Virgin Active UK 17+

It's ok but has quite a few issues...

The club is nice and clean and the gym is well equipped and the class teachers are fabulous. The cafe is great too. Now for the bad points... the car park at the front is like the Land Rover test track! Pot holes galore and not little ones either! Come on how much is a tonne of stones to fill them in really costing in the grand scheme of things?! Club V booking is an absolute joke. You have to book 10 days in advance (and by 9am or you can't get in) then have to remember to go into your app 3 days later to book your class to coincide! Managed to do this successfully 3 times over 4 & 1/2 months of trying 😫 When you do take your child in the signing in sheet has orange lines across it for all the 'no shows' (5 on Friday when I went and that was just the over 3's!) and by the staffs own admission they can't do anything about it. No phone calls to parents to tell them off or even an email. Why can't we book Club V 7 days in advance through the app? Calling them usually takes around 6 attempts to get them as they are always on the phone. The stuff in Club V is extremely limited for an 8 year old. The Virgin Active website tells of all the fabulous things that children can do. You only do one of them and whenever I'm up in the gym there are just a few children doing it. Really pointless. Come on Solihull Virgin Active you can do much better!

Virgin active

I used to l love coming to the club for a workout, then at weekends have a drink or some lunch afterwards with my family. Now for somebody who has trained hard at the gym for years I tend to make excuses not to go. For this I feel disappointed with myself. The cafe still does not serve food to order when we were led to believe that this was meant to come back in October. The club has allowed lots of young people to join at a reduced rate… of course I am happy that they are keen to keep fit. However the respect many of them have with the equipment is not acceptable. Throwing equipment then walking directly past the racking were it should have been returned to anyway! I generally find myself waiting for extended periods of time for equipment to become free because many ( not all of course) sit scrolling on their phone… even watching things or playing games when they could crack on and free up the equipment. The classes have become shortened and the amount of classes limited.
The showers do not have adequate ventilation and smell. The frosting in the shower doors is wearing off therefore reducing privacy. All of this and to still have my membership cost increasing at a steep rate. It’s a massive shame and I feel it won’t be long before it’s reputation being of a nice health cub is gone.

Upgrade made the app unusable

The new app no longer allows to search for and book classes across pre-selected gyms near you and is limited to the ‘home club’. Tons of fancy (and useless) tabs and functions added - but the single most important reason why the app was required - to easily search and book pre-selected classes in pre’selected gyms had been removed ... one now needs to manually search for any gym that is not the home gym every time. Extremely disappointed and going back to the web version 🫤 Can the option to use the old app please be added - it was easy to use and was not broken ?
The app only needs to give one a handful of things . Search class…. Book class.…see your bookings. It is ok to have a section on media, loyalty and news - it can be at the very last tab and one in ten people might occasionally venture there. It should not be the front page. … whoever developed this has never been a gym member themselves … a gym app needs clear and simple graphic, 80% of focus on class bookings, 10% focus on managing your membership and maybe 10% everything else. This app is 80% everything else and you might book a class if you’re lucky. Another personal bugbear is removing the option of cancelling the membership from the app - I am extremely annoyed by apps that force you to call the provider to cancel instead of pressing a button - surely that’s a violation of consumer rights.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback. Just so you know, we recently updated the app & have reduced the number of steps when it comes to viewing your bookings, booking a class or cancellation. We also added the waitlist position function back on. Cancellation can be done in club, via email, and via the live chat on our website.