Swim Opiniones 62

We have been with swim for a number of years but have found the quality of lessons to no longer be of standard. Our daughter progressed well enough in Swim 1, but since going to Swim 2 her progress stalled. The lessons at times have had more than 6 kids in there (sometimes 7-8) and also some lessons have started 5 minutes late and a lesson recently even ended a couple of minutes early (despite starting late and being oversubscribed). Our daughter made more progress with her us in a weekend in Centre Parks than she has in months at swim. The oversubscribed lessons and late starts/early finishes were the final straw and the service is no longer worth the rather expensive monthly fee.

My sons attended Swim in Oldham and I couldn’t recommend it at all. There was one good teacher who sadly left and the only reason we stuck it out as long as we did.

The lessons are expensive. The teachers change so often that it’s hard for your child to progress. The progress is then very slow. There was a lot of inconsistencies with the teaching. I felt a lot of the lesson wasn’t spent actually swimming and they rarely did a length of the pool.

Staff told me that my son was ready to move up in the next couple of weeks, waited weeks and weeks for somebody to do the assessment only to be told he wasn’t ready to move up. Caused lots of disappointment for my son, and surely the teacher should have been helping to make sure he passed the assessment.

Even after expressing concerns to the management on several occasions there was no improvement. I’m
Sad to think of how much money I’ve wasted considering one of my sons is still unable to swim independently despite all the lessons 😩
I would avoid attending lessons at swim.

My son is 6. He attends the Oldbury centre which I cancelled yesterday. My advise to other parents is do not take your child here. The teachers are constantly changed that we have gone through 5 teachers in 12 months and no progress in his ability to swim. When my son started his lessons with Swim! he was happy to be in the pool but now he hates it, which is disappointing. The last straw was when he had a new teacher who paid more attention to the capable child and my son was paid little attention to the point he actually ended up sinking and being helped by another teacher!!! And there I was thinking they are meant to be developing confidence but unfortunately we had an opposite experience.

I suffered a Christine burn and my 4 month old daughter came out in a rash. I raised this and was told that we could cancel without paying anything else. However they went and took a direct debit out as even though we required medical assistance from 111, we were not entitled to a refund

Our 5-year-old daughter started swimming lessons at this place in Oldham two months ago, and we set up a direct debit as required. Towards the end of the second month, she started getting really upset and said she didn’t want to go anymore, she was crying and clearly not enjoying it.

We spoke with her to try and understand why she didn’t want to go, and through tears she simply said, “I don’t like it.” It was obvious she was distressed, so we decided it was best not to continue.

We cancelled the direct debit five days before the next payment was due and let them know she wouldn’t be coming back. But we were told the payment would still be taken because we were supposed to give 30 days’ notice.

We spoke to the manager and explained everything – how are you meant to give a month’s notice when your child suddenly becomes upset and refuses to go back? It didn’t feel fair at all to be charged for a full month of lessons she wouldn’t even be attending.

The manager even said we’d need a ‘valid reason’ to be considered for a refund – but surely a young child being distressed and in tears is a valid enough reason? There was no empathy or understanding, and they didn’t want to know.

Even if our daughter wants to try swimming again in future, we won’t be returning to this place in Oldham. Poor customer service and an inflexible, unsympathetic approach. Really disappointing.

Terrible experience and still ongoing at Chatham location.
First visit, there was zero staff around to welcome or explain what to do or where to go.
Had to wait 2 months for a correct colour swim hat.
Floors are constantly filthy, after 3 months they finally provided shoe covers, but fail to enforce them.
Never any staff on front desk.
Toilets filthy and constantly have run out of toilet roll.
Hair dryers hardly ever in service. Usually half broken with long queue to use them.
Ceiling tiles all missing for weeks with cables and extractor fans all exposed in roof.
Once passing to level 3 the new teacher seemed disinterested and barely paid any attention to daughter who attending.
Asked to cancel membership on front desk and was told 30 days notice, despite the poor service they refused to budge on this.
Management not willing to accept the cancellation.
Would not recommend swim to anyone.

My son has been going to St Ambrose in Hale Barnes for over a year and having moved him to another company this week can honestly say I don’t think he has progressed in that time.

1. He has had over 10 different teachers in one year giving him no consistency.

2. They cordon the pool off info different areas and he has been in the same tiny area the whole time. He can easily swim a full width but only gets to swim for 2ish meters at a time due to the way they section the pool off.

3. We have not received any progress updates and had to ask them to assess him because we felt like he wasn’t making any progress. We were then told that he should be moving up to the next class in a couple of weeks. That was 6 months ago and nothing has changed.

4. Their customer service is shocking. They regularly cancel lessons last minute even within an hour of it starting. Often the cancellation is because there is a school event. Why they can’t give better notice is beyond me.

5. The worst bit is if they cancel a lesson you have to ask for a refund…!!!!

Don’t even give it a go

This company is dreadful at customer service. If they cancel a lesson you have to ask for a refund and stalling tactics and delays are very accomplished. In addition if you have any issues then you can ring no one and the email responses are poor and slow. It’s a bit embarrassing it’s owned by what are supposed to be UK icons and pillars of the community and UK sport. The children progress very slow at swimming and are held back if the classes above are not empty. Shameful for Rebecca Adlington and Chris Hoy I think. Still waiting for a refund or anything and my daughter has a serious fracture in her back. Could really do with some customer service training. All about the money.

Having started at Puddle ducks my son was flying however we couldn't make the days for the next group so swapped to Swim! Terrible mistake in over a year no progress all he was taught was kicking his legs and a doggy paddle with his arms in a small section of the pool. I've wasted a year. Now moved to Batley swim and tennis centre and already in lesson one he's been taught breaststroke legs and so much more swimming in a larger pool. The teachers are on the side whereas in Swim in the pool so you can't see the demos. Wish I had changed sooner. I'm gutted and so disappointed with this company. If your child is a natural swimmer they will fly through the groups. But if they need help with teaching points you won't get it here as there is no personalisation at all.

To be fair, the teachers are ok. They're mostly collage-age teenagers who are trying their best. There are 6-8 kids in a class, which often means the nervous or naughty children distract the teacher so much the rest of the children spend most of their time just bobbing round in the water.
The real problem is the company itself, they are impossible to get through to on the phone and response to email is patchy. The company is set up in a way to extract as much money as possible from parents who just want their kids to be safe in the water.
If a lesson is cancelled by them (which they frequently are) you don't automatically get a refund, you have to fill in a form to apply for it. They don't actually tell you this, it took me two emails to get hold of the form to request a refund. Then, when I did fill it in, they then emailed me several more times to confirm the information I'd filled in on the form, including an email to ask me what my email address is (??). If this goes beyond 30 days, you don't get the refund because you've missed the deadline
If you want to leave, you have to give 30 days' notice from the next direct debit, so if you time it wrong, it ends up as 8 more weeks you're tied in. If you cancel the direct debit, they cancel all classes, even the ones you've paid for.
Oh, and the changing rooms and toilets are filthy.

The lessons are more expensive than you'd pay at a local leisure centre, but the service is absolutely dreadful. I only wish I had left sooner.

Don't answer emails, don't update progress, constant changes in teachers and impossible targets, 400 metres for 9-10 year olds is excessive, would be impossible to complete all levels

Level of incompetence of the front desk is appaling! At first , they struggled to put down correct details down when signing up , then direct debit issues because yet again they are not capable of putting the details down correctly. THEY DONT ANSWER THE PHONE ! LEFT ME VOICEMAIL ON THURSDAY LAST WEEK, I RANG BACK , LEFT VOICEMAIL NO CALL BACK MADE.

Massive chaos in changing rooms. Extremely badly organised it is actually embarassing. It's filthy.
30 minutes lesson for £50 and there is not much attention paid to childrens skills, they play more than they teach them . Extremely small area to swim for children to learn to swim. They moved my daughter up twice within 3 weeks and said she needs a new hat . Surprise , surprise no new hat available for the last 3 weeks but the " teacher" said she needs to get one from the front desk. Honestly what a joke!

Given how bad this place is I can honestly say This place should not operate as it does not teach children anything and you are wasting time and money .

Stay away unless you have time and money to waste as your child wont learn to swim there.

I sent an email stating that I wanted to cancel my sons membership at Swim, I was instructed to fill out a cancellation form online, so I did that and still didn't hear anything back after a month. So I decided to cancel the direct debit but I opted to cancel it after the next payment so that my son could still go for the next month. So my direct debit came out of my bank and then will have cancelled after that. I got an email saying they had cancelled all of my sons classes on the day that he was supposed to be going, even though I had just paid for the month!! They said it states this in the terms and conditions but as we had been going for the last few years I'm not sure how I was expected to remember this and also if the communication from their admim side had been better we would not be in this position! I am absolutely disgusted with this company, I will be telling everybody I know not to use them! Also, the turnover of staff is not great! My son would just start getting used to one teacher and then they would change to somebody else. So I think this says a lot about them too. Go somewhere cheaper like your local swimming baths, these are a rip off and a disgrace!

Teachers were pleasant and the staff were professional and the facilities are nice, they are the only redeeming parts.

I ended up almost filing legal action against this company and reporting them to trading standards.

Progress is extremely slow. We ended up completing 6 months of lessons and there was next to no progress in swimming ability, compared with a local leisure centre which has vastly improved my childs swimming ability in the same time arc. In that regard it feels their programs are simply existing to extract as much revenue as possible.
When we cancelled our Direct Debit as we no longer wanted to use their services, they informed my partner they would keep the money and the remaining lessons would not be provided, as it is in their contract.

Therefore, as this is potentially a breach of the consumer rights act 2015 I notified them of this fact and they told me there was nothing they could do. Having investigated the correspondance they sent my partner, I noticed they failed to disclose any trading particulars, contrary to the Chapters 24 and 24 of the Trading Disclosure Regulations 2015. Therefore they breached their own contract as they failed to comply with the laws in Emgland & Wales, so I informed them of the non material damages incurred as a result of their failing.
2 weeks later, I filed a Subject Access Request to find out what they had been saying about me internally, they then processed this from a company not even registered with the ICO, again on a emiail not disclosing trading particulars.
I also included in my complaint, the details of all the unlawfully deployed tracking technology on my web browser installed via their website, without my consent and without providing me with any information as to what data they collect. They also failed to have any form of cookie policy on their website.

In total I successfully claimed £1000GBP in non material damages, by way of mutual settlement and would suggest to anyone who has had to deal with this utter shambles of a company to protect their own consumer and privacy rights.

The more serious concern, is how can a company be trusted with highly sensitive data, when they cannot even get the very basics correct. I genuinely hope more people do take action against JD Sports, which is the parent company of Swim!

Don’t bother! So many negative things to say that I don’t know where to start. They change teachers without prior notice, never update progress and the latest they have ripped me off by taking my money and then when I gave 30 days notice they just cancelled the lessons I’ve paid for! Avoid!!!

I have two daughters who I signed up to Swim with - my eldest I am satisfied with the classes mainly because she enjoys it but there’s a serious lack of organisation.

My youngest I signed up recently due to the offer that was running went in the pool with her and was basically left to swim around the pool with her there was no structure no learning and most importantly no teaching!

I have tried to cancel my membership for my youngest since the start of December I have emailed, lodged messages on their system emailed the site directly and I’m still awaiting a simple cancellation when I was within the 14 day cooling of period.

I also recently received a parking ticket from the Chatham car park. You are allowed three hours free parking and I was onsite for 1 hour 8 minutes. I have appealed the ticket and asked SWIM to assist with getting it cancelled. They have advised they can not assist.

So they can’t cancel my youngest daughters swim lessons when I am within my rights to do so and they can not assist in getting a parking ticket cancelled for their own parking facilities.

The customer service is non existent and the communication is dire I wouldn’t recommend this company to my worst enemy.

I will be reporting them to trading standards - avoid this company with a barge pole!

Complete theft. Had them remove my daughter off a swim level to move up to the next level, no other lessons where available for 6 weeks then continue to charge you even if they have no available lesson and also when you log into it says no upcoming lesson and apparently you are ment to just shown up for a lesson you are not booked into. I was also told that thier system will not update this information and you are basically just ment to know all this. Avoid like the plague

There is no actual teaching going on in these classes. The kids just play games. There’s no support to progress their swimming skills.

The administrative side is abismal. You can only email them and the staff are rude and unhelpful.

The terms and conditions are designed to cheat you out of money. For example, if a class is cancelled by the company you aren’t automatically refunded. You have to request a refund and if you don’t it within 28 days they don’t pay you back. If you cancel your direct debit you cannot attend any further classes that month even though you’ve already paid for them.

I’m shocked that Rebecca Adlington has put her name to this because I’m sure she’d be upset if she knew this was happening.

Like everyone else. Finding it impossible to cancel and the company are taking money out when my child no longer goes there as the pool is freezing. They use your card and not direct debit Which is convenient for them. Impossible to speak to anyone or get an email response. What a scam. Avoid like the plague. Just simply awful.

Both of my children attend swim at chatham and have done since it opened. The swim teachers are lovely and the children have fun.

However the admin side is horrendous. Unless you have a huge amount of time spare to chase money for cancelled lessons I would go somewhere else. Lessons are not automatically refunded when cancelled by the centre. So far it's over £50 since we started (about a months worth). Lessons were cancelled this week and so far it's taken 3 emails to get a refund (that we still don't have) because head office have no record of the lesson being cancelled.

I wouldn't want my name associated with the company, so it's surprising Rebecca Addlington does. The company acts like a scam company when coming to finances.