Bad experience at Fitness First Singapore for membership transfer

Recently, as I have been busy, I wanted to transfer my membership to someone else. Naturally, I called up Fitness First to check if I can transfer the membership and they told me that as long as they are willing to pay the transfer fee of 98 bucks and the remaining months of the membership, I am able to do the transfer.

It sounds alright, correct?

Then, when I attempted to transfer the membership, problems started to arise.

Initially, the staff at Market Street Fitness First told me that yes, I can do the transfer(and that is after calling them multiple times as none of the staff can actually confirm it. They just told me to wait for their return calls which never ever happens.) Then after that, when I called for a last time to confirm when I wanted to make my way down, they suddenly told me that because I am on a term membership, they are unable to let me transfer my membership. (And I had already made arrangements with the person that will be taking over my membership)

That was despite me calling up Fitness First Westgate to confirm that I can transfer my membership with the rate that I am paying to someone else. And I did not just called once. I called a few times to each outlet as they told me that they need to check if I can actually transfer the membership. I gave my membership number countless times and they told me that they made a mistake when I was preparing to go down later that afternoon on 10 May 2014.

Of course I was quite pissed at that point of time because I have arranged for the transfer of the membership and it was a very last minute rejection. Isn't lucky that I called to confirm that I can transfer? If not, I would have made a wasted trip down all the way to Fitness First Market Street.

The staff at Market Street (Tisa and one of the floor manager) I think, told me that they would call me back on 15 May 2014 as they need to check with their head office if they can arrange for my membership transfer, and today is already 18 May 2014 but they did not even bother to make a call back to me to inform me of the arrangements that they have made for me. I am very displeased with their service. What horrendous service! It is very irresponsible of them to forget about this issue and pretend that it has never happened. It is not as if I have not given them ample time to check with their head office (or so they claim), and it has been more than a week since this incident.

All my previous good experiences has been slurred by this service. The classes are indeed good, but if I have to suffer through this kind of horrible service, I would never want to continue with the gym membership. Be sure that I will never recommend this gym to any of my friends again.

Dear fellow gymmers, please be careful when you are making a contract with Fitness First as they are just hard up for membership sales. They are willing to promise you anything in order to get your money but their after sales services are really sucky when you try to transfer your membership to someone else.

Updated [20/5/2014]: The club manager of Market Street called me up to apologise for the wrong information given. However, the issue is still unresolved as they insisted that the person that I am transferring to must be someone from my own company(if not, they have to pay the balance), in addition to giving them evidence of the reason why I need to transfer the membership. I am slightly pacified by the apology but it still does not solve the problem as the management is inflexible about the arrangements. For now, I guess I have to keep the membership. The other option is to freeze it (but that is dumb as I have to pay a freezing fee every month)