I am so disappointed with having to write this review, but after defending Water Sprites in online groups and going through my own hurdles with them, I feel the need to be authentic by sharing the full embodiment of my experience with this place. First, let's start with the good. Water Sprites is a local business and the woman who runs it, Hayley Clark, is something of a fixture in Chico. She knows everyone, it seems like, and she really is invested in her business. That much is clear. She is very friendly and can be very accommodating about scheduling, should the need arise. The facility is always very clean and the instructors are skilled at working with the students. The prices are very reasonable for weekly swim lessons.
Now, let's talk about the not-so-good, not ideal, and not necessarily bad but certainly not great. First and foremost, the teachers change, a LOT. We went to Water Sprites for about a year and in that time, cycled through four teachers. To be fair to the business, one of those changes was the result of us changing our designated swim time. Yet the other three had to do with internal juggling on the part of Water Sprites. The rotation of so many teachers in such a short time can be very destabilizing, especially for shy children (which mine are). It took several weeks to restore confidence that the new teacher could be just as helpful and nice as the one before her. Also, it seemed like the lessons always started several minutes early, even by their own clocks. I lost count of how many times I arrived a minute or two before the class was scheduled to start, and the other kids were already in the water, warming up. The class itself was always like a game of aquatic musical chairs; there was rarely consistency as to which students would be there.
Next, let's talk about the very undesirable. The customer service is just wretched, particularly on the administrative side. In the year we attended, my child only earned three ribbons (ribbons refer to the levels of advancement the child undergoes) and one of those was only rewarded after I questioned why, despite several months of clear improvement in my child, the lessons themselves did not reflect this improvement. The teacher checked the log and realized that my child had been awarded a ribbon months earlier, during a time when the school apparently didn't have any to hand out. They failed to write my child's birthday on the birthday board. This might sound like something petty, but think about how your kid would feel if they saw all their friends' names being included for their birthday, and not yours, and when you brought it to their attention, you were told, "Oh, that happens to the kids born at the end of the month a lot--I'm sure they'll get used to it." That's a pretty rotten attitude to justify leaving a little kid out in the cold. You could have just said, "Sorry to have left them out; I didn't mean to."
Finally, the absolutely bad and lousy. Unfortunately, customer service is not a strength of this place. While the people at the front desk are wizards at finding your bill and notifying you of the amount due before you're even at risk of paying late, they are not capable of doing much else. This includes, but is not limited to, giving the owner messages that you called, or knowing anything about billing beyond what you owe. For a variety of reasons, we made the decision to stop attending Water Sprites. It took more than three weeks to get a straight answer from anyone at the front as to what we needed to do to terminate the business relationship with Water Sprites because Hayley would not return our phone calls. It isn't just that she wouldn't return them; we were given specific deadlines under which she would call, and she just didn't. We ended up finally giving her notice via e-mail.
Sadly, in the months since this went down, I have found out we are not the only family who went through this. It seems like maybe something has been happening in the last year that has driven the quality down, because almost everyone I've spoken to who has had this experience has only been going to Water Sprites for the last year or so. Those that defend them and continue to stay with them have been present a lot longer. read more
