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Members Say Uptown Fitness Gym Charged Them For Month When It Was Closed, Is Now Leaving Them In The Dark

CHICAGO (CBS) -- It's no surprise that some gyms are still closed, but members said one North Side gym is even ignoring their phone calls, messages, and emails.

All this comes while those members have questions about why they were charged in the month of April or how they can get their money back.

CBS 2's Tim McNicholas and the Morning Insiders did some heavy lifting to try to get answers.

"I guess we should take it off the key ring," said Olivia Mancuso.

Olivia and Fred Mancuso have not used their gym card since March, when Uptown Fitness shut down along with all the other non-essential businesses.

"We assumed our gym was going to be shut down," said Olivia Mancuso.

They did not assume they would still be trying to get answers about their refund options nearly four months later.

The Mancusos said they paid hundreds of dollars last summer for a long-term membership, so they had already paid for the past few months.

"They won't answer Facebook messages, they don't answer emails, they won't answer their phone," said Olivia Mancuso. "We understand businesses are going through rough times themselves, but when you don't even answer a single phone call or email, it's just really bad for business."

Making matters more confusing, they saw the business is listed for sale online.

We tracked down a cell number for a manager, who said the gym is not being sold and they are planning to reopen, but there is no set date.

She said when that happens, members who paid in advance will have months added to their membership from the time the gym was closed. As for the month-to-month members, the manager said as far as she knows, billing stopped April 1.

But Samantha Grund-Wickramasekera and two other members showed us bank transaction records showing charges in mid-April.

"I did see for my April bank statement that I was charged for that month," Grund-Wickramasekera said. "We haven't heard anything from the owners of the gym, when it's going to be open again, if the charge that I had in April is going to be credited to my future membership."

We sent the manager one of those transactions and she wouldn't go into specifics, but she did say the problems would be taken care of when the gym reopens.

Several other customers have taken to social media to complain, but some of them told CBS 2 they have not gotten answers either.

"I knew a lot of local businesses were going to struggle, so if you're going to charge me for the month, fine," Grund-Wickramasekera said. "I would have appreciated some communication that it was still, my account was still going to be charged."

Grund-Wickramasekera said she plans to return to the gym if they refund her for the month of April. As for the Mancusos?

"We've kind of come to terms that we're probably not going to get our money back," Olivia Mancuso said.

When we pressed the gym manager about the communications complaints, she said we would have to talk to someone else, but she could not say whom. We asked her to have the owner call us, but so far, no luck.

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