How hard should it be to cancel a membership!

So today I went to the local Gold's Gym to cancel my membership because I haven't been using it. First the lady asks if I had a 2 year membership and I told her no (I would have went to another gym if this had been an issue). After she finally proved it to herself she handed me a small piece of paper with instructions on how to cancel my membership.

First I have to mail a certified letter to ABC financial stating that it is my 30 day cancelation. Then after receiving confirmation that they received the letter I need to call their toll free number to be sure they posted it to my account correctly. In my opinion this is a lot of hoops to go through to cancel a membership. After all, all I had to do when I signed up was go inside and sign a paper!

This is not my first gym membership in the past I have also used Lifetime Fitness and Nautilus. With both of these gyms the only thing that I had to do to cancel my membership was go inside the facility and sign a paper. The paper was my 30 day notice and the company took care of the rest.

I do not understand why a company would make you go through all of these hoops in order to cancel. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that many people will keep forgetting to mail the request in. If we forget they keep getting our money. I actually talked to one of my friends that this happened to. Well not me my letter will be mailed tomorrow and if I ever decide to join a gym again it will definitely be a different one. I will also be sure to ask what their cancelation policy is at the time of joining.

What do you think?