A mailed LA Fitness cancellation has to be postmarked at least five business days before your next billing date. Miss that by a day and you pay for one more month.
But LA Fitness also says, in its own membership FAQ, that if a late postmark causes that extra charge, “we will refund that additional billing.” We have read a lot of cancellation guides for this site and none of them carries that sentence, which is strange, because it is the single most useful thing on the page for somebody who has already missed the date.
There are three ways to cancel. One of them did not exist for years, and the Federal Trade Commission is currently in court over that.
Last checked: 18 September 2026. Every rule below links to its source. This is research, not legal advice.
Three ways to cancel, and the address that matters
The membership FAQ lists them in this order: “(1) by mailing written notice of cancellation to P.O. Box 54170, Irvine, CA 92619) (we recommend registered or certified mail and keeping a record for your files); (2) in person at a club (please see the front desk); or (3) via your online account.”
Note the words “we recommend” on the certified mail. LA Fitness is advising you, not requiring it, and that distinction has turned out to matter a great deal in the FTC case discussed further down this page.
- Online account. Log in and cancel there. Fastest route, and the one to try first
- In person. Go to a club and ask at the front desk
- By post. Write to P.O. Box 54170, Irvine, CA 92619
Whichever of the three routes you take, keep evidence. A postal receipt, a screenshot of the confirmation screen, the name of the person at the desk, the date. If a charge appears anyway, that record is the whole of your case, and LA Fitness’s own FAQ tells you to keep one.
What to put in a cancellation letter
LA Fitness does not publish a template, and the FAQ does not describe what a valid notice has to contain. Six things are worth including anyway:
- Your full name as it appears on the agreement
- Your membership or account number
- Your home club
- A plain sentence saying you are cancelling, effective immediately
- The date
- Your signature
Send it certified. The $5 or so it costs buys you a postmark date and a delivery record, and the postmark is the thing the whole deadline actually turns on rather than the date you wrote at the top of the letter.
Five business days before your billing date
This is the sentence that decides whether you pay again: “A mailed cancellation form postmarked at least 5 business days before your next billing date should result in no further billings.”
Business days, not calendar days. So a weekend inside that window does not count, and nor does a public holiday. If your bill lands on the 20th of the month, a letter posted on the 17th is already late by two days.
Work backwards from your own billing date and add a buffer. Seven calendar days clears five business days in every week of the year, which is the only version of this sum worth memorising. Post it a full week out.
If you miss it, LA Fitness says it will refund you
The FAQ continues: “If notice is postmarked within 5 business days, you may be billed once more. If this occurs, we will refund that additional billing.”
Read that twice, because it changes what you should do next. Most cancellation guides treat a missed deadline as a lost month and tell you to accept it and move on. LA Fitness’s own words say the extra charge comes back.
So if you posted late and got billed anyway, you are not asking for a favour. You are asking LA Fitness to do the thing it has published in writing, and it is worth quoting that sentence back exactly as it appears in the FAQ.
One thing the FAQ does not say is how long that refund takes to arrive. We could not find a published timeframe anywhere on the site.
Whether it costs anything depends on one thing
Almost every article on this subject says LA Fitness is month-to-month and you can leave whenever you like. The FAQ is more careful than that, and it splits into three outcomes depending on whether your membership has “an initial term of three months or more.”
| Your situation | What happens |
|---|---|
| No initial term, or you are past it | Cancel at any time |
| Inside an initial term, cancelling normally | “Your cancellation will be effective when the initial term ends” |
| Inside an initial term, leaving early | “A termination fee will apply” |
LA Fitness does not publish what that termination fee is. Not in the FAQ, not on the offers page, and not on any of the 14 club rate pages we read for our LA Fitness membership price breakdown. Several sites quote a figure. None of them says where it came from, so we are leaving the cell empty rather than filling it with somebody else’s guess.
Your own membership agreement has the number in it. Dig it out before you call.
You keep whatever you have already paid for
Small detail, easy to miss, and it sits in the same FAQ answer: “If you decide to cancel, you may still use the club for any pre-paid time.” Cancelling does not lock you out the same afternoon. You bought that time and it stays yours.
How to know it actually worked
LA Fitness does not promise a confirmation email, and the FAQ says nothing about what you should receive once a cancellation goes through. So the only reliable proof is the one you create yourself.
Three checks, in this order.
- Log into your account a day or two later and see whether the membership still shows as active
- Watch your bank or card statement across the next billing date, which is the only test that really counts
- If a charge lands, go back with your postmark or confirmation date before the following cycle comes round
Set a calendar reminder for the day after your billing date. It takes ten seconds and it is the difference between catching one wrong charge and catching three.
Freezing costs $10 a month, and it is often the wrong call
If the plan is to come back in the spring, freezing beats cancelling and then paying a fresh initiation fee to rejoin later. The price depends entirely on how LA Fitness bills you.
| How you pay | Freeze cost | How long |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly dues | $10 per month | Indefinite |
| Paid in full | $35 one-off fee | Up to 6 months |
| Bi-weekly dues | $5 per bi-weekly billing | Indefinite |
| Weekly dues | Not available | “May not suspend their memberships” |
| Kids’ Klub | Free | Indefinite |
The freeze link sits in the left menu of your LA Fitness online account, next to the billing information link.
Now do the sum, because the sum is where people go wrong. Freezing a $44.99 membership for three months costs $30 and saves $134.97, which is obviously worth it. Freezing a $19.99 membership you were never going to use again costs $10 a month for nothing at all.
Freeze only if you have a month in mind. Otherwise cancel.
The FTC sued LA Fitness over exactly this
On 20 August 2025 the Federal Trade Commission filed suit against Fitness International, LLC and Fitness & Sports Clubs, LLC in the US District Court for the Central District of California. Those companies run LA Fitness, Esporta Fitness, City Sports Club and Club Studio, and the FTC put the group at more than 600 locations and 3.7 million members paying between “$30 and $299 a month.”
The case was brought under Section 5 of the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act, usually shortened to ROSCA. The FTC wants two things. An injunction, and restitution to consumers.
What the complaint alleges
Five things. These are allegations in a live case rather than findings, and LA Fitness denies them, which the next section gets to.
- Cancellation forms had to be printed from a part of the website you could only reach after resetting your login
- Cancellation terms were not disclosed clearly enough before purchase
- Staff were trained to refuse cancellations made by phone or email
- Billing continued for some people after they had revoked the payment authorization
- An online cancellation route was introduced during the investigation, and the FTC says it was burdensome
There is a sixth point in the complaint that is worth more to you than the other five put together, and the next section is about it.
What LA Fitness says back
The company filed a motion to dismiss and argued the case at a hearing. Reporting from 30 April 2026 sets out its position: that online cancellation now takes fewer clicks than signing up does, that certified mail was only ever recommended rather than required, that the cancellation terms appeared in the membership agreement in ordinary type, and that there is an “absolute absence of any real allegations” of consumer harm.
That certified mail point checks out against the FAQ we quoted at the top. It really does say “we recommend.”
The judge’s tentative order went the other way on the broader question. It noted that “notably, for many years” the gym offered no online cancellation at all, which is the asymmetry the FTC built its case around.
Where the case stands, honestly
We could not find a final ruling on that motion. The most recent reporting we located is from early May 2026, four months before this page was written, and it described the matter as still sitting at the dismissal stage with a tentative order issued. So that is where we have left it.
So nothing has been decided. LA Fitness has not been found to have done anything, and we are not going to write as though it has. What we can say is that the online cancellation option exists today and works, which is the part that actually affects you this week.
Why the case runs on ROSCA and not click-to-cancel
People reasonably ask why a federal click-to-cancel rule did not simply settle this. Because there is not one. The Eighth Circuit vacated the FTC’s Negative Option Rule in full on 8 July 2025, six days before its compliance date, on the grounds that the rulemaking process was procedurally defective.
The FTC has since restarted that rulemaking. Meanwhile ROSCA and Section 5 still apply, and so do state automatic-renewal laws. That is why this case exists at all.
Where you live changes what LA Fitness will do
Here is the sixth point from the complaint, and it is the most actionable thing on this page. According to the FTC, the companies modified their practices in states that have mandatory gym cancellation requirements, and they modified them again when a complaint escalated to a state attorney general or to the Better Business Bureau.
Read that paragraph as instructions rather than as news.
If your state has a health club statute, cite it. If citing it gets you nowhere, escalate to your state attorney general’s consumer protection office or file a Better Business Bureau complaint, because the FTC’s own filing says that route has historically produced a different answer from the one you get at the front desk. It costs nothing to try.
California’s rules are the clearest, and they are worth knowing
California’s Health Studio Services Contract Law is set out in the state Department of Consumer Affairs’ own legal guide, which is where these figures come from rather than from a summary of a summary.
| Right | What it gives you | Section |
|---|---|---|
| Cooling off | A five-day right to cancel, longer on high-value contracts | Civ. Code § 1812.85 |
| Moving away | Cancel if you move more than 25 miles from the facility and cannot transfer to a comparable one. Fee capped at $100, or $50 once more than half the term has run | § 1812.89(b) |
| Disability or death | Cancel with physician verification, or the estate may cancel. Prepaid amounts refunded pro rata | § 1812.89(a) |
| Contract length | May not exceed three years | § 1812.84 |
| Refunds on cancellation | Refunded within 10 days, less services already received | § 1812.85(b)(5) |
The 25-mile rule is the one people miss. If you have moved across the state for work and there is no comparable LA Fitness near the new address, California hands you a route out that has nothing to do with the postmark deadline at all. Different rule, different paperwork.
Other states
Several states have their own health club statutes, often with a cooling-off period and a relocation right that look broadly like California’s. We have not verified those state by state against primary sources, so we are not going to print a table of them here and risk sending you into a club quoting a law that says something slightly different.
Search your state’s name plus “health club contract law” and look for the attorney general or consumer affairs page rather than a blog. Five minutes. It gives you something you can actually cite at a front desk.
Billed after you cancelled
Work through it in this order, and do not skip to step four.
- Check the postmark or confirmation date against your billing date. If you were inside the five business days, the extra billing was expected and the FAQ says it gets refunded
- Contact the club with your evidence and quote the refund sentence verbatim
- If that fails, file a complaint with your state attorney general’s consumer protection office, and with the Better Business Bureau
- If you are in a state with a health club statute, cite the section in writing
That order matters. Step three is the one the FTC’s complaint says has historically changed the outcome, and most people never get to it because they give up at step two.
Blocking the payment at your bank is not a cancellation
It is tempting and it does not end the membership. The agreement carries on, the balance can keep building, and the FTC complaint alleges that some people who revoked their payment authorization were billed anyway. Blocking a payment is not a cancellation.
Cancel properly through one of the three routes first. Then, if you want belt and braces, tell your bank as well.
Personal training is a different contract
Cancelling your membership does not cancel a personal training agreement. It is signed separately. LA Fitness does not publish its cancellation terms anywhere we could find, and the FTC complaint includes a claim that customers were not told add-on services had to be cancelled on their own.
Ask specifically, in writing, and name the personal training agreement rather than saying “cancel everything.”
Questions people ask about cancelling LA Fitness
Can I cancel LA Fitness online?
Yes. The membership FAQ lists your online account as one of the three accepted methods. That option did not exist for years, which is part of what the FTC’s 2025 case is about.
How much notice does LA Fitness need?
A mailed cancellation should be postmarked at least five business days before your next billing date. Business days, so allow for weekends.
Is there a fee to cancel LA Fitness?
Not if you are outside an initial term, or never had one. If your membership had an initial term of three months or more and you leave before it ends, the FAQ says a termination fee applies. LA Fitness does not publish the amount, so check your agreement.
Why was I charged after I cancelled?
Most often because the notice landed inside the five business days. LA Fitness says that when this happens, “we will refund that additional billing.” Quote that line when you ask.
Can I cancel LA Fitness if I move?
In California, yes, if you move more than 25 miles away and cannot transfer to a comparable facility, with the fee capped at $100. Several other states have similar rules. Check your own state’s law rather than relying on the club’s answer.
Did the FTC really sue LA Fitness?
Yes, on 20 August 2025, over cancellation practices. LA Fitness has moved to dismiss and denies the allegations. No final ruling had been reported when we checked on 18 September 2026.
How we checked this
The cancellation and freeze rules come from LA Fitness’s own membership FAQ, read on 18 September 2026. The case material comes from the FTC’s press release and from law-firm reporting of the April 2026 hearing. The California rights come from that state’s Department of Consumer Affairs legal guide, not from a summary of it.
Seven things we wanted to tell you are not published anywhere, including the termination fee amount and how long a refund takes. We have said so each time instead of borrowing a number. If your club told you something different from any of this, send it over and we will read the page again. More on how we research gym prices, on what an LA Fitness membership costs across a full year, and on how Planet Fitness handles the same deadline.