Just go ahead and...

Declines went through the roof with the Target issue and it has not slowed even with the introduction of chips. It's as bad as ever. Rather than helping us with our financial security regarding this form of payment, they find other ways to spend their time. This credit card thing should have been addressed before Member Engager, and before Prospect Engager, and before a lot of other money makers to corporate. Because all of these "oh just cancel my membership" people add up to thousands and thousands of $$$S. There should have been action even more than a year ago.

I see a lot of advertising for 9Round on the internet. This is their focus now. For 9Round, it's an $85K approximate start up cost, among the fastest growing. Now do you see that we are not a priority? I mean, how many leads do you get from the internet compared to two or four years ago? Instead of changing things, they keep the same old things. 30 day trial, Nascar, country music singer. These efforts have really done nothing to bring in good quality leads. But corporate won't listen to this. Hell prospect engager should now show them how few leads we get! And even the portal was an indicator (although not an indicator for follow up). I'm sure they see all the Snap Fitness locations closing and not reopening. 9Round is the backup plan. Even those who buy into SF cheaply from a desperate franchisee looking for an escape are struggling and doing extremely crazy things with Groupons, etc.

Taking care of even the necessities for SF franchisees is met with this attitude that we are making waves, and disgruntled, and disengaged. And we are just not following the game plan, or whatever. Well I was following and it made me broke.

And then being on this forum, we are certainly not in their favor because we speak out. Rather than taking a negative view of us, corporate should understand that there are a lot of voices out there with great concern for the future of this franchise because of the money we have spent on this. Oh wait, they'll just replace us when we sell for 5% of what we put into it. No need to listen.

re: 9 Round, I noticed that last year they were advertising during sports games (like, during games for a major professional sports team in our state). Multiple ads per game. I inquired with corporate about how those ads were being paid for...there is no way I believe the few 9 Round franchisees in our area were paying for all of those 100% out of pocket. Of course, I never got an actual answer.

FirecrackerGirl: We have been asking for routing and account #'s and cc recently. I was a little afraid to ask for JUST routing and acct #'s and switching anyone we could over because; our 2014 Migration experience with Fitware and checking/savings accounts started out pretty rough. So your Declines have went down to 1/3 of what they were?? That is great news... How long have you been doing this?

Been since June, so about 4 months. Just really started getting aggressive about it in past 2, and converted a lot of members over that I was originally going to "grandfather in". In addition to this, if new sign up has a DC or CC expiring within next 6 months, i tell them I will switch them to the bank draft once card expires. Make sure you get info for both.
So far people say it is "a lot simpler " on BD.

Make sure you sympathesize with them and tell little stories aboutwhat a pain chip cards are and having to switch all your payables with the new card.... *always remember this is to make it EASIER on the customer* Seems to work


Also, we had a unique situation here. Two of our local banks (And this is a town with population less than 10k, so its huge) Switched hands and got new cards. So most of our BS decines occured this summer. So our numbers are a bit inflated due to that mess.

But you get the idea, itll help tremdendously.

I have $430 in delinquents.

This coming from a club that used to be consistently in the $1000-1500 range.

Keep pushing the bank guys...