Don't save $5 / get an answer for free

  You wouldn't hire the guy standing on the freeway offramp to fix your treadmill at any price, no matter how much cheaper he was, so don't let $$ be your guide in choosing a treadmill service company.

  When you call us, (a person will answer, none of this push # for department A nonsense) we will take a brief service history and what is happening with your treadmill, and if possible, an estimate of what the cost to repair it might be.

310.489.0200 310-773-3GYM 888-GYM-REPAIR

  Typically, this will just be the cost of the service call. We don't charge extra once we get there to fix it- (some "services" do) an hour of labor is included, as are any repairs with basic parts, including screws, nuts, bolts, wires, lubricant, (please DO NOT try to lubricate it yourself, more often than not this causes problems and can even ruin your treadmill / elliptical / other exercise equipment if you use the wrong kind or spray it in the wrong place) etc.

  We can even walk you through some simple tests to see if your equipment is a good candidate for repair to save you the cost of a service call.

310.489.0200 310-773-3GYM 888-GYM-REPAIR

  You can email us if you have pictures of the machine, malfunction, etc., but a follow-up call is recommended to alert us that the email is there before it gets crowded off the first page due to other incoming emails, especially during the busy season of October through March. 

  If you emailed and are not called back within 24 hours, it's a safe guess that your email either didn't get to us (everything breaks, including the internet) or it was not seen. Please call us and we'd be happy to help you.

  If all of our phone representatives are busy helping people, please leave a message and we will call you back as soon as possible, usually within 1 hour.

310.489.0200 310-773-3GYM 888-GYM-REPAIR

  If you have the Brand, Model Number or Name, and/or Serial Number, that's helpful, but not always absolutely necessary. All treadmills operate on similar basic principles, so if all you know is what noise it is making or what problem you're having with it, we will know what is wrong with it, or what the possibilities of what is wrong with it are.

  We would need the Model / Serial Number to provide an accurate quotation for parts, some Model Names are used for up to 7 years, and may have 2-7 iterations with different parts.

  We are happy to give a ballpark estimate if you don't have the Model / Serial Number, so don't let that stop you from calling if you don't have them right at hand. Sometimes there is only 1 version of a Brand / Model / Serial, so we can quote just from the Model name.

Here is the most important part of "Treadmill Tricorder" for those who missed it while it was in the Google Play Market;

the matrix chart of how often your treadmill should be serviced depending on where it is, (house, garage, etc.) how often and how hard/fast it is used, etc.;

No more "Professionalism University" in our blog...

So it's come to my attention that our competitors have been reading our blog for clues on how to be professional, so we've deleted all those posts that would be helpful to them- we'd love to tell you all the ways we're better than them, but it's much more effective to simply pick up the phone and experience it.

310-489-0200 310.489.0200 or 888-GYM-REPAIR

Best, Eric

A surprisingly important component of exercise equipment maintenance especially for strength units; DONT peel off model/serial # stickers!!!!

Also save your original receipt and owners manual, if only a picture/copy/scan of it.

An excellent way to do this is to email it to yourself using Google's gmail "boomerang" feature, which will present you with a copy yearly and remind you it's time to service your machine!    

Just take a picture and send it to yourself with yearly repetition selected.

Helping people vs. getting credit for helping people or why you can't always reach the person you want instantly

So yesterday I spent 3 hours on the phone with a French treadmill manufacturer to figure out why we got the wrong part for a client who has been to the emergency room 3 times in the last month with heart arrhythmia, which  meant at least one customer couldn't reach me for an extended period.

Fortunately, she's experienced two other lackluster company's performance and do-nothing "repairmen" who told her nothing was wrong with her machine before we got there and did the delicate, difficult job of adjusting it so it would be quiet during use, so she knows we care about her and genuinely want to help her as we do all our customers, and so assumed there was a good reason we weren't calling back immediately.

That kind of patience and understanding puts her at the tippy top of our list of favorite people...

And keeps her off the list of people we decline as clients. People don't usually get more reasonable, so if they start off that way, it's a very real possibility we'll decline them as clients at the first phone call.

So if you call and can't reach the person you spoke with last time, or can't get through to someone immediately, AND don't get a call back within an hour, it's usually because; you didn't leave us your phone # or email or whatever, or it didn't reach us, or you have a bad cell phone or bad connection and the message you left is garbled / unintelligible, (right up there with death and taxes, the other thing were sure of is that EEEEEEVERYTHING breaks down, including our high tech phone system, we know this all too well) or we don't have a useful answer from the manufacturer about when that part will be here, or (very often) we're currently on the phone trying to solve your problem already.

We can't fix the fact that the world is an imperfect place, that backorders happen, that manufacturers are unresponsive or out of business, but we do our best to help you every day, including when we basically ask you not to give us money by honestly assessing how much it will cost to repair your equipment and often recommending buying a new one if you can, and doing our best to fix it affordably if you can't.

The good news is we're honest treadmill repairmen who love helping people. The bad news is the world still isn't perfect.

How to tell if you're talking to a FAKE treadmill repairman

How to tell if you're dealing with a FAKE treadmill repairman;

1. No one in the office (there is no office) ever answers the phone.

2. If they do answer the phone, they don't sound or act professional.

3. You have to email him (several times, in some cases, as much as 20 times) to make an appointment.

4. He promises to come back for FREE if you need a part.
   4a) either the cost of the 2nd service call is built into the cost of the part
   4b) or you will never see him again. Yes, this does happen. Sometimes, they don't show up for the 1st service call

5. They don't show up for the service call.

6. They pretend to be multiple companies to stay ahead of the bad reviews under the name of their last company name.

7. They show up for 2 minutes, claim the treadmill needs a part, take off with $90 and never return your calls again.

8. They care about getting your money only, and may not even ask what is wrong with your treadmill (or other type of equipment).

When you call us the first time, we ask many questions to determine if you should even make an appointment for a service call and spend money repairing your equipment.

We will tell you honestly on your first call to us (before you've spent any money!) whether you should schedule a service call or not.

9. Since they're not busy with returning customers, they will be able to come to your home the same day (or within a day or two) that you call them, sometimes within hours of your call. Real gym services have a busy schedule and travel all over (we service all of Los Angeles, and travel as far and wide as Palm Springs, Santa Barbara, San Diego, etc.) and will need to schedule you on a day they will be in your area.

10. The Yahoo will not know exactly how to fix many problems unless they are very simple, but can't very well admit that and still charge you, so he will try and make something up that sounds reasonable, even though his explanation doesn't really make sense. One guy seems to always diagnose the drive motor. Now, obviously I can't say these never fail, but it is VERY rare, i.e., I MIGHT see a drive motor failure once a year, likely less. I always explain it to people this way; the reason why car companies don't want to build electric cars is that they're TOO RELIABLE, and so they don't make enough money on repairs and maintenance.

11.Yahoos take parts of your machine, documentation, etc., with them when they can't fix them onsite. Good luck getting them back. Real technicians can get documentation and service information directly from the manufacturer and carry a battery of specialized tools in order to be prepared to fix any problem they might encounter without having to take parts away and charge you for a 2nd return call.

12. Yahoos try to compete on service call price, promise a 2nd service call for free if needed (HA!) since they can't compete in skill level, professionalism, or parts prices, so they will offer "price-matching guarantees", dropping their price to whatever point convinces you to make the appointment with them.

We guarantee that our SERVICE, knowledge, professionalism and customer service ethic are second to none, and charge the lowest price possible for our service that ensures we can earn a living and be around next year to continue to keep your equipment working so you can stay healthy.

You can always find someone who will charge you $10 less to come to your house and take your money, but that's only a good deal if the problem gets fixed and fixed right. We've been the second call enough times to know that the yahoos have a really bad record of being unable to fix even the simplest of problems.

13. Yahoos stop pretending to be treadmill repairmen after a while, usually this takes about 6 months to a year, due to many causes that inevitably occur sooner or later- some of these include; failing to charge enough to cover unanticipated expenses like insurance, taxes, licensing, training, fuel, injury, inability to deal with administration of business, frustration with having to return for free multiple times to attempt to fix problems they don't understand and don't know how to remedy, simpler to just go work the fryer at McDonald's and earn an hourly wage, and the list goes on.

14. Yahoo's parts prices will generally be higher (and inferior in quality since they don't know where to buy real exercise equipment parts) than an established company that can buy from manufacturers, wholesale parts suppliers, and direct parts suppliers.

They may even try to substitute inferior parts not intended for gym equipment in order to maximize their profit margins.

In treadmills, this will cause them to fail sooner and have a shorter lifespan.

In cable-operated strength systems replacing those cables with home depot, lowes, osh, etc., steel cables can cause dangerous and potentially FATAL operating conditions.

I've tried to ascertain what the breaking strength of plastic-sheathed steel cables from Home Depot is, and have gotten various answers from various employees, ranging from 750 lbs to 1500 lbs.

Compare this to the correct cables for strength units, which have a breaking strength of 3300 lbs (lighter duty, apartment building gyms, etc.) to 6600 lbs. (heavier duty, Gyms, etc.).

We could keep this knowledge to ourselves and use it as a selling point only when you contact us, but this is a safety issue, and it's more important that we tell even the yahoos how to do this basic stuff correctly, because people can, and do, get hurt or killed using exercise equipment that breaks or is serviced incorrectly.

Problem is, even telling a yahoo this is not enough to make it safe to use them for strength machine repair.

Google "Leon Bostick Golds Gym Flex" to see the story of a man who suffered a crippling accident (he's a quadriplegic now- obviously not worth saving a few bucks if that is the result) as a result of broken cables during weight training.

And in case you were wondering why you would need cables that can lift 6600 lbs when the most you ever lift is 200 lbs, there are a couple of answers to this; one, that over the course of time, those cables will stretch as much as one to two inches as they're used, weakening them, and two, jump a little when you weigh yourself to see an example of G force increase, and you will see that you momentarily exert 300 to 400 pounds of force against the scale even though you weigh only 100 to 200 lbs. The same thing is happening as you push and pull on your strength machine.

The warning sign that your cables need to be replaced is when that plastic that covers the steel cable starts to crack off- that plastic sheath is important to the cables function, it keeps the metal cable from bending at too extreme an angle, which weakens the metal with each bend, just like a paper clip and will eventually break.

I've even seen cables in HORRIBLE, DANGEROUS DISREPAIR in professional gyms serviced by supposedly professional exercise equipment repair services. I saw one cable with MORE THAN A FOOT of the plastic sheath cracked off, (HIGHLY dangerous- usually these cables are replaced when an inch or two has cracked off AT MOST) on a machine that was right in the front of the room, smack dab in the middle of the doorway when you walk in, you couldn't miss it.

Which means that the dude pretending to be a professional gym service didn't know what he didn't know, and wasn't making any effort to learn, because that cable would have had to have been cracking for YEARS for MORE THAN TWELVE INCHES to be in that condition.

Sorry to get off on a rant about this, it's just so dangerous I tend to go on in an effort to emphasize that.

15. Yahoos break stuff as often as they fix it. Don't feel ashamed to call us back if you have had a yahoo mess up your equipment. We're happy to fix mistakes made by your husband, your yahoo, whoever. Because it usually means we make more money since it means fixing two problems; the yahoo "repair", and the original problem.

We are insured, bonded, certified and love to help people. I hope this information helps you. We know that the yahoos eventually fail and will simply disappear naturally, but post this as a public service to help you in not geting ripped off.

Best, Eric

From the http://forum.xda-developers.com I frequent to learn about new developments, here are some helpful posts I made to some people having problems with shocks from wired earbuds as they exercise... the cold air of the season may be causing you to experience the same- here's how to troubleshoot whether the cause is your treadmill, which would indicate a dangerous malfunction that needs to be corrected, or something else...

Read down to learn more;

Originally Posted by AshleyNG2

I've got a problem with my HTC earphones (or myself) and I'm just wondering if anybody else had the same issue or if anybody can guide me on what to do.

Basically, after listening to the earphones I would get what I believe is a mild electric shock in my ear every now and then and obviously I don't keep it in my ear after that as it could potentially be fatal (?) and it isn't a nice feeling ! I rang up my contract peoples and they sent me a new set of the handsfree earphones which I received earlier today but after about 5minutes of listening to them I experienced the same 'shock' feeling !! I also tried the first earphones in my iPod whilst at the gym and I got the 'shock' then too and the iPod wasn't even turned on. Hopefully this has happened to somebody else (not hopefully in a bad way) as reading this back makes me sound a little crazy lol !

Thanks for any advice too,

- Ash

Originally Posted by RalphS

Nothing to do with mobiles, but I get static electricity shocks from my metal cased 'in-ear' phones on the treadmills in the gym.

The treadmill "belt" being a good insulator; Similar in principal to a Van de Graff generator.

Keeps me on my toes....

You'd think so, it being a rubber belt and all (at least partially, actually there's a lot of vinyl in the mix), but in fact, they're a static electricity GENERATOR.

I've been a treadmill repairman for 10 years, and I have seen some weird electrical stuff... I even have a video of some fibers "caught" in the treadmill belt's electrical static charge field, "orbiting" (not touching!) the rear roller like a moon!

Treadmills have a grounding system designed to discharge this static, which can malfunction, or may never have been correctly installed in the first place.

If you're getting mild shocks, there are 3 main potential causes (or combinations, but we'll assume for the sake of simplicity one is a main cause, possible contributing causes we'll attempt to eliminate later)

1. The headphones are at fault- I'd recommend repeating that experiment to verify you didn't confuse the old headphones with the new ones, I assume they're identical?

2. You're especially sensitive to electrical current- indicated by you reporting that you got shocked using two different headphones and two different music players.

Do you get mild shocks when holding the heart rate sensor grips on the treadmill? These work by sending a tiny electrical charge through your skin, and measuring the change in resistance as blood pumps through your skin, creating an average of your heart rate it then displays.

Most people don't feel this charge, some are sensitive to it and do.

3. The treadmill's static charge is too high, either just for you because you're oversensitive, or because the treadmill's ground system is not working, or not working well enough, or was never installed correctly (or at all) by the person assembling the treadmill in he first place.

Try switching treadmills and see if you have the same problem. If not, notify the management that the other treadmill may need maintenance, the grounding system is there for a reason, and if it's not working, that static charge is slowly breaking that very expensive commercial treadmill.

Each resistor, capacitor, etc., every component in the electrical system has a 5-20% variance in what voltage it should be, so you may be better off on another treadmill.

You might also try cutting your salt/sodium intake, salt will make your skin more conductive, and that's good for you anyway.

As I alluded to earlier, it might also be a combination of your sensitivity and the headphones or the treadmill. Maybe switching to a bluetooth headset would be the solution for you if you're overly sensitive.

Another possibility that occurred to me is that you may have a pimple deep inside your ear canal? Do you eat junk food, greasy food?

Whatever the cause, the voltages are not enough to make it a safety concern, just a comfort one. In other words, fatality is not possible.

Hope this helps!

Originally Posted by MD5Hash

I've had the HTC Desire for four months, but only started wearing the 'phones last month on my way to work. It's January in Wisconsin, so very dry air and these things always give me little unpleasant prickles throughout my ears. It's not painful but always make me jolt a little bit because it's unexpected and random.

I owned an iPod Touch for two years and it never occurred with their headphones, or a sony in-ear set that I also used (but recently lost, which is why I'm using the stock HTC Desire ones).

I feel that HTC should provide us with better-designed headphones that don't have any conducting pieces in contact with the skin.

For all our scientific advancement, there's still LOTS we DON'T know about electricity, like how a vacuum can hold a charge, etc.

Sometimes, the only way to see an effect is to build the product, and there will be minor variances in each thing produced, sometimes adding up to completely unexpected behavior; i.e., plastic being problematically conductive where normally it's level of conductivity is not enough to cause discomfort in 99% of users... best thing to do is let the manufacturer know what's happening, test the warranty replacement for same effect, if it still bugs you, it's either you or it, if there are no other pertinent factors...