Peilin Pratt
January 23, 2019 17:28
As a small business owner myself, I covet reviews and take each one personally and seriously. This is why I do everything I can to resolve any issues directly with a business before writing a bad review. And I try really hard not to write bad reviews.
While I really wanted my daughter to learn martial arts - for self-confidence, protection, strength . . . she unfortunately, begged me to stop (see reasons below). I reached out to my contact Andres at Elite both via email and text requesting our membership be cancelled (after waiting the obligatory 6 months of our contract commitment). After no response, I emailed again twice - all the while being charged $65/ month upfront - 2 weeks before the actual month of service even begins (is that legal?).
Today, I finally reached out to the company again and tried another contact at Elite, Olivia. To her credit, Olivia got back to me right away and told me Andres was no longer at the company - I asked her why there was no auto-reply stating he was no longer there. Unfortunately, she provided no explanation or apology.
I explained I tried to text and email Andres multiple times and never got any sort of response he was no longer with the company. I told her I have paid $260 worth of fees while waiting for a response from Andres.
All Olivia offered was that she could cancel my membership today but that there was "nothing she could do" about all the other charges . . . no offer to meet in middle, cover some of my costs, nothing - all the while saying "we are doing everything we can" - a truly disingenuous statement.
What Olivia did was blame me that I didn't try to contact anyone else. I told Olivia that Andres was always my contact at Elite and it was not my job to "figure out" he was no longer there when both his work email and text was working.
While I would have understood if Olivia said, "you know, I cannot refund you all of the $260, but here's what we can do . . . let's meet in the middle since we both had some responsibility here". Sadly, there was no effort to take any ownership in the situation. I mean, the first thing I do when an employee leaves my company is have his/her work emails forwarded to an existing employee - I don't expect a customer to know what employees are here or not.
And as for why my 11-year old daughter begged to stop taking classes at Elite:
(1) She was always paired up with boys who where rough and rowdy. She said she often felt very uncomfortable - often having a boy pin her down or literally sit on her.
(2) I would receive texts from Elite saying my daughter was "ready to test" so she could move up to the next belt. Even though the test takes place DURING class (a class for which I already paid) it costs $50. I asked why did we have to pay an additional $50 if the test is during class and the explanation was - it's "for belts and certificates" (Really? A belt is $3 and a paper certificate - $0.10? That's a 1,500% markup!). The irony is that even after your child passes the test and gets a higher belt, she still stays in the same large class.
(3) There was very little supervision of "problem kids" and much of my daughter's class time was being disrupted by kids not paying attention without any no process to address these behavioral issues.
(4) Class size is much too large and children of all levels are lumped together . . . even after kids pass multiple tests.
I noticed all the positive reviews are from adults and not parents of children taking classes . . . perhaps Elite is great for adults but my child did not enjoy it.