Get Gephardt: Woman refunded for prepaid massages after husband dies
Dec 14, 2022, 11:04 PM | Updated: Dec 15, 2022, 8:55 am
WEST HAVEN, Utah — A West Haven man paid for dozens of massages but died before he ever got a chance to use them. When his widow could not get a refund from the massage company, she decided it was time to Get Gephardt.
Before he passed away, Jenny Ince said she and her husband loved getting massages together. So much so, that they signed up for monthly treatments from Massage Envy.
After years of canceled appointments due to COVID-19 and other things, the couple had racked up quite a few credits.
“I reached out to them to find out what my options were,” Ince said.
The option she said she got: 20 can be transferred to their daughter and Massage Envy will refund her the other 19.
“That’s the absolute most that they would refund me back and I’m like, I’m fine with that”, Ince said.
The problem is, Massage Envy was not making good on that offer, according to Ince. Company reps kept passing her around and did not return her calls.
Make no mistake, she was due a refund. In fact, according to the contract her husband signed 15 years ago, they owed her a complete refund for all unused services.
“If you have prepaid for your membership services,” read Ince from the contract, “you or your estate will be refunded the portion of your membership dues that are all allocable to services you have not received.”
“I just kind of feel like they are just going to keep pushing it under the mat until I go away,” she said. After months of delays and unreturned calls, she decided on another option.
“And I thought, ‘Oh! I’m going to Get Gephardt,’” she said.
We got to work and reached out to Massage Envy’s communications team to ask what is holding up the refund and why the Ince family was not entitled to a full refund.
Their reply? Crickets. We heard nothing. But it seems somebody got the message.
Less than a week after we reached out, Ince said Massage Envy sent her $2,012 – a full refund for all her late husband’s massages.
Tip of the cap to her for hanging onto the original contract from way back when they signed it in 2007.
Had this gone to court, that paperwork had everything she should have needed to show a judge that Massage Envy owed her a refund contractually.
