How To Benefit From A Lie

Just a heads up - this is a long story.

When I originally signed up for my gym membership, I was informed by my HR department that the gym offered a corporate discount to the employees of my company. Score! After double checking this information, I drove to the gym to sign Rigatoni and I up for the discounted rate. An hour later, Sales Rep Round 1 printed out the documents while I inquired as to when he would need my work ID for the discount. Sales Rep Round 1 looked at me like I was bat-shit crazy, said he was unaware of the corporate discount my company offered, and handed me the paperwork to sign. This was where my palms started sweating.

I pressed on for the next few minutes in semi-bitch mode, using my conversation with HR two days prior as proof of said discount. Fifteen minutes later, the paperwork was being signed - without the discount. What can I say? It was a rare, weak moment for me. I needed to join a gym - immediately. Maybe the brand new shiny equipment was to blame.

A handful of months after I initally joined, my co-worker and I were discussing which gyms we belonged to, what we liked about them, and what we didn't like. I began bitching about how HR told me that our company had a corporate discount agreement with my gym, but when I signed with them, Sales Rep Round 1 acted as though he had never heard of such a thing. This was when my co-worker told me that she had been working out at my very same gym under the corporate discount for almost a year. Oh, hell no.

That bastard.

It took 24 hours for me to calm my crazy ass down. I walked into the gym after work and asked to speak with someone from the sales department. After explaining the situation in full-length detail (including the part about how I was utterly offended someone could lie to my face so easily), Sales Rep Round 2 explained that he was sorry this ever happened and offered to cancel my current membership and simultaneously sign me and Rigatoni up for new memberships under the corporate discount. Huh? This may have made sense to anyone else that hadn't WORKED AT A GYM FOR TWO YEARS like I did. I mentioned that in my lengthy experience, there was zero need to cancel our memberships, rather, they needed to be transferred to the new pricing.
Sales Rep Round 2 "promised" to get the new pricing in order before the next billing cycle was applied to my credit card. Since I was already in a big pile of shit without a shovel handy regarding this situation, I figured that requesting a full refund of the overcharges during the nine months prior was the very least they could do for me. Although Sales Rep Round 2 exthusiastically agreed a refund was absolutely in order, he mentioned it would need to go through the Club Manager and then through Corporate before anything could be finalized. From here forth, we will call the Club Manager by her real name: Candy Cane. As was expected, once the billing went through for the next cycle, there was no adjustment on my credit card. Magically, Sales Rep Round 2 was nowhere to be found during the next two weeks, thus my having to now communicate with Candy Cane.          

Candy Cane was a gem: a doe-eyed blondie that appeared to listen well, yet she only reponded with "uh-huhs", head-nods, and excessive blinking. Helpful. My monologue to Candy Cane sounded like this:

"Here is the deal: We have been members of this gym for 9 months. When I signed up, a member of the sales staff lied to me about the corporate discount being 'unavailable' to me for a reason that he clearly made up on the spot. The last sales rep I spoke to *promised* to handle this and still, it was handled properly and I'm started to get pissed. I don't *want* to quit this gym. I want to stay, but I won't be staying if I'm going to continue to be lied to. I have zero problem quitting on principle. I need *you* to process this *today* and call me on my *cell* *phone*, which you have on file, to let me know if you need any other forms of identification, credit card numbers, etc so this can happen immediately."

After all the bullshit the gym had put me though, I decided that my conversation with Candy Cane would not be resolving the issue. I opened up my email to compose the classiest/bitchiest, email of my life addressed to all four corporate head honchos. To the mattresses I went. Exactly thirteen minutes after I pressed send on the email that described my experiences during the last thirty days, I received an email from one of the corporate guys asking me to please call him right away on his personal cell phone to discuss the matter.

Yes, this conversation was happening.

To speak with an intelligent person within customer service is a rare occurence. Head Honcho listened to every word of my monologue - it was an extrememly enjoyable conversation. At the very end, he assured me that the corporate discount would be applied to our account from now on.  He then offered to "do a little math" for me to compute how much I deserved in refunds from the overcharges. Our math matched and came to approximately $190. Head Honcho - being the awesome dude he was - offered to refund the money or to give Rigatoni and I three free months at the gym. I graciously thanked him for the time he spent out of his day righting the wrongs that were caused by other staff members and also for offering us the free three months. Then I explained that because I had been drowning in customer service/intelligence issues for the last month, Rigatoni and I would need six free months to make this negotiation worth while.

Head Honcho replied with, "Sounds good to me".

JD = 1; Gym = 0