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Post by ike on Oct 11, 2016 18:29:38 GMT
Does anyone do an annual fee at their clubs? Please let me know if you do and how it looks. Some of these bigger clubs makes a lot of money alone off the annual fee. I am interested in this idea and think it could work.
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Post by supercool on Oct 11, 2016 19:03:21 GMT
I know some Snaps in our state have started doing this. Usually charged in January or February. I think I've heard ranges of anywhere from $25-50/mo. Not sure I'm comfortable charging it to existing members if it's not in their membership agreement.
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Post by snaplongtimer on Oct 11, 2016 19:43:10 GMT
I would have to listen to the Snaps that are doing this. I don't think I would start that after 9 years in business. It's a BS hidden charge just like Fit19's lock in fee and planet's yearly equipment fee. CC's change out all the time and if so....then what. Have fun chasing it on the phone. They'll catch on and notice prepaid people aren't paying it. I think many of my members would get upset. The seniors would probably throw their teeth at me in anger....
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Post by FirecrackerGirl on Oct 12, 2016 22:57:47 GMT
I have it in my agreement but not sure how I feel about it. People hate hidden charges. However if you can show you are re-investing in your biz, and they see concrete return , such as a new piece of equip, etc, they may be more "ok" with it. Many an Anytime is doing it and consider it their "13th Draft"
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Post by ike on Oct 12, 2016 23:02:37 GMT
How much do you take out and when? and the people that are already a member do you grandfather them in and not do an annual fee with them?
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Post by fishstyxx on Oct 13, 2016 23:15:20 GMT
Here's my take, and I just came up with this after reading your email. I haven't initiated this yet, but I will. Almost every club around us has an annual fee. They range from $25 to $75. (One club used to call it an equipment upgrade fee. However, I started telling prospects I knew would be evaluating them to ask them what equipment they had recently upgraded or installed, knowing damn well they haven't put anything new in there since the 80's). So ask yourself how you differentiate yourself? What I'm going to be advertising now is NO ANNUAL FEES!!!. Big bold letters. Make this one of the first things they ask your competitors. Make it a deal breaker. Make it one of the first things you mention. Credit cards all used to charge an annual fee. Today they're rare.
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Post by determined1 on Nov 1, 2016 14:56:26 GMT
So the question was asked about doing an annual fee. The resounding sentiment is NO!!! We don't think it's a good idea. So what is snap hq doing now? Rolling out the ability to charge an annual fee. To make matters worse, this is so difficult to figure out they're going to charge us an additional $30 fee, bringing the cost of SHITware up to a ridiculous $185/month. This is higher than ANY other fitness billing/member management system and it's still riddled with problems and is an overall piece of SHIT.
We took fishstyxx's advice and started advertising NO ANNUAL FEE. I now have my staff pushing that as a differentiator for us and other clubs. As usual snap is a day late and a dollar short (make that a day late and $150 too expensive) I've never seen an organization run by such morons who have absolutely no idea what they're doing and provide less than adequate services at a premium price.
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Post by Amy on Nov 1, 2016 19:06:17 GMT
Why would corporate need to spend any time/resources on this topic. If a club wants to charge it, they charge it. Would like credit cards auto updated though. You know, the most desired technological improvement wanted by the zee's that is scheduled to be implemented last. WTF!!!
What are the chances they even make that deadline. It's been well over a year since this concept was brought to their attention.
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Post by determined1 on Nov 2, 2016 12:38:46 GMT
They've lied about it only being available for Visa. They've lied about it being unsupported by the processor. They've lied about it being difficult to implement. We're getting pounded month after month with declines due to updated cards and they're collecting a fee on top of the pain we're experiencing.
I HOPE EVERY POTENTIAL FRANCHISEE OF SNAP and 9ROUND READS THIS AND UNDERSTANDS EXACTLY WHAT TYPE OF SCUM BAGS COMPRISE LIFT BRANDS!!!
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Post by cheryl on Nov 2, 2016 16:11:46 GMT
Here's what they're planning, and my thoughts on each
Newly Improved Member Dashboard - Who cares. The one from the company they bought the software from, igofigure, I believe, was better and they made it crap. Now they want money to make it tolerable?
Projected release: November 2016
Electronic Agreements - Already have it. Costs us $0 per month.
Projected release: Q4 2016
Membership Billing – Introduction of Anniversary Billing - Don't need it and we're not going to use it.
Projected release: Q4 2016
Introduction of Annual Membership Maintenance Fee - Again, don't need it, not going to use it.
Projected release: Q4 2016
Upgraded Club Performance Dashboard - See comment above
Projected release: Q4 2016
Guest Waiver and Membership Sign-Up Application - We have these already and they're paperless at a cost of $0 per month.
Projected release: Q4 2016
Member Mobile App - If we sign someone up outside of the club we use our laptop. Prior to fitware we had other ways of doing this.
Projected release: Q1 2017
Account Updater - Hopefully this is a credit card updater. A credit card updater is the only thing listed we have a need for.
Projected release: Q1 2017
Decline Recovery Updates - FUCK this program!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The only thing it does is steal money out of our pocket on a member we've received $0 from that month. We're the ones who collect the delinquent dues and update the members' billing. This program can't even update the members' billing info and guess what they're delinquent the next month. By that point they're sick of how awful our software is and cancel. FUCK this whole fucking program and snap go fuck yourselves!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Projected release: Q1 2017
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Post by Dale on Nov 2, 2016 16:40:55 GMT
How about the newest "technology" fee for ALL of the new technology updates....oops...wait..one of the technology updates (automatically re-running declined accounts) will be an opt in program...hmmm do I smell a fee for this technology tid bit? Why do they implement a technology fee for the new technology and then make us pay ANOTHER FEE for new technology?
Oh...and Cheryl couldn't agree with you more about the decline thief fee...they are literally stealing from us on this one.
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nothing else to lose
Guest
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Post by nothing else to lose on Nov 2, 2016 17:03:53 GMT
I'm ready to say screw it and shut my doors down. We really don't own these clubs we don't have a say so in anything. I feel like I still work for someone else.
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Post by cheryl on Nov 2, 2016 17:14:54 GMT
NETL,
Not sure where you used to work, but everywhere I've worked I've been treated with a lot more respect. Even when I was 16 and working at McDonald's. If snap ran McDonald's they'd charge the employees a time card fee. Oh, good news we're moving to virtual time cards. Great no more time cards. Oh, sorry, forgot to mention that due to all the work involved with virtual time cards we're going to have to steal, er, ah I mean deduct $1 an hour from your pay rather than the $.75 an hour. Welcome to lift brands version of McDonalds.
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Post by determined1 on Nov 29, 2016 22:17:31 GMT
Over the last couple of months we've been pushing NO ANNUAL FEES - EVER and we've trained prospects to ask the other clubs if they have an annual fee. If so, would that club be willing to waive it? We've seen all of these prospects come back and sign up. Not a single club will waive that fee.
A couple other interesting things in snap's statement.
1. 20% of the top clubs have 820 memberships (funny, I thought I remembered reading recently that the top 5% of clubs had 600 members). That's a pretty quick ramp up.
2. There's a saying that if you want less of something tax it. For all intents and purposes the annual fee is a tax and members will bail before being hit with the tax. What's not taken into account is the loss of members from this. Imagine a business person who decides that they're going to increase revenue by raising their price X dollars, and assuming sales will remain constant.
3. You can invest the money into adding lock rooms and showers. Funny, those were absolute no-no's before, as were group x classes. Are they also moving away from their $20 Costco table? (sold to you for $250)
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Post by Dale on Nov 29, 2016 23:33:07 GMT
This is a mandatory program!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Holy shit.....lawyer up!
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