The Silence Index
How often are mold complaints simply never answered? The Silence Index counts it — per gym, per chain, per agency — starting with the founding case: 14 complaints and filings, zero substantive responses.
Every mold complaint has two halves. The first half is the mold. The second half is what happens when somebody reports it — and that half, almost everywhere, is nothing. A complaint goes to the front desk and dies there. Or to a review site, where it sits alone and uncounted. Or to an agency, which passes it to another agency, which has no mandate, which suggests a third. Each complaint dies by itself, in a separate drawer, and because they are never counted together, the silence never has to be explained.
The Silence Index counts the silence. For every gym, chain, and agency we track, it records three numbers: how many complaints or reports were filed, how many received a substantive response, and what percentage were simply never answered. One unanswered complaint is a story. A counted record of unanswered complaints is evidence — of a pattern no single filer could prove alone.
This index starts with one case: our founder’s. In August 2024, Thomas Bowman filed with the gym, its parent company, and every Florida agency a citizen is told to file with. The founding table below is that record — the gym’s public BBB file beside his own documented filings — because it is the whole problem in miniature: 14 complaints and filings. Zero substantive responses.
And here is the part that makes the zeros structural rather than personal: the silence is legal. There is no mold mandate — no law requiring an agency to inspect a gym sauna, order a test, or even answer the person who filed. Silence costs the silent nothing, because no rule says it should cost them anything. This index counts the silence. The mandate that would end it does not exist yet — the comparison shows what other countries wrote instead, and the petitions are how the rule gets written here.
How to read these numbers — methodology. Every row carries a source label, and the labels are not interchangeable:
- PUBLIC RECORD — figures taken from a public source (here, the Better Business Bureau’s published complaints record for each location, checked 2026-10-14 and linked from the row). BBB counts cover its rolling 3-year window. These are BBB’s numbers, not ours.
- FOUNDING CASE RECORD — our founder’s own documented account of his August 2024 filings: his video record, his filings, and his recovered original complaint email. It is one man’s paper trail, labeled as exactly that.
- INTAKE REPORTS — numbers reported by filers through this site’s Report It center. These are always shown as reported, never as findings, and they appear only after review (see the threshold rule below).
“Answered” means a substantive response — an inspection, a test, a determination, a corrective action, or a written reply that addresses the substance of the complaint. A referral to another office, a pass-off, or a bare acknowledgment does not count as answered. Where an office did make some contact — the Volusia County health department’s verbal “there is no mandate for saunas,” for example — the row’s note says so, in plain language, so you can judge the count for yourself.
Counts are dated snapshots, not vibes. Every figure carries an “as of” date. When a number changes — a complaint gets answered, a deadline passes — the row is updated and re-dated, never quietly edited.
Two rows are the gym’s public BBB record (every complaint, any topic — BBB’s published figures). Two are the founder’s own direct complaints about the sauna. Different sources, same result.
| Entity | Filed | Answered | Silence | Time to response | Source |
|---|
Gold's Gym — Daytona Beach — Daytona Beach, FL
Operator: Next Level Health, LLC
BBB grade: F
BBB complaints record for this location (rolling 3-year window): 4 complaints filed, 0 answered — BBB's own stated reason for the F grade is 'failure to respond to 4 complaint(s)'. The 2024-08-09 complaint is the sauna-mold filing. BBB customer reviews are a separate bucket (0 published) and never affect the grade. | 4 | 0 | 100% | No response to any of the 4. The oldest — the 2024-08-09 sauna-mold complaint — has been waiting over two years. | PUBLIC RECORD
as of 2026-10-14
Source → |
Gold's Gym — Ormond Beach — Ormond Beach, FL
Operator: Laward Fitness, LLC
BBB grade: D-
BBB complaints record for this location (rolling 3-year window): 2 complaints filed, 0 answered — BBB's stated reason for the D- grade is failure to respond to 2 complaints. Both displayed complaints are billing/cancellation grievances; no mold complaint is displayed on this profile (BBB warns displayed complaints may not represent all filings). This row measures the location's complaint-response record, which is the pattern the founding case ran into at the sister club. | 2 | 0 | 100% | No response to either complaint; the oldest dates to 2024-05-06. | PUBLIC RECORD
as of 2026-10-14
Source → |
Gold's Gym — the club, its owners & corporate (direct complaint) — Daytona Beach, FL
Operator: Next Level Health, LLC / Gold's Gym corporate
Aug 8, 2024: Thomas Bowman emailed the club and corporate (info@goldsgymfl.com, communications@goldsgym.com) with his sauna test results — Chaetomium, Aspergillus, and Nigrospora spp. from a consumer kit — demanding the sauna be closed and professionally tested, the results released, and his membership cancelled and refunded. No reply was ever received. The original email was recovered intact from his own mailbox archive in Oct 2026 and is on file with this site. | 1 | 0 | 100% | No response ever received — 26 months and counting as of Oct 2026. | FOUNDING CASE RECORD
as of 2026-10-14 |
RSG Group (Gold's Gym's parent company)
Aug 2024: Thomas addressed RSG Group's CEOs by name in a public video message (Part #2, Aug 14, 2024) and contacted the company directly. Per his documented account, no one from RSG Group or Gold's Gym ever contacted him at all — not the club, not the franchise owners, not corporate. | 1 | 0 | 100% | No response ever received — 26 months and counting as of Oct 2026. | FOUNDING CASE RECORD
as of 2026-10-14 |
Every Florida office the founder filed with in August 2024, from his documented record. Each was asked, in effect, the same question: is anyone responsible for this?
| Entity | Filed | Answered | Silence | Time to response | Source |
|---|
Florida Attorney General — Tallahassee, FL
Complaint filed Aug 2024 (office of Attorney General Ashley Moody at the time). Per the filer's documented account, the office passed the complaint off to another department; no action, determination, or outcome was ever communicated back to him. | 1 | 0 | 100% | No substantive response — 26 months and counting as of Oct 2026. | FOUNDING CASE RECORD
as of 2026-10-14 |
Governor of Florida — Tallahassee, FL
Complaint filed Aug 2024 and a Change.org petition to Gov. Ron DeSantis asking for a health-department sauna-inspection mandate. Per the filer's documented account, the Governor's office passed it to a department; no response to the complaint or the petition was ever communicated to him. | 1 | 0 | 100% | No substantive response — 26 months and counting as of Oct 2026. | FOUNDING CASE RECORD
as of 2026-10-14 |
FDACS — Florida Dept. of Agriculture & Consumer Services — Tallahassee, FL
Complaint filed Aug 2024 — FDACS case 2408-01846 (confirmed from the agency file; the filer had recorded the number on camera only in part). FDACS forwarded the complaint to the business, which replied inside the agency file (Sept. 9, 2024) claiming a test showed no mold — on one tape-lift sample from a single bench-leg stain whose own lab sheet detected Penicillium/Aspergillus-type spores. No determination, letter, or copy of any of it ever reached the complainant. FDACS is the agency that registers Florida 'health studios' — a registration covering contracts and money, not sanitation. | 1 | 0 | 100% | No substantive response — 26 months and counting as of Oct 2026. | FOUNDING CASE RECORD
as of 2026-10-14 |
Florida Dept. of Health — Volusia County — Volusia County, FL
Contacted Aug 2024. The department did answer one question: it told the filer directly that there is no mandate and no rules for saunas, that it had no power to swab or inspect, and it suggested code enforcement. That answer is recorded here in full — but no inspection, test, written determination, or any action on the sauna followed, so under this index's published definition (a substantive response to the complaint itself) the row counts as unanswered. | 1 | 0 | 100% | A verbal answer in Aug 2024 ('no mandate'); no written response, inspection, or determination — ever. | FOUNDING CASE RECORD
as of 2026-10-14 |
Daytona Beach Code Enforcement — Daytona Beach, FL
Complaint made in Aug 2024, on the health department's referral. The officer was named on camera by the filer (Denzil Sykes). Per the filer's documented account: no response at all by Aug 16, 2024 — and none since. | 1 | 0 | 100% | No response of any kind — 26 months and counting as of Oct 2026. | FOUNDING CASE RECORD
as of 2026-10-14 |
Florida DBPR — Dept. of Business & Professional Regulation — Tallahassee, FL
Complaint filed Aug 2024. Per the filer's documented account, DBPR's only step was sending a letter to the gym's owners; what that letter said and whether the owners replied was never communicated to him, and no outcome followed that he was ever told of. | 1 | 0 | 100% | No substantive response communicated — 26 months and counting as of Oct 2026. | FOUNDING CASE RECORD
as of 2026-10-14 |
How this index grows
The founding table is one case in one state. The index exists to become thousands of cases in fifty states — and it grows only one way: people filing, and the filings being followed up.
- Every Report Mold filing feeds it. When you file through the Report It center, your report records which facility and which agencies you complained to — and what they did. After review, verified filings roll up into that entity’s row.
- The 14-day follow-up keeps it honest. Two weeks after a filing, the reporter is asked one question: did anyone respond? A “yes” updates the row with a response and a response time. A “no” is data too — it is, in fact, the data this index is named for.
- A threshold before any percentage. An entity earns a published percentage from intake reports only at 5 or more verified reports. Below that, filings are told as individual stories, never dressed up as statistics — one report can prove a mold problem was reported; it cannot prove a response rate. (Public-record figures like BBB’s are already public and are shown with their source, whatever the count.)
- The founding rows are live, not history. The founder has prepared a follow-up round for every party in the table above, each letter carrying a 30-day response deadline once sent and notice that the reply — or the silence — will be published here; the letters go out on his approval. Every answer updates a row: answered count, response time, new date. Every deadline that passes unanswered is recorded the same way. The clock is part of the record now.
- Public records get re-checked. BBB figures are re-snapshotted on the same cadence as Gym Watch’s Review Watch, appended and dated — never silently overwritten.
What “no row yet” means
Most gyms, chains, landlords, and agencies in America have no row in this index yet. Read that correctly: it means no filing has been counted — not that nothing happened, and not that anyone answered. The silence this index measures is, by its nature, the kind that leaves no record. The only cure for an empty row is a filed report. If it happened to you, put it on the record — that is the entire reason this site exists.