I sent an email to club management three days ago. No response. Crickets. Bupkis. Here's what I wrote regarding the largest room at the club, which is filled with workout equipment:
This morning I discovered that in order to overcome the loud, angry 'metal' music booming in the room, I had to turn up my Bose bluetooth headphones "up to eleven"...and they still couldn't drown it out.
I stopped my workout to ask the young woman at the front desk if the volume could be lowered a bit, explaining that there were only five customers in the big room, including me, all either wearing headphones or earbuds. None of us asked for- or needed- any extraneous music.
At a lower volume, not a problem! When it's too loud to tune out, even with good headphones cranked up to earbleed level, it is a problem.
When I returned to the rowing machine, the music was as loud as before. On my way out, after cutting my workout short, I let her know. She said, "Well, they (I assume that means management) like to have the music on for 'atmosphere.' I turned it down ten notches. It's a pretty big room, so the sound just carries. That's the best I can do."
I got the message: "Tough noogies. This policy isn't going to change, there's nothing that can be done about it, so you'll just have to deal with it. It isn't physically possible to lower the volume."
I last belonged to GFD Sport in 2016 and 2017, and enjoyed working out to personal, custom Spotify playlists on my headphones. I made friends, dropped 18 pounds and felt great! I was working out at the club, quite happily, five days a week. Back then, even loud in-person conversations and yakking on a cell phone were discouraged in the treadmill room. When I recently moved back to Davis, I looked forward to rejoining the friendly, mellow, laid-back club that I had nothing but positive feelings toward, and getting back in shape.
If I had known the policy now was to bombard members with loud, angry, edgy metal, I wouldn't have rejoined. It's hard enough at my age and physical condition (66 and about 20 pounds overweight) to be motivated to work out without having this unnecessary "suck" factor that, for me, takes the enjoyment out of the experience.
I'm going to cancel my membership and write off the initiation fee as money not well-spent (ugh). Why would I continue to spend $60 a month on a fixed income (Social Security) just to be discouraged from working out?
____________________
Not even the courtesy of a response.
Nada. Zip.
I was totally blown off. Not a good way to retain a customer. read more