Swimtime UK Reviews 49

Swimtime are a disgrace, they let little boys over the age of 6 get changed in the womens changing room in the village hotel.

Do not bother! We have attended the St David's Park Hotel Swimtime lessons. Firstly, St David's Park Hotel changing rooms are filthy! Secondly, Swimtime are absolutely diabolical with customer service and admin. We got turned away from a class, despite payment being taken and email confirmation. My child wasnt on the teacher's list! There is also always a problem with children getting moved up a class. Never straight forward.
Find somewhere else if you can, the experience end-to-end is poor at best.

I've been learning to swim with swimtime for a few months now, and I couldn't be happier! I was kinda embarrassed to start lessons as a twenty something year old, but my instructor gave me so much reassurance and listened to my needs (not to mention I can acc swim now!)

Just had my kids lessons cancelled due to no staff and un able to hire new ones. Tried to take my deposits and charge a cancellation fee till I emailed them and they re looked into it. Overall my kids enjoyed their lessons and got more water confident so it's a shame they couldn't find new staff. There is a high turn over of staff we would often turn up to lesson's and teacher have no clue which children are enrolled or levels she is to be teaching. This wasnt instructors fault i felt bad for them as they were lovely and seemed to be a management issue.

This company is an absolute joke. They never answer the phone and don’t return calls. Repeatedly cancelling lessons as others have said. They don’t give any consideration to the way this impacts on the children.

Please do not swim with Swimtime!

Cancelled lessons all the time! Over charged, pool customer services.
Told multiple times that the invoice is correct when I know that it isn’t and refuse to refund.

AVOID

This organisation has failed to deliver on its promise to support children with Special Educational Needs (SEN). They initially enticed us with assurances of support, only to consistently cancel scheduled sessions, causing disruption and wasting our time. The situation became unacceptable when we were informed that lessons for an SEN child would cost double the rate charged for a neuro-typical child. This discriminatory pricing, coupled with unreliable service, is truly disappointing and financially exploitative. I would strongly advise parents of SEN children to seek support elsewhere.

Had our daughter swimming at blackburn, ive got to say this review in no way is a reflection on the teacher as he was great.

Management is another story. The pool closed for a refurb (which is fine as out of their control) we got an email as soon as the holidays started giving other pool options and advising us to email the request to avoid charges. Well we moved to bury then got an increase of £10 DD and no warning! Emailed with very slow responses to be told thats the cost of that location.

Took ages to get a resolution and refunded on a 'goodwil'. After outlining the facts I was told they would honor the price ...guess what, they took the higher amount again! And again long delayed responses to my emails.

After agreeing an immediate termination of contract the online form gave the closing date of the last lesson and I'd just paid £39.40 before this.

Now this is where the fun began. They refunded the immediate holding deposit but nothing else.

They avoid emails, block you into only speaking to the franchise owner and ignore you in a hope you will go away. After 3 months of arguing I finally got back the equivalent of 3 lessons back.

The way this business is ran I'd be shocked if its still running in a year!

Swimtime feels like a rogue or scam company. Our negative experience with Swimtime includes:

• Money grabbing. They took over at our old swim school, asked for a month’s deposit to stay there and for us to pay them again for the month, despite having already paid. This totalled over £400 for one month's swimming lessons for x3 children.

• Terrible communication. Slow to respond and when they finally do, they do not adequately answer your questions

• Difficult to register your children, despite already being taught for years at the same pool. This resulted in weeks of non-swimming and many unhappy parents

• They put our child in a class with much younger and less experienced swimmers. This was raised with Swimtime but they repeatedly refused to accept this. I believe this is because they don’t have enough swimmers to put them in the right class and don’t want to pay their instructors to teach students at the correct level

• Swimtime are not recognised by, or affiliated with any official UK swimming body or organisation

•Fictitious swimming bands that make no logical sense

• Completely understaffed, both in the office and in the pool

• Stressed and unhappy freelance instructor, who ended up being the face of the company in the absence of a competent management team

• We were due a refund but Swimtime claimed they didn’t have our money, despite previous emails from them confirming they did

• Frequent cancellations, with little or no notice.

Swimtime appear to be a company that puts extorting money from parents ahead of the wellbeing of the children in their care. I can say without hesitation that Swimtime should not be working with children. Swimtime behaves like a rogue trader and the many reviews on Trust Pilot show other parents have had very similar experiences.

Had our child in lessons but then didn't hear anything about continuation or start after the summer holidays. The communication has been poor throughout. We have tried to email, phone and message on social media without getting proper replies.

The teacher was really nice and patient, but the ones running this seem incredibly disorganised. They are advertising for lessons when there are none available on the website and we've not had a refund for a lesson we were promised would be as we had a free trial and were told our account is in credit. We've given up on this company in trying to get lessons for our child.

We've been with Swimtime for nearly 2 years, Kayleigh being our child's main teacher - she is calm and has a clear teaching method, always friendly, positive and encouraging. The venues are fine and staff are helpful. The swimtime price structure, website and emails are all clear to understand once your sessions begin. Other teachers have been good, too, especially Deepak who is very enthusiastic. Huge thank you to Kayleigh, though, who has remained my child's favourite teacher.

WARNING! Shocking. The attendance from the teacher has been low, last minute cancellations, substitute teachers at best. The teacher didn't even turn up today and no communication! The classes are badly organised, the swimmer capabilities vary beyond ability which divides the class. Better off jumping in the river to learn how to swim. This is very poor standard of organisation. DO NOT SIGN UP FOR SWIMTIME!!! (Village, Bromborough, wirral)

Great experience, highly recommend!

Adult swimming lesson with Phil in Bromborough to teach front crawl. Have always wanted to know how to do it properly and Phil managed to teach me in less than half hour! Hoping to take up swimming again to help with health issues and aches and pains. Thoroughly enjoyed it, Phil super friendly and down to earth and makes you feel at ease. Thanks Phil!

Rachel B has taught all 3 of my children to swim in 121 lessons. They are all really confident in the water enjoy attending lessons couldn’t ask for any more really! If you are thinking of booking lessons for your children then don’t hesitate they are in brilliant hands!!

The most unreliable swimming lesson group we’ve ever used. A constant and consistent let down. Moving venues, loosing teachers and having no means of replacement should there be illnesses or issues.

No lesson for the third week running. Turned up to find the instructor wasn’t there. This is not an isolated experience, constant cancellation of lessons. We have now cancelled with Swimtime having being let down constantly since the beginning of this year.

Swimtime 1:1 and 2:1 instructor Rachel B has worked with my children from 2022. My daughter has special needs and Rachel got her to a level of accomplishment we never thought possible. She made the sessions fun and differentiated them for my two children. The children loved swimming every week with Rachel. There are issues with other aspects of swimtime (see my other review of group and managerial team) but I can’t recommend Rachel enough and am very grateful to her.

The website states that children from age 4 with no experience should start with the beginners class (makes perfect sense). My daughter does in fact have some experience; however, it still seemed the best and safest option for her to attend the beginners class when reading the requirements for the subsequent class.

Lesson 1: I asked the instructor at the end of class if she felt it was a suitable fit for my daughter. I was told it was.

Lesson 2: at the end of the lesson, the instructor suggested another class since my daughter wears aids (just like she wore them the first lesson). No alternative class was given, and I was told to organise this myself via the website. Upon request - after I pointed out I would struggle to do this and get a different outcome due to already following website recommendations - she said she would sort it for me. The instructor was surprised that the class was for children with no experience, which was obviously concerning given she was teaching that very class. However, I took it in good faith that the situation could be quickly rectified somehow.

Unfortunately, a week went by without hearing anything. Hence, the day before her usual lesson was scheduled, I was left making countless phone calls to no end (without an option to leave a voicemail). The only other option was to send an email enquiry relaying the conversation with instructor. I waited 4 days for a reply, where I was just asked what days would work best - no actual information about an alternative class was given. A further 5 days passed without a reply. Needless to say my daughter had already missed a week of class and was on track to miss another, still without any resolution in sight.

2 weeks after the initial suggestion from the instructor that my daughter changes class and 2 weeks without any information about said class, I informed Swimtime I would like to cancel her subscription. Following this email came a response in less than 24 hours where additional charges were debited from my account due to cancellation. Within this email was confirmation that my daughter did begin the correct class (beginners) and that children within this class will of course be at different stages of their swimming journey. This was highly frustrating as this is what I had anticipated the problem to be (again in accordance to their website guidance) in a previous email.

In summary, we have been charged £102.47 for 2 swimming lessons, a few headaches, and the task of finding another swim school. Swimtime phone lines still ring out without a voicemail option. Email requests for telephone communication regarding unfair charges have continued to be ignored.

If you feel safe in the knowledge that swim instructors don't know the requirements of the very classes they are teaching, or you enjoy dealing with upset 4 year olds when you can't give them even a child friendly indication of when they'll start swimming classes again then Swimtime is the school for you. Communication very much lacking, but payments and cancellation fees on point.

I can't fault the instructors at all, they have been fabulous and my son loves going to his lessons. The admin however, you can't get hold of anyone by phone or by email. I've sent several complaint emails with no response what so ever. It's a joke! We've not had our deposit back, when the agreement statez we will get it back after 90 days if you agree to sign up for lessons and don't cancel. I've been charged over summer when no lessons are being done (why I'm paying when they're closed I don't know). Absolutely shocking customer service. I don't know whether to keep paying them and suck it up so my son continues to learn in a luxury pool or cancel and stick him in a freezing cold pool with a new group 😑