Health clubs: which to join and what to look out for.

You can pay up to $95 a month and get "the latest state-of-the-art equipment and hundreds of fun classes" or "great amenities to keep your workouts challenging and fun," but our survey of more than 10,000 subscribers to ConsumerReports.org indicates that you might be happier spending a lot less. Readers gave higher marks to the Y, community centers, and office gyms than to most of the big chains we rated.

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In our first survey about workout facilities, readers who used a gym in the past six months provided the inside scoop about staff, equipment, classes, crowds, cleanliness, locker rooms, and billing issues. The 3,400 respondents who had canceled a membership in another gym during the past three years told us why they left and whether it was easy to cancel (often, it wasn't). To investigate the sometimes-tricky experience of joining a health club, we also sent 12 mystery shoppers to ask about joining branches of the major chains in nine states. Their experiences helped generate the tips in this report. Among our findings:

Independents rule. Studios for yoga, dance, or Pilates; work gyms; community centers; school gyms; and nonprofit Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) and YMCAs or YWCAs outscored most of the big chains. Usually, the main draw was value.

Life Time is hot, Bally is not. Life Time Fitness was the only big chain toward the top of the Ratings, with high marks for equipment, locker rooms, classes, and hours. (Most locations are open 24 hours a day.) The low-rated Bally Total Fitness was criticized for wait times for machines, problems with contracts or fees, poorer cleanliness, and less-adequate locker rooms than others. (Bally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the summer of 2007, just before we conducted our survey. Bally clubs stayed open during the restructuring, and the company emerged from bankruptcy in October.)

Bills can be a pain. Among respondents with paid memberships, 16 percent had a problem with their contract or fees, such as an unexpected dues hike or inability to suspend their membership temporarily during an expected absence. Members of Bally and Town Sports International were most likely to have had those problems (34 percent and 28 percent, respectively).

It can be difficult to cancel. Thirty-eight percent of respondents who had canceled their membership in one of the big chains had at least one problem, such as receiving bills after cancellation and excessive time and effort to cancel.