California attorney here. Your fact pattern, a stamped cancellation form plus continued charges, is one of the cleaner consumer-protection cases the gym industry generates. Three California statutes stack in your favor, and your credit-card dispute is doing the right work in parallel. Here's how I'd structure the next move.
1. Three California laws give you separate, overlapping claims.
- Health Studio Services Contract Law (Cal. Civ. Code §§1812.80 et seq., specifically §1812.85): once the buyer cancels, "all moneys paid pursuant to a contract for health studio services shall be refunded within 10 days." Three months of post-cancellation charges with no refund is a direct violation.
- Automatic Renewal Law (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §17602): the gym must provide a "cost-effective, timely, and easy-to-use mechanism for cancellation." Your in-person, stamped cancellation form is exactly the mechanism the statute contemplates. Continuing to bill after that cancellation is what ARL was written to prevent.
- Unfair Competition Law (Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code §17200): both of the above qualify as "unlawful" predicates, and a "we'll look into it" stall after six calls and two emails is the textbook "unfair" practice that supports restitution and injunctive relief.
2. Your credit-card chargebacks are doing the right work in parallel.
If your card issuer ruled against LA Fitness for any month, that is admissible to show LA Fitness lacked authorization. If LA Fitness "won" the dispute by sending the original membership agreement without addressing the stamped cancellation form, that is itself a documented misrepresentation to the card network and worth attaching to a demand letter. Either way, ask the card issuer in writing for the full dispute correspondence: you are entitled to it.
3. Honest downside.
- Some LA Fitness contracts require 30 days written notice via certified mail to a specific address in addition to an in-person form. If the contract you signed had that language, the stamped form alone may not be a complete cancellation under the contract, even though §1812.85 and §17602 still protect you. Pull your original contract and check the cancellation paragraph.
- For a $270 disputed amount, the economics of a $575 demand letter only make sense if (a) you have a strong likelihood of fee-shifting recovery, (b) the gym continues to bill (each month adds), or (c) you intend to escalate to small claims and want a clean record. CA small claims is capped at $12,500, and most of these cases settle once the gym sees a real attorney letterhead with statute citations.
4. Where a demand letter fits.
A certified demand letter on attorney letterhead, citing all three statutes, attaching your stamped cancellation form, demanding a full refund and immediate cancellation of any future billing, with a 14-day deadline, typically resolves these within 30 days because the corporate office routes them to legal rather than to the cancellation-line script. If they ignore it, you have a litigation-ready record for small claims plus a UCL public-enforcement complaint to the California Attorney General and Department of Consumer Affairs.
I draft these as a flat $575 fixed fee, USPS certified plus email, with a copy to you. Scope is on my service page: Demand letter, California attorney, $575 flat. Bring the original membership contract, the stamped cancellation form, every charge and refund statement, the credit-card dispute correspondence, and a log of your six calls and two emails with dates.
Sergei Tokmakov, Esq. | California Bar No. 279869 | General legal information only. No attorney-client relationship is created by this post.