Core Issue
The founder later claimed this was "not a private lesson" and that we "did not accept his offer." In reality, we purchased a 20-class swim clinic -- structured group sessions with coaching, not private lessons. On the fifth practice day, the assigned coach said she had no capacity to teach. While our child could swim in the pool, no instruction was provided.
Triton never informed us that this would be unsupervised self-practice, nor was this ever part of the paid program. The "offer" the founder referred to was merely pool access without coaching -- fundamentally different from the service we paid for. By reframing this as us "declining group lessons," the founder shifted blame rather than addressing the central problem: the paid service was not delivered.
Service Delivery Failures
- Practice schedules were never proactively provided; they had to be repeatedly requested.
- On scheduled day, no coach was present.
- Canceled session came with no prior notice.
- On one day, a coach was assigned but stated she lacked the capacity to teach.
Coaching Mismatch & Lack of Alternatives
- We do not accept unsupervised sessions. During the phone conversation, the founder offered no alternative solutions (different coach, rescheduling, makeup session, etc.). He immediately jumped to offering a refund instead -- effectively acknowledging that the original promised service could not be fulfilled, while framing the situation as us being incorrect.
Communication & Professional Conduct Issues
- When requesting a refund, the founder responded flippantly, joking that we "did not understand the 72-hour rule."
- He also said he shared our messages with "coaches he has close relationships with," implying potential consequences for our child -- a veiled threat.
Refund Timeline & Broken Commitments
- The founder proposed multiple refund dates (Jan 17-18, then "Monday"), including weekends and holidays, which were not honored.
- On Sunday afternoon he stated the refund had been approved and would be sent via Zelle that evening. No payment arrived the next day. we were following up based on his own explicit time commitments . He attempted to use the weekend + holiday as an excuse, but every timeline mentioned was one he himself proposed. The refund was delayed despite Zelle being processed nearly instantaneous;
- After reviewing other comments, we discovered that other families also had to repeatedly follow up to receive refunds.
Operational & Administrative Issues
- The club functions as a one-man club with no dedicated administrative or billing support. We had to contact the coach directly about billing and refunds because no other point of contact existed.
- The refund was only processed efficiently because we provided fully organized documentation (Excel summary, PDFs, screenshots, ~100 English words in total), and heavily rely on other coach to intervene.
Tryout Issues
- At the tryout, we waited at the scheduled time and place. Fortunately, a coach came over, asked about our purpose, and kindly helped us to contact the founder on our behalf. The founder told the coach he couldn't come, but he never informed us he wouldn't attend.
- We later learned other families experienced the same lack of arrangements at tryouts -- this was not an isolated incident.
Conclusion
This level of accountability and professionalism is unacceptable, especially for a business representative who works with children. read more
