Busyknitter

I am writing to complain about what happened to myself and my son at XXX Fitness Club this evening.

I only became a member last weekend, but I have paid up front for a full year’s membership. So far I am very impressed with the centre. I have joined mainly to use the swimming pool in the mornings before work and I do think it is an excellent facility.

I have also signed my younger son on as a junior member. He has a learning disability and is autistic. At nearly 4 years old he has profound and complex communication difficulties, with no expressive language at all (ie he cannot speak). But he loves swimming and one of my objectives in joining XXX was to bring my son swimming in the early evenings in order to relax him before his bedtime.

When I joined on Saturday I was told that the facilities were available for children up to 7.30 in the evening. I took that to mean that we could use the small pool till 7.30. However, I was not told that this was a strict rule, moreover that children under 15 were actually required to be out of the building by 7.30.

On Monday and Tuesday of this week I brought T swimming at about 7.00pm, swam for 20 minutes or so and probably left the building at around 7.40. We were not challenged about this at the time.

This evening, I knew that we would not be able to get into the pool till 7.15 because there was a water polo class, so we arrived at the centre at 7.05 with the intention of having a 15 minute swim until 7.30. As we were going through the barrier, the receptionist asked me to wait as a manager needed to speak to me. When the manager came down (I didn’t catch his name) he said something along the lines of “It’s OK to come in, but you have to be out of the building by 7.30″! He did not attempt to explain the rule or the rationale behind it. When I asked, he said it was just a head office ruling that he was required to enforce. He did not try to find out why I was not aware of the rule and he did not apologise for the inconvenience this was causing me.

Given that it was already 7.05 and we would not have been allowed into the small pool till 7.15, it would have been impossible to comply with this. Therefore we had no option but to leave.

Any normal 3 year old would have been very upset about missing out on a swim that they had been looking forward to. But for my son, it was impossible to try to explain to him why we had to go. He became very distressed and by the time we had arrived home, his distress had developed into a violent tantrum. In the end, I took him out in the car again to the local municipal pool and gave him a swim there. This did eventually calm him down.

My complaint really centres around two issues. Firstly, if the 7.30 rule is to be applied that rigidly, then this should be explained to parents when they join, clearly and explicitly. Secondly, given that I have parted with the best part of £500 to join XXX, I don’t expect to be faced with such an inflexible attitude when a rule hasn’t been explained to me properly. It would surely not have been too much trouble to let us have a quick 15 minute swim this evening, on the understanding that we kept to the rules in the future. We would have been out of the water by 7.30 after all.

I look forward to your prompt reply