I just got fired from National Fitness today (which is probably one of the happiest days of my life) and have personally seen how it works. In regards to the collection company out of Miami, it's actually not National Fitness, it's E&R Collections, although I believe they've just recently changed their name to Genysis or something like that. They violate the fdcpa on a regular basis. National Fitness will work with you on payments, and does not require you to pay 4 months in advance, however, it is not an ethical company.
The basis of National Fitness is that it's '3rd party billing company' that just has to execute the terms of the contract. There are all these stupid clauses to cancel, and National Fitness is obligated by the gym to basically be the bad guy and tell these people that they have to jump through all these hoops to make sure you cross ever t and dot every i. I would suggest to anyone wanting to cancel their membership to just do every little thing that anyone tells them to do, and follow up, otherwise they're just going to get you even more mad at the situation. Usually the faxes don't work. The fax machines there suck. You should use the website -nationalfitness. com/members.cgi to submit anything you want. Find someone to scan into the computer anything you want sent. Then, once you send it, follow up and make sure they got it. Then, call back in a couple of days to follow up and make sure that their supervisor deemed it as valid, because about 65% of the time they're going to tell you it's invalid because of some stupid reason.
Honestly, this has been my worst job ever, and it made me feel like crap screwing over so many people. It's was also without valid cause that they terminated my employment there. I could take legal action, but honestly, I'm just glad I don't have to work there anymore. I hope this will help anyone that's having to deal with this evil company.