, she implied I made it up. Told her I wanted to cancel the month-to-month and wanted the charge reversed. She claimed it had been more than 24 hours, so she couldn't reverse it - mind you, it literally just showed up on my card as a *pending* charge *today*, less than 24 hours after my year-long membership ended on July 9th. At any rate, she was going to have to reverse the charge, but she couldn't give me any kind of case number, that I would just have to wait for a confirmation email. Oh, and if I didn't get the email, I'd be lucky enough to get to call into the overseas call center yet again.
If you look at the positive reviews, you'll see that they are all from early on. So if you like poor service and mediocre food along with staff that don't have a clue most of the time when you ask them anything beyond their name, by all means go to 5 Iron. It's disappointing, because it started out so well, and we always recommended them to others. I wouldn't ever go there at the going hourly rate, which can jump up to $50/hour or more. read more
