Living Off the Fat of the Land
Reducing establishments can make you look better, but their fine print may make you feel worse.
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"Not so," said my attorney, when I asked him about the legality of signing a contract in this manner. "Your name in any form is your name, and you can be held legally accountable for any such 'agreement' that you sign." I decided I had better check more carefully into the legal ins and outs of health spa membership.
Caveat emptor should be the watch-word of anyone who is shopping for effective results at a health spa for the least amount of money. Contracts are not in sight when the customer first enters a spa, and it is difficult for a person sitting in a spa manager's office ready to sign on the dotted line to read and comprehend all the small print, where (naturally) the catch usually is.
As a consumer, you have little recourse to the law if you fail to live up to the terms of a contract signed with a health spa. However, should you default on your payments, the spa has plenty of recourse. Once you have signed a contract, you are responsible for the payments—whether to the spa itself or to another agency holding your contract. In many cases of long-term contracts, the spa sells the contract to a finance company or to a bank at a discount. Should you decide that you no longer wish to continue working out at the spa, you are still responsible for the full amount of the payment.
If you are signing a contract with a health spa, you may find a notice to this effect in the fine print. Others will call your attention to it. The contract for the prestigious Presidents-First Lady has the clause in a red box with the caption—READ CAREFULLY AND SIGN ONLY WHEN COMPETELY UNDERSTOOD. The clause reads, "I understand that I have signed an installment promissory note which may be financed by a bank or finance company at the option of 'PRESIDENTS-FIRST LADY CLUBS, INC.'
"All payments must be paid in full direct to the bank or finance company, and may not be suspended for any reason whatsoever, and no monies will be refunded. My failure to regularly attend the 'Club' and utilize its programs and facilities does not relieve me of my obligation, regardless of the circumstances, to pay the promissory installment note in full as outlined below. My membership is absolutely non-cancellable by me, not transferable and not refundable.
"No representations or statements except as herein written shall be binding upon Club."
Once you have joined, you receive a copy of the contract, and your signature is witnessed. You can be liable for all unpaid installments at an interest rate of 10 per cent per annum and for a delinquent charge of 5 per cent on each installment in default for a period of more than ten days.
Some spas have sued customers who defaulted on contracts, and until recently could sue them at the home base of the company. For instance, Trim & Swim has sued customers in its home territory of San Antonio, although the customer may have resided in and signed the contract in Austin. Recent legislation provides that henceforth, if a health spa and a customer come before the law, it will have to be in the city where the contract was signed.
WITH MY EYE ON MY pocketbook as well as my waistline, I again embarked on my search for a spa. The sign glares down at you from Burnet Road in Austin, and its message is appallingly clear—"Are You Sure You're Just PleasantIy Plump?" Our Fair Lady is conveniently located next to Lady Yaring's Fashions for the Full Figure. Inside Our Fair Lady, a sign reads: "What Lady Yaring's Can't Cover Up, Our Fair Lady Can Take Off."
"Pow" colors of lollipop lime and fuchsia provide decor theme at Our Fair Lady, and the reducing machines are plentiful. It's the same old washboard rollers and the dumbbells, but the names are changed to disguise the torture. My program at Our Fair Lady involved working out with dumbbells called "beauty bells," leg-ups on fuchsia plastic slantboards called "Bahama boards," a workout on a machine called "Hips Away," and a barrage of huff-and-puff exercises called "Tummy Toners."
My measurements were taken and my program supervised by Rhonda who, with her cohorts Janet and Terry, smiles cheerfully as she puts the ladies through the battery of machines and floor exercises. The girls stroll the floor in their black and fuchsia leotards and even have a kind word for the ladies' children, penned in the "Kiddie Korral." Rhonda told me my frame was "medium," although I was beginning to think that it was "huge."
Rhonda supervised my exercising and explained which exercises would whittle away which part of my body. We set up a series of goals for me, according to my measurements. Rhonda figured that I should lose 36 pounds and 3814 inches, which I could easily do if I attended Our Fair Lady at least three times a week for a year. She also explained that I would not. need to diet, but that Our Fair Lady would help me plan a series of meals to lose weight and a series to maintain my weight. She suggested that perhaps merely eliminating one or two items from my daily diet would help me keep my weight down.
After my exercise session, I was more than ready for the "wet area"—the whirlpool and steam room. Soapy showers are in order before entering the "wet area," and the whirlpool is hot and bubbly after the exercises. I checked my egg timer carefully to be sure that I stayed no longer than the specified three minutes in either steam or whirlpool. While resting my weary body in the whirlpool, I chatted with the one older woman who was in the "wet area." She told me that she had been coming to the spa regularly since she had an operation for a slipped disc. I asked if it had helped her and she said, "Oh, yes." She had lost several pounds and a few inches. Her doctor had told her, "Keep up the good work!" We floated awhile and she confided, "You know, I have a woman at my home doing my housework for me while I come exercise at the spa."
After my "soak-along," Rhonda and I got down to money matters. Rhonda explained that women spent so much money on clothes and hair that surely a few dollars could be well spent on anew figure. I agreed, and she told me that Our Fair Lady could help me both lose weight and save money. The Executive Plan, in Rhonda's words, was like buying a house; the Regular Plan was like renting one. The analogy escaped me.
Our Fair Lady's Executive Plan cost a grand total of $450 for a period of 24 months. Fortunately for me, there were a few of their advertising specials remaining—but only a very few! I would have to act instantly to get in under the special, and I could save $IOO—making my Executive Plan cost $350. If I chose the Executive Plan, I could pay $175 down and pay out the total cost for 24 months at $18.08.
Under the "Rent-a-Body" Regular Plan, the total cost would be $250. The advertising special allowed a discount of $50, making the complete cost of the 12-month course $200. Also, under the advertising special, Our Fair Lady would allow me four extra months, bringing the total to 16 months at $18.66 a month.
I thanked Rhonda and said I would let her know when I had made my decision. Rhonda was reluctant to let me leave without having signed me up and stressed that the advertising special would soon be ineffective. She said that it was imperative that I sign up immediately, although she failed to show me a contract. When I asked to see the contract, she said that would be taken care of later. That evening Rhonda called me at home to let me once again take advantage of the advertising special. It seemed only one membership was left. When I called Our Fair Lady a week later, I talked to another girl who told me that indeed the salon was running an advertising special. "Would I like an appointment for a trial treatment and a figure analysis?" she inquired.
I later talked to the manager of Our Fair Lady, who explained that the spa has only a regular course which lasts one year. The salon usually runs a two-week special during the summer months. Summer is a slack time in spa circles, and most people come back from vacation ready to begin reducing and firming up again. The manager explained that I had just missed the two-week special, and he had no authority to extend it. Too bad! But summer comes around once a year!
"TRIM & SWIM! DO YOU LIKE the shape you're in?" was the cheery telephone greeting at Central Texas' oldest reducing salon. Established in Austin in 1964, Trim & Swim prides itself on having popularized health club services throughout Central Texas. When I called to inquire about the hours and days that women could visit the club (Trim & Swim alternates days for women and men), one of the women instructors turned me over to Bob to set up a trial appointment.
Trim & Swim restricts its sales department to men, and the women instructors are allowed only to show the women through the salon and to conduct the women's exercise classes. Bob promptly turned me over to Terri, who was handling about 50 women in an exercise class, a combination of yoga technique and calisthenics. Several of these classes are held throughout the day, and most of the ladies in the gym were participating.
Trim & Swim attracts a large clientele, and on the morning that I attended, the gym was crowded and there were only three empty spaces in the parking lot. Every type of motor vehicle from an Eldorado to a pickup truck had brought the ladies for their morning of thumping and bumping around on the floor. Nothing is new and interesting in the exercise line at Trim & Swim—it's the same old dumbbells, back reducing machine, leg lifts on the slant board, and a workout on the "Thighs Away," a torture instrument billed as "Hips Away" by other salons.
The decor at Trim & Swim is not so exotic as at the newer health spas. The decorative motif is patriotic red, white, and blue; and the wet area (swimming pool, wet steam room, authentic Finnish sauna, and showers) is obviously much in need of paint. The entire place is run down. The Grecian statutes in the niches around the swimming pool were chipped, and the windows in the solarium where the customers sun were dirty and streaked.
You check your belongings in lockers and change in curtained areas. The changing rooms were dirty and badly in need of paint. Warning signs state that no one is to stay in the steam room or the mineral spa for longer than three minutes. (Terri had warned me not to stay over five.) Another sign stated that no one should enter the swimming pool unaccompanied.
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