Great staff and facilities - but crowded, expensive and borderline scammy…read more
If you read all the 4- and 5-star reviews on here who talk about the staff and facilities, they're right. The staff are awesome, though I've only ever worked with Shamir. He's patient and understanding, and he drives his classes hard (which is good). After class he'll sit and talk to people about their experiences and offer advice.
I'm only giving it 3 stars because of the crowd, the pricing, and the cancellation policy.
To be fair, I go to the Sunday afternoon class, but it's so crowded that you often touch the people next to you when you're doing a wide pose. It's nearly wall-to-wall people. Plus all the additional people make the room even hotter and more humid. I almost passed out last class and went through my entire 32oz water bottle. People were dropping out of the poses like flies.
The costs are nuts. A drop-in class and towel/mat rental come to 275dkk... for an hour-long class. Maybe this is standard for hot yoga in Denmark, but it felt unreasonable to me.
I signed up for the membership thinking it would be cheaper, per class. I see other reviews about a 14-day trial period, but I wasn't offered that. The once-per-week class is ~480 and I bought my own mat at Tiger. The mats they have there are expensive - I remember the towels they have running 400dkk but forget the mat purchase price.
And lastly, the cancellation. I'm moving to another gym because work gives me a discount. There is a cancellation fee at HYC of 89dkk, AND you must pay for another month. I was not told this when I signed up for the membership, because I assumed they would be more customer-friendly. So it's almost the end of August, and I have to pay for all of September as well. I went back and asked for my membership to end at the end of August (since I didn't know if have to pay for an extra month), and the email reply was like "I'm sorry you were unaware of our cancellation policy." ...ARE you sorry? I feel like there's no technical reason for them to be unable to end my membership in August, right? I mean you just hit a key and it's done. They have it specifically built that you must wait a month. It's very frustrating.
Either way, I suppose I'll ride out my month and keep sweating it out before I say goodbye.