Five years ago, Christy Mack crossed a threshold familiar to a lot of deskbound Americans. Looking for a way to stay fit, she signed up for a half marathon, her first ever, in Portland, Oregon, and discovered that along with her medal, souvenir T-shirt, and sore muscles came a $64.95 fee for something called Active Network.

Mack didn鈥檛 remember signing up for anything but the privilege to run, and聽after a year of determining the value of the membership鈥攚hich includes members-only gear deals and discounted hotel rates and eliminates processing fees with the company鈥攕he decided she didn鈥檛 want it. So Mack started planning for her next race, swallowed the charge, canceled the membership, and stowed the memory in the back of her head.

Flash forward to June, when Mack was once again about to sign up for a race through Active. She was now a seasoned customer, having run 11 other half marathons in the five years聽since she got into the sport (none of which offered registration via Active Network).

Along with a target time, she also had a new goal: Don鈥檛 get screwed again. Mack thought she was just the kind of person who could avoid the membership fee she had been stuck with before. 鈥淚 do online marketing for a tech startup,鈥� she says. 鈥淚鈥檓 ultra-aware of legal language and hidden fees.鈥� To make sure she was prepared, she even set up a handful of checks and balances, including an alert to warn her if there was any unusual activity on her credit card, which is why she was surprised when the buzz of her cellphone woke her up at 4 a.m.

鈥淥h my gosh,鈥� she thought after seeing that she had once again been billed for the company鈥檚 $64.95 membership fee. 鈥淚 can鈥檛 believe I鈥檓 getting charged for this again!鈥�

What happened to Mack is an example of a problem familiar to many runners, bikers, golfers, and anyone else in America who signs up online for an event on . Since its founding in San Diego in 1999, the company聽has quickly grown into聽something like the Ticketmaster of the outdoors.聽

Active鈥檚 business is relatively simple: For a fee, it handles the mundane tasks like registration that event organizers and city and state parks departments prefer to outsource. According to its competitors, Active鈥檚 ability to smooth out these potential administrative speed bumps has turned it into the industry鈥檚 leader. It鈥檚 an event sign-up giant that processes nearly 90 million annual transactions, handles half of the major road races in America, helps organize the White House鈥檚 annual easter egg hunt, and just began making聽inroads in China鈥檚 burgeoning marathon scene, smog be damned. But聽that growth has come with a reputation.

Mack鈥檚 first instinct after seeing the new Active Network charge was to go straight to Google. There, after typing in 鈥淎ctive Network scam,鈥� she discovered she wasn鈥檛 alone in her anger. At the moment, Mack is but one of 68 customers who have given Active a . 鈥淗ow is this company still in business???鈥� she wailed. and currently lists 343 complaints lodged against the business in the past three years, most of them along the same lines as Mack鈥檚: I didn鈥檛 know I was being charged for this, and now I want to be reimbursed.聽

In September 2013, the Iowa for what it deemed as 鈥渟tealth enrollments.鈥� As part of the settlement, Active was able to deny liability even while refunding some 9,500 Iowans for unwanted charges. The company did ; it must clearly disclose membership fees to would-be membership purchasers and contact Iowa consumers who fail to use any of their membership benefits at least once every 12 months.

This type of consumer complaint is something of a specialty for , an associate professor at Harvard who spends a decent part of his time, as he puts it, 鈥渇lagging numerous deceptive advertising practices.鈥� As an experiment, I went through the same online sign-up process as Mack and then asked Edelman to review all of the resulting legalese. After asking what size T-shirt I wanted and my average finishing time for past marathons, Active presented me with a box and asked me to check it to agree to its waiver. When I clicked on the link provided, a pop-up window appeared containing little text and yet another link. That led to another separate window, in which I found, finally, the company鈥檚 terms of service. Combined, the two agreements came to a total of 13,814 words. Edelman couldn鈥檛 find anything about a membership or yearly fee. 鈥淚 call that an unauthorized charge,鈥� he says.

For as careful as Mack thought she had been, she did miss something. At the very end of her sign-up process, she says, she was asked to reenter her email address. Somewhere on that screen, she now thinks, was a prechecked box, known in the industry as an auto opt-in, which amounted to her agreeing to begin a free 30-day trial that would cease to be free when the month was up. Next, she received three emails, which she briefly scanned. Sandwiched between two confirmations was one congratulating her on her new membership.

鈥淚 still got screwed over,鈥� she says. 鈥淥bviously, I am going to open the emails that contain my receipt and confirmation and skip over the promotion.鈥� The sheer volume of complaints similar to hers suggest many do the same.

Mack isn鈥檛 entirely dismissive of Active. She says she鈥檚聽run other races that were smaller and didn鈥檛 offer quite the same streamlined checkout service. 鈥淭here鈥檚 definitely a benefit to going to [the site],鈥� she says. 鈥淭he experience is superior, right up until the very end.鈥� Some of Active鈥檚 competitors agree. None would talk on the record, but all expressed a mixture of envy and annoyance at the company鈥檚 success. According to them, auto opt-ins are uncommon in the industry, precisely because they lead to the kind of confusion and anger that鈥檚 been directed at Active online. Some even said that race organizers who had left Active told them it was because of the sheer volume of complaints鈥攃omplaints just like Mack鈥檚. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e definitely got a reputation for pissing people off,鈥� says the head of one suchcompetitor.

With that sort of notoriety, it鈥檚 natural to wonder how Active got so big so quickly. A simple online search makes plain that one key to Active鈥檚 growth has had nothing to do with customer service and everything to do with its willingness to buy up the competition. The include dozens of articles announcing Active鈥檚 latest purchases, dating back to start of the previous decade.

Active refused to offer any insight into how it does business. When pressed for details, a corporate spokesperson directed me to the company鈥檚 online factsheet. When asked if any executives would be willing to speak with me, he said, 鈥淣ot at this time.鈥� Because the company wouldn鈥檛 talk about its growth strategy or its habit of billing people for things they didn鈥檛 know they had signed up for, it鈥檚 hard to say what might motivate Active to continue a practice that has led to so many pissed-off customers and a near-toxic rating on sites like Yelp. The only thing we can be sure of is how that plan has paid off. Last November, Active went from being the publicly traded pursuer to the pursued when it to a private equity firm. The price tag: $1.05 billion.聽

As for people like Mack, the lesson is simple: Avoid registration companies known to use membership auto opt-ins, always closely review prechecked boxes, and look at on-site registration options. Considering how big Active has become and how many different events it now handles鈥攏ot only in the United States but worldwide鈥擜ctive may soon be unavoidable for anyone looking to sign up online for an outdoorsy activity. 鈥淚 may have to deal with them again,鈥� Mack says, 鈥渂ut I guess now I鈥檒l at least be prepared.鈥�

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