8 Tennessee Gym Contracts That Keep Charging Long After Members Quit

Think a canceled Tennessee gym membership stops billing the moment a member says so?

It doesn’t always, and a Knoxville Gold’s Gym contract spells out why: The final 30 days of dues come due the moment a member files to cancel, not the day they leave.

This isn’t only a Tennessee problem.

Federal regulators say one national gym chain ran a version of the same playbook at more than 600 locations coast to coast.

These are the Tennessee gym contracts that may keep charging long after members quit.

Note: This is general information, not legal advice. Health club contract terms, fees, and cancellation requirements are subject to change, so confirm the current rules with your gym or the Tennessee Division of Consumer Affairs, part of the Attorney General’s office.

1. Automatic Month-to-Month Rollover

A Tennessee gym contract almost never simply ends when the initial term does.

State law lets clubs write in a continuing provision that rolls the membership onto a month-to-month basis the moment the original term runs out, and Gold’s Gym’s own agreement for its Tennessee locations uses exactly that language, stating the contract “will renew automatically on a month to month basis at the end of the Initial Term.”

No new signature required.

One Tennessee Gold’s Gym member found out what that rollover costs after calling the club directly to cancel.

Gold’s Gym’s own written response to the member’s Better Business Bureau complaint said the call didn’t count: “there are no ‘call in’ cancellations as a record of such cannot be kept on file.”

No call, no record.

That member wasn’t alone: The operator behind Gold’s Gym’s Tennessee locations has drawn 45 complaints with the Better Business Bureau in the last three years, many of them tied to billing.

Nothing stops the rollover until a member’s notice arrives in the exact form the agreement demands.

2. Registered-Mail-Only Cancellation Rule

Tennessee’s Health Club Act spells out exactly one way to stop that ongoing membership: Thirty days’ written notice sent by registered mail, under Tennessee Code Annotated 47-18-305.

A phone call doesn’t count.

Neither does an email, a note left with the front-desk staff, or canceling through an app. The law names one mailing method, and nothing else satisfies it.

That single word, registered, is where many canceled memberships go wrong.

3. Gold’s Gym’s Final-30-Days-of-Dues Clause

Gold’s Gym’s Tennessee membership agreement keeps one more payment on the books, even after a member files to cancel.

The contract states plainly that a member’s “final 30 days of Dues shall be due upon cancellation,” so submitting the termination form triggers one more full payment, not zero.

One more draft.

A member who assumes canceling stops the very next charge is wrong by an entire billing cycle, and Gold’s Gym’s own paperwork says so in writing.

4. Anytime Fitness’s Ignored Cancellation Requests

Six months of phone calls and emails weren’t enough to make Anytime Fitness stop billing a Franklin, Tennessee member.

The member asked every time for the account to be closed, according to a complaint filed with the Better Business Bureau.

One staff member denied ever receiving the requests and even claimed a payment hadn’t gone through when it had, the complaint says.

Denied, then billed again.

Six months of asking, per the complaint, still hadn’t stopped the forty-four-dollar charge.

5. Gold’s Gym’s Billing After a Filed Cancellation

A confirmed cancellation date didn’t stop Gold’s Gym from charging a Tennessee member’s card the following month, either.

The member filed the required 30-day notice on a training agreement in August 2025 and was told September would be the final payment.

October brought another charge anyway.

A mistake, Gold’s Gym admitted, in its written response to the member’s Better Business Bureau complaint.

The charge was eventually refunded, but only after the member filed a formal complaint over a bill that was supposed to have already stopped.

6. Planet Fitness’s Home-Club-Only Cancellation Address

Planet Fitness doesn’t treat every Tennessee cancellation letter as a valid one.

According to the chain’s own customer service policy, a certified cancellation letter has to go to the exact home club where the membership started, not to Planet Fitness’s corporate offices and not to a different location.

Wrong address, no cancellation.

A member who mails a letter to the wrong Planet Fitness club, or assumes headquarters can process it, sees the charges continue until a corrected letter reaches the right address.

7. Planet Fitness’s Billing Disconnect

Tennessee members describe a gap in how Planet Fitness handles a cancellation.

Complaints filed through Planet Fitness’s Better Business Bureau profile for its Murfreesboro-based Tennessee franchise operator, which runs more than 140 clubs across Tennessee and Maryland, describe members who froze accounts or wrote in to cancel, only to keep watching charges hit their cards for months afterward.

One member says a debt collector came after them for more than $267, over a year after they’d already canceled and disputed the charges.

Canceled on paper, billed anyway.

Whatever breaks down on Planet Fitness’s end, the charge doesn’t stop on its own. A member has to catch it, dispute it, and often keep disputing Planet Fitness.

8. LA Fitness’s In-Person-or-Mail-Only Policy

LA Fitness runs clubs in Memphis and other Tennessee cities, one small piece of a parent company that federal regulators say runs more than 600 locations nationwide and makes canceling deliberately hard at all of them.

A 2025 lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission against Fitness International, LA Fitness’s parent company, says the chain only accepts cancellation requests submitted in person or by mail.

Staff are trained to reject requests made by phone or email, according to the same complaint.

And when a member cuts off a card to force the charges to stop, the FTC says the company rebills them under new account numbers instead.

Emailing to quit accomplishes nothing.

A member who never finds their way back to the club, or to the right mailing address, keeps paying, according to the FTC’s complaint.

What Tennessee's Bond Law Protects

Tennessee's Health Club Act isn't only a trap for members; part of it works the other way.

The same law requires every health club to carry a bond, and if a gym ceases operating without offering members an alternate location within fifteen miles at no extra cost, no further payments are owed to anyone, including whoever bought the note tied to the contract.

Nothing more is owed.

Gym chains close locations often enough that the fine print spelling out what happens next is worth knowing before it happens, not after.

Sending a Cancellation That Sticks

A Tennessee gym cancellation only counts if it's sent the way the contract and the law require, not the way that feels reasonable.

Registered mail with a return receipt costs more than certified mail and takes an extra stop at the counter, but it's the version Tennessee Code Annotated 47-18-305 names, and a returned receipt proves exactly when the club received it.

Even the gyms get this wrong on their own paperwork.

Gold's Gym's own front-desk rules sheet for members who've moved out of the area tells them to cancel by certified mail, the exact method Tennessee's Health Club Act doesn't recognize for a health club agreement.

The gym's own instructions and the statute disagree.