Membership fee?

So we paid off one of our credit cards last month that we have had a balance on for a long time and today I get a bill for $45.50?? So i call the credit card company and ask what it is and they tell me it's my membership fee! What?!?! Have I been paying $45.50 on top of the ridiculous interest every year!! I told the guy to please cancel my account, and that I do not want to pay any membership fee! Luckily he was very nice and did it without any problem. We have 3 other credit cards with this company(2 have a balance and 1 doesn't) so I asked him to check and see if they all have membership fees. He tells me that the one we don't have a balance on does not, and neither does the one we owe the most money on, but the other one we owe a few hundred on has a $125 membership fee!!! That's insane!! I need to get that paid off and cancelled ASAP! I'm not sure how we are going to do it yet because we already have a payment set up for 8/28 to pay off another credit card(YAY) but we will find a way because I will NOT pay $125 just to have a credit card! Believe me we have enough other ones that we won't miss these 2!