Jessica Soles has accomplished something few other Akron women have: She made it through basic training and technical school and became an air-traffic controller for the U.S. Air Force.But until last week, it appeared Jessica Soles would not be able to do what most other women can: buy a car.Why? Because an area health club wouldn’t let her out of her contract after she went on active duty and turned her account over to a collection agency, a move that could have ruined the young woman’s credit rating.This is exactly the sort of thing Congress had in mind in 2003 when it passed the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, an update to the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act, which dates to World War II.The SCRA is, as a military website puts it, “intended to postpone or suspend certain civil obligations to enable service members to devote full attention to duty and relieve stress on [their] family members.”In other words, a person who is willing to lay his or her life on the line for the country deserves a break. When you enter the military and leave town, you can nullify an apartment lease, limit credit-card interest and, yes, get out of a health-club contract.Soles, who was 17 months into a two-year contract that called for monthly payments of $60.97, began active duty on March 29. Given that she would be training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, which is 1,250 miles from the My Personal Trainer studio she belonged to in Green, it was evident she wouldn’t be able to use the club. So she informed the company of her move.But My Personal Trainer was skeptical and, despite receiving an abundance of evidence that Soles was indeed in the Air Force and out of state, continued to bill her, month after month after month.In September, the company unleashed a collection agency, demanding a payment of $550.54.Only after the family contacted the Beacon Journal did My Personal Trainer back off, canceling the contract and calling off the collection agency.As Soles and her mother made repeated efforts to prove that Jessica had entered the Air Force, the club kept demanding additional proof. Even multiple phone calls and emails from her recruiting officer were deemed insufficient.In the midst of all this, an employee of My Personal Trainer accidentally sent Soles’ mother an email that was intended for someone within the company. It read:“This sounds odd to me. Ian talked to this so-called military officer and made this whole thing very simple. He told him that all she has to do [is] fill out the cancelation form. ...”The “so-called” officer in question, Sgt. Elvin Rose, is peeved that his credibility was questioned. He should be. When you’ve served your country for more than eight years, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, you deserve more respect.Rose’s legitimacy could easily have been verified with one call to the recruiting office and/or a glance at the domain name on his military email account. But the officer is far less upset about the personal affront than what this dust-up has done to one of his recruits.“Jessica [was] going through basic training, she [was] going through tech school, and it’s not a walk in the park,” Rose says.“In basic training, it’s a dictatorship from the time you get up until the time you go to sleep. Someone’s telling you what to do and how to do it. You don’t have time to get on email or send faxes.“Basic training is stressful enough. Then you have to deal with people like this.”Rose views the conflict as nothing more than a blatant money grab by the owners of My Personal Trainer.The sergeant, now based in Medina, says he has sent more than 60 recruits into the Air Force and never encountered anything like this. Along the way he was asked to vouch for about a dozen other people and in each case a single communique did the trick.Rose got the opposite reaction from Kimberly Burgardt, whose emails identify her as a member of “client services” at My Personal Trainer.“I sent this woman an email from my government email address,” Rose says. “I was more than willing to provide her with documentation, but I told her ... that some of that information, such as the Social Security number, would be redacted.“At first she said OK. I gave her the paperwork and she said it wasn’t good enough. She said she needed to see me and she needed to talk to my commander — you know, the freaking commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service. She just took it to a whole other level.”Rose says he even sent Burgardt a copy of the federal relief act with the appropriate paragraphs highlighted.Meanwhile, Jessica’s mother, Cathy, supplied a pile of documentation:• A form giving Cathy power of attorney for Jessica, signed by a notary at Lackland Air Force Base — a document My Personal Trainer had demanded before it would deal with the mother.• A copy of Jessica’s first military paycheck that shows the date she began active service.• A copy of Jessica’s military ID.Burgardt seemed to think the whole thing was an elaborate hoax.Says the recruiting officer, “The woman told me when Jessica got down to basic training that she wanted Jessica to make a copy of her plane ticket and send it to her.“They told her because she was moving out of the state, she needed to provide a driver’s license showing she lived out of the state.”Never mind that active military are not required to change their driver’s license.“The woman was completely off the wall,” Rose says. “She wanted her money and didn’t want anybody telling her how things were going to work.”Jessica’s mother is understandably livid.“My daughter must provide protection for her country at any time, in any place, with any means deemed necessary by our president, up to and including her life,” Cathy says.“This includes the protection of the owners of My Personal Trainer, its employees and the very land their business sits on.”The company’s headquarters are in Jackson Township near Westfield Belden Village Mall. In addition to the studio in Green and another at Belden, My Personal Trainer has locations in Canton and Stow.When contacted on Friday, Burgardt said repeatedly that she is “not allowed to speak specifically about any of our clients,” but in a long conversation she did address some aspects of the situation.She claims someone in the Air Force told her the Soleses should supply a certain document that they did not supply. When asked for proof of that exchange, Burgardt said she was not allowed to forward that email because of privacy laws.OK, then forget the military aspect. The contract says a customer can leave if he or she moves more than 25 miles away. Why not just go with that?In those cases, Burgardt responds, “we provide them with a moving cancellation form and they are required to provide certain documentation that proves they did in turn move.”Burgardt admits she never gave that form to the
Soleses — likely the same form referred to in the accidental e-mail sent in May — and says she doesn’t know whether anyone else in the company did.The Soleses say no one did. And, according to copies of email exchanges the Soleses forwarded to me, Cathy Soles asked for that form on June 6.This company apparently adores the phrase “so-called,” because it also shows up on the My Personal Trainer website, where founder Jeffrey Stone asserts that the “vast majority of so-called trainers ... do not understand why they do what they do” and “produce minimal results for most at best.”The website also quotes Stone as saying, “I have always stood for and believe in Christian values, the family unit and the American Dream.”Stone was a founding partner of the now-defunct Scandinavian Health Club in the Merriman Valley; the founder of the now-defunct weight-loss franchises Nutrabolic and Formu-3 International; and the founder of the now-defunct Women’s 17 Minute Workout centers.Stone’s online bio says he previously was honored for having “the 13th-fastest growth company in the United States.” What the bio doesn’t say is that he later filed for bankruptcy.After the 17 Minute Workout clubs abruptly closed in 2001 and Stone’s daughter opened a company called Nubolics in some of the same locations, 300 women signed up for a class-action lawsuit because the new firm wouldn’t honor the low renewal rates in their original contracts.Because most women had paid by credit card and their card companies eventually refunded their money, only 25 customers actually filed suit. The company settled out of court for $50,000.The Canton Better Business Bureau says My Personal Trainer has been the subject of 16 complaints during the past three years. Of the 54 health clubs in its region, 48 have received zero complaints and three others have received no more than four.The Ohio attorney general’s office says it has eight complaints against My Personal Trainer on file but has never taken any formal action against the company, which was founded in 2008.Jessica Soles recently started a three-year assignment at Eglin Air Force Base in northwest Florida. Let’s hope the “so-called” airman gets a little more respect from her peers.Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com.