Work Out World

I LOVE this gym. The people that work here are awesome. I have not had any of the issues that I read in previous posts; I think that some of them are either old or from competitors.
I just recently learned that they coined the term «Jersey Strong» and The Jersey Strong Foundation is operated by their owners. So great gym that gives back to its community? That’s pretty awesome in my book.

My wife and I both belong to this gym. I think it’s a great gym. The staff has always been very friendly to me. I’m extremely comfortable working out there. They have all free weights and a great variety of machines and cables. The personal trainers seem knowledgeable although I have never used them before. My wife likes it a lot because they have a closed area upstairs where only females can train. She also takes the power class and has had a personal trainer there with some success. The hours are good. The price is affordable and the results are up to you

The problem is not the facility in Ocean but the corporate structure. They gym and people in Ocean are nice. If you have any questions or problems with billing, however, they can do NOTHING at the local gym. You must email the corporate office — no phone calls are permitted — and they rarely respond. My most recent example is my annual suspension of my membership. That doesn’t save anything on my membership but I do it to suspend the billing for my personal training contract. Last year they failed to suspend and billed me every month I was away so I had to use up all the extra time. This year I again used the machine inside the gym to email them I wanted to suspend the membership. (This is a mistake; it left me with no record of doing so.) A couple of months later, after being billed, I told them they had made an error and they never got back to me. Only when I sent a notice entitled «Cancellation» did they respond. But all I was doing was notifying them that I was cancelling the payment for March which was about to appear. They responded saying that they had cancelled the contract for training. What an unbelievable mess they are.

The equipment is fine for what I pay… $ 20 a month. Yes, it is usually crowded, but it’s pretty big, so I have never had to wait for a cardio machine or any other machine really.
Major cons…
The hours. I really wish it was 24 hrs, like some competition (planet fitness), but I get it. The weekend hours, however are ridiculous. It closes at like 8 on Friday, 7 on Saturday, and 4 on Sunday!
Tanning… I was told almost a year ago (when I joined) that a tanning bed was coming… It’s going in right over there by the door… Just gotta buy it… Ok so my membership is paying for something that doesn’t exist. If I do want to go tanning, I have to drive all the way out to either the wall or tinton falls location. Annoying.
Classes… The class schedule is not «working man 9−5» friendly. The majority of classes are during weekday hours. Sure not what classes are free to use and what’s not. It’s very unclear.

Why is the women’s locker room «sponsored» by a plastic surgery establishment? You guys are sick and twisted. It’s 2015. Let’s not make women feel like shit about themselves when they’re actively addressing any situation by exercising, getting fit, and getting that endorphin release. Totally counter intuitive and very offensive. You should just call yourselves Vogue or Maxim if this is what you’re out to do.

So packed I could barely walk, let alone use any equipment I needed. They have good equipment, it’s just never available

I’ve been coming here for over 15 years. The past 5 – 6 years have been horribly disappointing. The club is clearly more interested in signing up new members than maintaining the existing facility. They do bring in new stuff occasionally but to the exclusion of most of the members. Latest case in point — a simple pushdown bar finally broke after 10+ years in service. No big deal, right? I spoke to the manager but he didn’t know how to order a new one or who to ask. I found it on Amazon in 5 minutes for $ 20 w/​free shipping. So I guess I’ll just donate it to the club because…
Another «benefit» if you’re a long-​term member is that your dues will ALWAYS be higher than the new members. They advertise $ 19 while I’m paying $ 35. I’d quit but there aren’t a lot of options in the area.
Its always crowded day and night so a simple workout takes a long time. A special nod to the groups of guys who camp out on one piece of equipment for 30 minutes as if its their private facility.

Walk thru the gym first and see for yourself, I’m just one person commenting on my opinion. And an FYI, you cannot cancel your contract until your initial term is up and its not a simple process, it has to be a written letter to the corporate office. But why I gave it «1» star, please read. As for all of you who’ve stated you’ve been going to this gym for years; you need to get out more. Quantity over quality is the slogan for this gym. A million cardio equipment, tons of Life Fitness machines, non-​existing attachments to the «Total» gym or very few to choose from, and the free weights area is sub-​par for a hugh gym establishment. This is a newbies gym for people who want to tinker with getting fit but don’t really know what to do. Hardly any of the machines ever get wiped down by anyone as well. For $ 20, go for it. You get what you paid for. Don’t let the fancy machines fool you.

For what I pay, this place works fine. It’s been pretty crowded at peak hour lately due to the closing of another gym in the area, causing waits for machines and a mess of a parking lot situation.
Classes are good, but I do wish there were more options to accommodate people who work 9−5÷6. I loved boot camp when it was free, but I think it is ridiculous they expect members to pay extra for a group fitness class. I highly recommend 530am Cycle with Andrea — she is dynamic, leads a challenging class, and plays the best music. Yoga and Pilates classes are also very good.
The crowd is a mixed bag, which I do prefer (young and old). The locker facilities are fine, but you have to bring everything to take a shower (no toiletries are provided except a dispenser of what appears to be hand soap in each shower).
I’ve heard one too many nightmare stories about canceling memberships. Fortunately, I’ve never had to deal with that. I am moving to the city in a few weeks, but feel it is worth it to keep my membership for what I pay. I would recommend, but I do hope the crowd dies down a bit soon.

Update: Still one star but just wanted to update that WOW Work Out World just lost a class settlement suit where they had to mail anyone who joined the gym after 2007 and who correctly mailed a letter in saying they were terminating their membership $ 50 They had to pay over 57,000+ members $ 50. Glad to see I was not the only one that experienced this problem with this gym and I am happy that someone decided to take legal action

If you are looking to sign up to a gym, do yourself a favor and go anywhere other than WOW! I can’t tell you all the things wrong about that place because if I did it would take me hours. Here are just a few things: you can’t speak to anyone at the home office if you have issues with bill. Only email. They don’t update you if your payment doesn’t process. They say it is up to you to know if your payment posts. They charge you $ 60 a year for equipment maintenance. Problem is many machines don’t work. I have been a member for almost 10 years to WOW. Customer service is not important to them. Please, please, please choose another gym. You will thank me later. BTW, it doesn’t matter which location. They all suck! I went to Ocean, NJ. Also, I gave 1 star because I couldn’t give 0!

Hard to find location. I had to drive around the mall several times to find it.
I had called the gym a day earlier to make sure that they have an olympic weightlifting platform. I was assured that they do. Of course, after arriving there and wasting my time with rude front desk staff filling out paperwork, I found out that they have NO lifting platforms at all! I wasted my training time as I couldn’t train there, I just had to walk out of there.

RUDE staff in the front some times! When I first wanted to join with my friend I asked if I could get a free five day pass, this rude girl that works there said «we don’t have that we never did». I go online and ohh what do you know I printed out a five day pass and went to the gym the next day. When I go some where I’m paying for i expect friendly helpful staff.

OK. We’re both members here, have been since 2009 and honestly we’ve had it. DO NOT JOIN THIS GYM, YOU WILL HATE YOURSELF FOR IT. The problems are just through the roof but I will list them all. These are accumulated from 5 years of observations.
1. Hours of Operation: Terrible. Open early and til late throughout the week, but closed at 10PM on Fridays, 7PM on Saturdays and 4PM on Sundays. This makes no sense. None. Why be open the least when your clients have the most time to workout? It’s because they don’t want you to.
2. Membership Fees: This is a constantly changing thing. One month it’s this, another month it’s that. Not cool. On top of that they have you sign this ridiculously shady contract which, in the fine print, mandates a $ 65 dues fee which is sucked from your bank account annually. I wasn’t even aware of this until this year.
3. Trainers: Out of shape and discourteous. Aside from a couple exceptions they are complete snake oil salesmen. As a longtime member I’ve seen them train people for months with no results on so many occasions. They stretch them for an hour then work them out for 15 minutes then stick them on a treadmill and walk away. And their prices? It’s like a G for 3 sessions or something wait til you find out. Stay away.
4. Equipment Failure: Go into most any location of theirs and you will see machine after machine with out of order signs on them. That’s fine, these things happen but the problem is that those same machines go unfixed and stay broken for weeks at a time. I remember once seeing 4 out of 5 treadmills in a row all out of order in Ocean. Unacceptable.
5. Nearly Impossible to Cancel: I’ve tried multiple times to cancel my membership and there is some ridiculous process you have to go through to do this. You first need to send some kind of email to the company and then they inform you that in three months you will be free of the contract and fees. Wait, what? I want to cancel NOW not three months from now. I would like to be able to walk up the to the front desk, tell the pimple-​faced kid working to cancel it and walk out in under 2 minutes. The current option is totally unacceptable.
6. Constant Closures: If lightning strikes, an inch of snow falls, the pope sneezes or its over 90 degrees, Work Out World is all too happy to cave to their employees and close their doors. This also ties in to their hours I might add. It seems as thought they close as much as they do to accommodate the social lives of their employees and that is totally unacceptable. They even close early one day each year for some kind of employee party. Seriously? Put it on a Sunday after 4PM you’ll have the entire night to enjoy yourselves!!!
Please do not join Work Out World. This is not the place to work out.

I have mixed feelings about WOW. I’ve got a supercheap membership because I used to belong to the one in Brick that burned down, so it costs me next to nothing, and it is a very large facility with a lot of equipment, and it is kept very clean, which is a tremendous plus, and there are a lot of classes to take should I have the time to do so (although they are only available to VIP members, not seasonal members or one-​gym-​only members).
On the downside, the cardio equipment I want never seems available except when the gym is nearing closing time. Recently all the WOW facilities closed down their saunas because too many people were throwing water on the electrical coils (duh) and shorting them out. Occasionally members were starting fires in the process of trying to turn a dry sauna into a steam room. How does WOW respond? Not by cracking down on the perpetrators, but by closing all the saunas. Wouldn’t a better solution be to replace these units with something that wouldn’t be damaged by moisture? Or replace the dry saunas with a steam room? I’m asthmatic and need the heat in the winter to help open up my bronchial passages. Now I have to shop for another gym membership.

I have been a member at this W.O.W location since it opened. I am no longer a member.
The biggest problem i have with the location is the fact that they had the same machines since I started there about 4 years ago. The gym is impossible to use during peak hours, the general crowd is a range of meat heads to the elderly, the machines that DO work, are barely hanging on, and the price is certainly too high for a gym with no functioning equipment. The last straw for me was when they hit me with a 40 dollar gym equipment fee. I don’t mind paying it if i’m actually going to get new equipment, but i have been there forever and all I ever noticed were new parts to the old crappy machines.
WOW was ok when it was the only gym in town, but I am going to look into retro fitness as a better alternative.

My wife and I have had MANY problems with all of the Work Out World Locations in Central NJ.
If you want to cancel your membership you have to send in an «application» to their corporate office. This is even if you have fulfilled your standard initial contract. The woman on the phone said my «application for termination will be reviewed and they will let me know if I can cancel my membership, until then they will continue to charge my cc».
Also, the machines are always broke and the staff is rude.
Oh god I hate this place.

If I could give NO STARS I would. I had a horrendous experience at the gym. The sales person was nice, but when it came time to talk about the plans, I explained that I was already a member at another gym for 19.99 a month for life and no start up fee. He said he would get the general manager to see what she could do about lowering or dropping the «initial fee» of 150 — 250 that you must pay to «join». Here’s what I posted on their facebook page which they almost immediately erased and blocked me from posting anything else on their wall.
«The general manager over at WoW Ocean is the nastiest person I’ve ever met. She tried to tell me that they have zero competition, that if someone in another WoW offered me a deal that they wouldn’t offer there she would in turn get them fired and told me that the $ 100 coupon that they hand me at the door was for that night only and I would never again be offered anything like the deal. She was nasty, she was snarling and she turned me off to the gym altogether. She is a disgrace to Work Out World.»
I guess censorship is alive and well in America! You are not allowed to review a place negatively if you have a terrible experience. This lady single handedly turned me off from EVER becoming a member to that gym.

Frauds. Bottom line.
Don’t even waste your time with the «free 5 day pass», it’s just their way to wrangle you in and practically force you to sign up with them by making you feel like you have no other option. Neither my friend nor I fell for it. Be smart.

Without a doubt, the absolute worst customer service I have ever experienced! These guys are worse than Citibank, and that really says something. At least if you call Citibank you can somehow talk to someone on the phone. I received a call and was greeted by an automated message, requesting me to call back about my membership. I called the number provided and pressed ‘1’ for Customer Service. The recording said that all Customer Service inquiries should be done over the web. Conveniently (for them, not me) the line disconnected me automatically. Any option you choose requires you to leave a message so someone can get back to you.
The staff is outright rude, both in person and on the phone (if you can even get someone to talk to you). I guess once they lock you into a contract (S#!T don’t even get me started on their contract) they have your money and you’re stuck with them.
The only reason they get a 1 star is because that is the minimum required by this site. Otherwise I’d gladly give them a ‘0’. What I can do is try my best to convince you that this is not the place for you, unless you’re a total douchebag. If that’s the case, you’ll feel right at home.