One of many marketing flyers from Catalyst Fitness littering the streets in Virginia-Highland.
Update 1 (June 6, 2011): The owner of Catalyst Fitness posted in the comment section of this article, below.
Update 2 (June 12, 2011): One week later, there are still numerous flyers from Catalyst Fitness littering the streets of the neighborhood, see update and photos at bottom of article.
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In the “bad neighbor” files, Catalyst Fitness plastered these marketing flyers on cars throughout the Virginia-Highland residential neighborhood this past weekend during Virginia-Highland Summerfest.
It shall be unlawful for any person, without the consent of the owner or person in charge of a motor vehicle which is parked on a public street, to place on or inside that parked motor vehicle any placard, handbill, card or advertising matter.
These flyers are now all over the streets in the neighborhood, creating a lot of litter.
We’d like to see Catalyst Fitness stop this illegal (and obnoxious) marketing practice. And we want the company to send out a crew today to pick up all the litter it created across the neighborhood.
Finally, to all readers: please do not do business with Catalyst until the company demonstrates it cares more about the neighborhood it does business in. Please help spread the word with your neighbors.
Catalyst Fitness has not returned calls seeking comment. We will update this story when and if the company returns calls.
Illegal marketing flyer from Catalyst Fitness placed on cars in Virginia-Highland this past weekend.
Update 2 (June 12, 2011):
One week later, there are still numerous flyers from Catalyst Fitness littering the streets of the neighborhood. During my walk this morning, I saw these flyers on the street on St. Charles, from Ponce Place to N. Highland.
My feeling is that if Catalyst Fitness successfully placed illegal flyers on cars throughout the neighborhood, the business should put the same amount of focus, energy and time to remove the litter that it has created.
Ideally, Catalyst should walk the entire neighborhood and clean up all their flyers and not rely on residents to contact the company every time we see the flyers littering a street.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
This marketing flyer litter has been seen this morning placed on cars… and on the streets and sidewalks… on the following streets:
Adair
Drewry
Greenwood
Highland Ave
Highland View
Ponce de Leon Place
Rupley
Virginia Circle
If you see these on another street not yet listed, please comment here.
If we don’t hear back from the company by end of business today, we’ll get in touch with City of Atlanta and ask the city to issue a citation to the business.
Add Elmwood Dr to your list
Catalyst Fitness would like to apologize to Virginia Highland Residents for any litter that was generated as the result of our distribution of marketing fliers this past Saturday during Summerfest . We received the complaint that David Eckoff placed on our Facebook page on Sunday evening at 5 pm and as a result sent 4 of our staff members out this morning (Monday – June 6) to pick up fliers on the streets that are listed above. We will continue to send staff out to remedy this situation. We encourage any resident that finds a flier that we have missed to please e-mail us at info@catalystfitness.com or call us at [edit's note: corrected phone number is 404.856.0513] and we will send someone out immediately to your street to do right by our mistake. We will make certain in the future that this type of distribution of our fliers never happens again.
Catalyst Fitness is a strong supporter of the Virginia-Highlands community both in our efforts through raising money for the New Virginia-Highland Park and many other donations made to Non-profits and Schools throughout our community.
Valorie Ness
Catalyst Fitness, Owner
Mr. Eckoff,
First of all, thank you for posting our response. We appreciate your allowing us to remedy this. We are closed on Sundays and did not get your voicemail until after you had posted your article. We also realize that we posted an incorrect phone number and want to ensure that anyone wanting to reach us can do so. Our correct number is 404.856.0513.
Thank you,
Valorie Ness
Catalyst Fitness Owner
Valorie, thank you for sharing your updates.
Thank you also for sending staff out to remove flyers from streets, sidewalks and cars.
And thank you for your commitment to not do this type of distribution of the company’s fliers in the future.
Much appreciated.
In spite of Catalyst’s cleanup efforts – I still managed to pick up a good dozen or so flyers on my rather short trash walk this morning. I suspect we will be finding them for some time yet as they continually get scattered by the wind and vehicular traffic.
This is absolutely ridiculous. In a down economy this business is simply trying to survive. Graciously using some of the procedes for charity.
If any of you had a shred of decency you’d bend over and pick up the trash yourself… Or are you too lazy to have that much decency?