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Confrontation over fake online reviews caught on video at Michigan Planet Fitness

Posted at 8:40 PM, Aug 10, 2018
and last updated 2018-08-11 13:22:52-04

MOUNT CLEMENS, Mich. — Tempers flared at a Michigan gym, and the confrontation was caught on camera.

It started when Rachel Dixson says she went to get a new membership. After asking for a manager and resolving the situation, her information was violated, and her business attacked.

According Dixson, who signed up to work out and at the Planet Fitness on Groesbeck in Mount Clemens, Michigan, while she was tanning the employee that signed her up looked her up on the web, found out she owns a car dealership and started writing negative and vulgar reviews.

Video taken inside the Mount Clemens Planet Fitness Thursday shows Dixson confronting an employee.

She says it all started much earlier that morning when she went to sign up.

“It was my first time in the gym in a couple years, so I was pretty pumped and excited to work out,” says Dixson.

But there was a problem. Dixson says the employee helping her wouldn’t let her pay with a debit card or include tanning in the package.

She says her husband had paid before with the same card, so she asked for a manager.

“(The manager) said no problem,” Dixson says. “They took my payment. He helped me with the tanning. I went in the tanning bed, and I worked out.”

While she was doing that though, she says the employee was working on trying to ruin her business's reputation with negative reviews.

This is one example:

“She says this is absolute worst company in existence,” says Dixson. “You sell **** cars. Everything you do is backwards, and the owner Rachel is a ****ing ***** and I hope you die in one of your **** cars you ****ing c***.”

She was able to track down through Google reviews the name of who posted.

“I plugged her name on the search bar on Facebook, and I recognized her as the employee who helped me that morning at Planet Fitness,” Dixson says.

So she confronted her— cameras rolling.

“When I walked in, she was just looking at me, all of those emotions of feeling violated came out,” Dixson says.

The employee has a very different story of how this played out.

She says Rachel was incredibly rude, so she did post one Google review that was not vulgar, but she knew she was in the wrong and deleted it an hour later.

She says she apologized and quit as well but was terrified during that confrontation.

Planet Fitness issued the following statement to WXYZ:

We are aware of the incident that took place at our Mt. Clemens franchised location and this type of behavior is not acceptable at Planet Fitness. We can confirm that the staff member in question is no longer employed by the franchisee.