I joined SoulFlight in August of this year, thinking to treat myself to an exotic and interesting…read moreform of dance. I signed up a few weeks before leaving on a trip to Canada for a month. At the time they were having a promotion for classes. Initially, I thought to buy three classes but since they would only be valid for 45 days, I opted instead for 5 classes which I could take over 3 months. 5 classes cost 110 euros, so roughly 20 euros per class.
After arriving back from Canada, I did one class and it was fun. I thought to come and use the rest of my classes soon. However, as work caught up with me, I wasn't able to think about going to a class for another month. Then, as luck would have it, I injured myself and ended up in the hospital, barely able to move for the next two weeks. Finally, when I was better, I booked a class.
This is where things took a downward spiral. I showed up for the class and, as I was about to change into my dancing clothes, they lady at the desk informed me that all my classes had expired the day prior. As a concession she mentioned that she would give me this class for free.
Shocked, I said that I thought my classes were good until the end of the month. She confirmed that this was not true and that my three months we up. I told her that I was in Canada for a month and just in the hospital, and that I could bring these documents to prove my absence/inability to take classes. Instead, she decided to fight me tooth and nail.
Could she not simply give me credits for the remaining four classes I missed, if I provided proof of absence? She said no, absolutely not, because they couldn't take my payment 'out of the system' (whatever that is supposed to mean) and that she would have to pay her programmer to come and change my account to retroactively grant me credits. Are they supposed to do that specially for me, she asserted? (Jeez, I mean why would you do that, I am only a CUSTOMER). Besides that, why would you want a system that is so inflexible that you can't change accounts yourself? That every time you need to make a change to an account you need to pay your programmer? Sounds both fishy and backward.
She said that if I couldn't have come for lessons I should have phoned in and they could have paused my account. Funny, none of this is written anywhere on their website and no one said that to me before or after I bought the five classes, even though I told the person I purchased the classes from (which ironically, WAS HER) that I was leaving to go away for a month. So apparently this policy just appeared out of thin air while we were arguing.
I also mentioned that it would have been nice to have an end of contract email to have been sent to remind me that my classes were almost up, considering I work 10 to 12 hours a day and have a home life as well and wondering when my pole dance classes are going to expire is the last thing on my mind. She said this email does in fact get sent, however I have yet to see an email like this in my inbox or spam folder so I suppose that policy magically appeared out of thin air as well.
Even after telling her that this is incredibly bad customer service of her and that she would be losing me as a customer if she couldn't find a compromise, she wouldn't budge on the matter.
So, in the end I ended up paying 110 euros for one pole dancing class. That is pretty fricking brutal. The worst part is, I wasn't asking for a reimbursement. I was just asking for credits to be able to take my classes and some leniency. Just as a reminder, this is not a huge multi-million dollar corporate gym or franchise, this is a small business with the owner working the counter. There is really no excuse for this kind of unforgiving behaviour and terrible customer service.
Again, I would have accepted some sort of compromise, but none was even offered, aside for the one class that I was 'allowed' to take in that moment. This is Germany however, a place where customer service doesn't exist.
Of the top of my head, I can think of two good customer service compromises:
1. To bring in my proof of absence and give me to the end of the month to finish the last three classes.
2. To bring in proof of absence and allow me to finish the last three classes provided that I can only join a class 15 minutes prior to it starting, to make sure I am not taking someone else's place.
3. Allow me to take two of the three remaining classes on a credit basis, following one of the two options mentioned above.
Instead they lost a customer for life and gained a bad review. Enjoy the 110 euros.
