When you decide to join a new health club it’s a big decision, a big investment and you do so with excitement and positivity at least I did. In my case I paid £141 joining fee with a monthly commitment of £82 per month for an off peak membership, restricted hours after 2pm at weekends and from 11am - 4pm during the week. For me I wanted to work out during the quieter club times.
I had a really good impression of David Lloyd clubs, I been a member at Hampton, Twickenham a few years ago which had been a great experience so when my friend said she wanted to join David Lloyd in Narborough and asked if I was up for it I said sure let’s do it.
We joined on Saturday and by Tuesday, having experienced the club for three days, we knew it wasn’t for us. We had read we had a 2 week get out clause, a cooling off period and could have carried on going for the whole of the trial period, that’s not us though so we immediately went on the app, sent the necessary messages to the sales team, explaining the experience, our reasons for cancelling and politely asking for the refund, expecting to receive it with alacrity.
What happened during the three days isn’t important, personal preferences and expectations are different for everyone, my problem was I’d been a member at a different David Lloyd club and very simply this one just wasn’t like the other one in any way.
What I think people should know is what happened when we tried to cancel the memberships with 5 or 6 very solid reasons. Reasons and feedback that any good business you’d expect to accept humbly and apologise.
Not so within the David Lloyd sales team who argued the fact, didn’t accept our very valid reasons for opting out and an unpleasant pushy conversation ended with us being told we were being charged for PT sessions where the personal trainer hadn’t turned up.
It took an insistence of speaking to Kristine, the club manager at David Lloyd Narborough to get the refund processed, not in it’s entirety, the cooling off period didn’t mean money back in full, we discovered after the fact. We were each charged pro rata for the three days we attended when more things went wrong than right.
The most shocking part of the dialogue with the sales person assigned to keep us onboard whatever it took was when we told him in a final bid to recover our money and cancel the memberships after only 3 days, other club members were complaining about ongoing problems at the club, his reply was “Well they are still sitting in the Jacuzzi.”
I don’t want to give any company, this one owned by TDR Capital a leading European private equity firm based in London and St Helier Jersey, whose staff has such little regard and contempt for their customers, my business.
We suggested more focus on better business and less focus on advertising and aggressively signing people up would make for greater long term success, and happy club members would create a better ambiance for new members should things go wrong.
We did get our money back eventually but it was a fight we didn’t want or expect.
This rant isn’t to stop people joining David Lloyd Narborough or any David Lloyd club, like I said I loved being a member in Hampton just a cautionary tale and warning if you are new and not 100% sure it’s for you. Don’t take a class (if you can book one) and don’t take advantage of a free PT session unless you are ready to pay over the odds should you cool off within the two weeks and wish to opt out of your commitment for whatever reason.