Looking to make going to the gym part of your New Year’s resolution? Everyone knows starting that membership is a whole lot easier than cancelling it. But New Jersey lawmakers are looking to change that. NBC New York’s Adam Harding reports.
As the new year approaches, many have getting to the gym and back in shape as a New Year's resolution. And while getting into that new gym membership may be easy, getting out of it can prove difficult — if not near-impossible.
New Jersey is looking to change that.
State lawmakers passed a bill that would make gyms and health clubs provide "an online option for cancellation of automatic renewal" of services. That cancel button would need to be made "easily accessible in a visible and prominent location."
"It’s not the right thing. If you need to leave you should be able to leave," said Dave Hancock, the general manager of the gym Iron Culture. "It should be as easy as possible. If you want to leave, you should be able to leave just fine."
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State Sen. Gordon Johnson, one of the sponsors of the bill, said it should just as easy to leave a gym as it is to join one.
"If you make a have a gym membership that you made online you should be able to cancel it online," said Johnson.
But not everyone is sold.
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"Our main concerns are not treating the industry like an online subscription service — as you know, it’s a brick and mortar business," said Mike Goscinski, a health and fitness industry worker who testified before the committee that took on the bill. "We shared our concerns with the FTC as well as the IRS about the ways the laws are written to make sure they don’t set the industry for failure and create a statute that’s impossible to comply with."
The bill now heads to Gov. Phil Murphy's desk. The governor did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC New York.
