Bizarre new (would-be) customer experience attempting to attend form. The screenshots kind of say it all but for context:
1. Attempt to sign up to book a class with my credit I bought. Only waitlists, nothing reservable. That's a bummer, but also fine, good for them for being busy.
2. Don't hear back for days so I forget about it. Then I get an email at 6:30am with 1 hour notice saying I need to be there.
3. I lose my credit and they kinda act like I'm an idiot for not watching my email inbox at 6:30am and scheduling my life around this. Fine policy, but the way it was handled was unnecessarily adversarial..
I'm a local business owner myself. At the end of the day, either you view your customers in an adversarial view, or you aim to delight them. I'm quick to try and delight my customers in my business, as are most. If there's an edge case or miscommunication, I always cut them slack-- it pays you back 10 fold (financially but also in kindness). If you have to have a last minute waitlist policy like this because you're a small studio, it would be so easy to use this as a teaching opportunity for a new customer and be friendly about it. Instead, in exchange for the $20 bucks they kept from me, they've lost at least 2 customers for life (my wife and I). I'm not opposed to the policy really (though I'd be shocked if all these waitlists don't create more headaches than they cure), more-so the aggressive way they handle it.
Of the 25ish people I've told this story to in the neighborhood (Form's neighbors), none of them were like "oh yea that's a great way for a business to operate" so I don't think I'm crazy here but who knows. Ultimately, I was a newbie that didn't know a policy, didn't think there was a chance I'd get off the waitlist at that point, and had never dealt with a waitlist system before for a workout class-- instead of being cool about it they treated me like I'd messed up their scheduling system 20 times before this.
Update: after ghosting me I followed up and she sent a 1 line email back saying she'd ask the owner about giving me my credit, that was yesterday. No word since. Obviously I have no interest in taking a class here so it's moot at this point. read more