37 degrees gym

I too have just cancelled my mebership with 37 degrees. Unbelieveable that in these economic times they would insist on a £2/month increase. Both my wife and I are members and they are lucky to not be losing both of us. On principle I have cancelled and will make other arrangements as I do not find the gym to be worth the rates and simply cannot understand how they think it is a sensible idea to be losing £762 on my membership next year (less the month I have to pay extra given their already mentioned underhanded notice of increase in mid-December of the increase in price), not to mention the other members they are losing in this process.

Good riddance.

PS I would be interested to see what the backers of the business had to say if they saw the effect this policy, and lack of flexibility thereon, will have on their cashflow next year.

As a former member of staff at 37 Degrees I will make clear some points I have read over the past couple of years.
My first point is that when you sign up for membership there is a lot of small print on the back of the form. Read this carefully is my advice. It does state about cancellation of membership among other things.
The facilities are all maintained, but not as well as they should be. This is because it is difficult to get the directors to agree to spending money on essential planned maintenance and repairs. I always found the maintenance guy wasn't given a computer to work on to organise quotes and search for contractors.
I really always felt sorry for duty managers who had to deal with complaints - it's not their fault the gym is run the way it is by the managers. Most of the time they would deal with complaints without knowing what they were supposed to say to the members because nobody told them.
For the money you pay to be a member the gym is not worth it. They will lose a lot of members over their price increase. Increases happened while i was there but we were never really told about them.
The managers and directors tell their staff that member retention is most important - this is not true at all. Membership sales are all important. I always heard the managers saying that more sales were needed.
I understand they have spent some money on refurbishments recently and I would be interested to hear what others have to say about that. Any good or just a waste of money and a way of upping membership fees more?

Well Let me tell you about great ol' 37 degrees gym!

Im speaking of the one in the Olympia location.

Firstly the worst possible management in the world! Trust me I worked there so I had hands on experience of all the so called great loving managers and the training in place!Also a high turn over in staff. New people all the time. They are over rated, could talk the talk but couldnt walk the walk. Too much responsibility, not enough pay. They also were paying staff that did the same job different levels of bad pay. For example if you were foreign then u had a very low level of pay! quite demeaning but what do u expect of a gym thats barely paying its own bills. There was also no level of professionalism whatsoever.
Managers slept with managers, indulged in all the gossip. Back biting cheating people to be quite frank. Its horrible to say so but unfortunately it seems the only way to describe their incompetence.

37 is sinking in debt, the finance manager was the biggest joke of all as he would always avoid calls in regards to outstanding bills etc. there are sport aparatus that is being used by members that hasnt even been paid for yet!

To speak of the gym and its facilities, great nice etc but not worth being conned out of your money. Everyone is being charged different rates to use the gym depending on what you can afford and trust me you will be ripped off by the sales team who like to be addressed as the caring membership team! watch out!

You will learn from experience as I surely did!

Any body else's experience just as bad as mine?

I have been a member of 37 for nearly 2 years now... myself & a friend joined, the gym was good.. everything worked, had a nice atmosphere, was clean...

but since summer, the place has really good down hill.. hence the reason we both have cancelled our membership.

Some of the staff are okay.. a few http://www.london-se1.co.uk/email.htmlhad issues...i guess thats with all gyms.. good with the bad..

the new changes, it made it worst, i thought they'd bring in some new equipment so waited until i cancelled our membership, but they just moved around some machines, got some new dumb bells and thats it...

there are far better and cheaper gyms locally...

bye bye 37

I've had complaints about the gym myself but I don't think its true to say that they haven't brought in new machines - there is now a nautilaus walking uphill machine (not sure of proper name)and there are also powerplates. They've also changed all the spin bikes which is an improvement.

true blue- yes it does seem like the recent makeover of thirtysevendegrees has been a scam to increase membership fees. Despite new equipment and other improvements made to the gym, other changes (or lackthereof) have been made which do not justify the recent price hike.
For instance, the new towel system is a joke- where are the advantages there? I have been a member for over 6 months, and i see this as a step backward for such a club, rather than a foot forward.
This price increase could not be occurring at a worse time..and to further shove our noses in it, I was shocked to learn that a fellow member was paying almost one third of what i was paying for the facilities through a private membership organised through a staff member. surely such memberships are unethical, not to mention unfair for other members!
thirtyseven is indeed slipping in its game- the maintenance of the club is only one of its issues!

I've been a member of Topnotch for 2 years or so and quite fancy a change. A friend and I went to look round 37 degrees yesterday. It seemed OK, very clean and all that but it didn't blow my mind. I'd heard that people paid a lot to go here, but the sales manager's opening offer didn't seem that ridiculous. I'm surprised that some users paying exorbitant fees didn't negotiate: it's the first rule of joining a gym! If 37 degress can't beat or match my current price, I won't even consider them.

I have been offered the chance to try out the facilities, which I'll do today, but perhaps it's a case of better the devil you know for me. Topnotch may be grotty (and it really is getting worse) but thus far I've had no major problems and this thread is quite off-putting. I'm going to look at Soho too, although it has the disadvantage of not being on my way to work.

One thing that concerns me is the raising of fees: are people saying that they did this mid-contract?

there are plenty of gyms around SE1, we are lucky to have the choice... we are all different and look for different things, so if one gym does not suit me, it does not mean it will not suit someone else..

best thing to do is take a trail and see if you like it.. i moved from 37 to soho... even thou soho is good.. there are things which 37 does better.... its down to what you need & require...

and it cost nothing to go for a trail at any of the gyms....

I've been a member of Cannons for years, just over London Bridge. Just been bought bhy Nuffield Health. I've always found it to be clean, and well maintained.

Also, it's virtually empty over the weekend when the city boys/girls are off home.

The reason there are different prices for being a member is that there are large companies nearby that pay a subsidy for their staff to be gym members.
As somebody has already said its best to take a trial and see what you think. The only thing is they will be very good to you during the trial and it will only be when you sign up that they will lower their level of service.
Obviously that isn't true of cleanliness or of the facilities, but it is true of the sales and reception staff who basically ignore you when you go in (they are either chatting or sending messages on msn).
I hear they've got new night time cleaners. It would be interesting to hear if the standard has improved because it used to be very bad. The maintenance guy and some of the guys in the gym always said the pool steam room and sauna were really dirty in the mornings. I felt sorry for the cleaner guy in the mens changing room because he was always having to do extra work every day to try to make the place cleaner.