Swim Avis 

My daughter's lessons were cancelled every week for 2 months due to constant maintenance issues. Not good enough. To top it off you have to chase up each refund yourself or you don't get one. It's impossible to get ahold of anyone via the phone so have to email. They take a while to reply to emails. They also take weeks to process the refunds. Some members of staff refused some of our refunds (whereas my friend told me she got them) as they said it was reorganised to another day which we didn't book, and could not attend. This meant I had to waste more time chasing this up as other members of staff would refund regardless off lessons being rescheduled to another day and were refunding others people. This felt very unfair and inconsistent. Majority of the time the rescheduled lessons were also cancelled. We have ended up cancelling our membership as it was becoming a chore requesting refunds every week and it wasn't fair on my daughter to get her hopes up every week. They didn't offer anything as an apology for the disruption.
They could improve by automatically refunding cancelled sessions without us chasing it up as it is an inconvenience as it is that they are getting cancelled but to waste time chasing it up every week made the whole situation worse. There also needs to be consistency within the staff replying to emails. Just better customer service in general would be good.

I am writing to express my extreme frustration with the swimming lessons my 5-year-old daughter has been enrolled in. Unfortunately, these lessons have been consistently disrupted due to recurring pool faults, resulting in numerous cancellations.
What is even more disappointing is the lack of customer service and support. There is no automatic refund system in place, meaning I have to take the time to call and request a refund for each missed lesson. This process is incredibly laborious and unacceptable. Additionally, there has been no compensation offered for the inconvenience caused, and we are expected to make up for the missed lessons by having my daughter swim three times a week after school.
This level of service is simply unacceptable. I would expect a more reliable and accommodating approach, especially when dealing with young children. I hope this issue can be resolved promptly but we will no longer be using this service.

The transition to Swim has been largely disappointing. Not enough time or communication was provided to correctly select classes that matched ability and the criteria was different across the two. As a consequence both of my children were booked into the wrong class.

The biggest issue is that there seems to be nobody to speak to and instructors do not have the time to help with queries and do not call back as promised.

I have so far paid £110 for two, even though only one has gone to lessons and those lessons do not suit him.

I am in the process of trying to get 1 child moved up and awaiting a full refund for the other child as there are no longer classes that match. Fingers crossed someone calls this time.

Not great experience from this swim school at all. Such a shame as it’s a lovely pool and some of the instructors are okay. However if you need to make an amendment or cancel lessons it is Impossible to speak to anyone, or get any kind of response from head office . The phone rings out, or cuts you off after going through endless automated messages, the email address isn't monitored and the online enquiries ignored. It's impossible to cancel membership and the swimming tuition is very mixed.
There have been dangerous incidents with younger children and lacklustre swim teachers, with the odd exception of a great teacher in the more advance stage classes.
Such a shame that Beaconsfield has lost its previous swim school to Swim.

Terrible!
My daughter was at swim! Oldham for 4 months. We ended up moving her to active swim instead as she made NO progress in all these lessons. The swim! Oldham does not provide swimming techniques or teach them how to swim. More so on how to get from one side of the pool to the next.
Waste of money, waste of time and travel. Would never recommend this to anyone. Especially given the price!

AVOID! My son has been with them for 10 weeks and 7 of out of 10 of his swim sessions have been cancelled. They also don’t tell you that you have to sort your own refund out when they cancel a session!??? But If you don’t do it within 30 days you lose the money!

When you request to be refunded they like to make it very long winded and very awkward in the hope you give up! 😡

We have cancelled our membership because of this. Will definitely never recommend them!

Very dissatisfied customer 👎

Avoid this company for swimming lessons - terrible company! They do not like refunding money if the swimming lesson is cancelled due to pool maintenance! You have to send a claim form request, which most parents won’t know this! If you haven’t sent a request for the refund within 30days they refuse to give you your money back!!! Surely they should be refunding automatically if they are cancelling the session, not us having to request it!!

Very slow progress. Daughter been going for 6 months and in that time she has progressed from zero to 18% of swim one. Trying to cancel and it's not possible. I emailed info@swim address and used their contact us form a number of time and there is no response. I find it highly tactical and morally wrong that you can book/register online, change lessons online, pay online but you cannot cancel online. It's just not right for consumers.

I have to say a big thank you to swim at castleford. We have just come back from our holiday where we spent quite a lot of time in the pool and sea. My 10yr old son who has been having swimming lessons via school at swim has really come along with his confidence in water. He has some way to go with swimming but he’s gone from years of needing (or wanting) floats or armbands before going near shallow water to doing handstands and rolly polys in the water and retrieving things from the pool floor. He’s floating and swimming (a little) he would not do any of this on our Easter holiday! He even jumped from the back of the boat into the sea (parental supervision of course) his independence and confidence in the water makes the whole experience so much easier and so much more fun for the family. Thank you swim!

First of all the teachers are amazing but for close to £50 a month I’d expect my 8yo son to progress more than two levels in two years. Also, watching him being told he needs to work on his strokes yet be given no more space than 4/5m meant I moved him to a local leisure centre where he can swim the full length of their 25m pool in lessons for half the price.
Great teachers but after paying a premium price over 3 years for the use of a small squared area of a school pool and seeing very limited progression I’d recommend Swim@ Durham for younger children only.

I emailed asking which swim group would be best for my SEN child (either the one for his age or the one below), and I received an email back saying that they could not accommodate a child with any additional needs. I’m absolutely disgusted.

They don't let you cancel your membership and try to force you to pay for their services even if you no longer use them. Very scammy and desperate. The costs are also exponential for what you're getting.

Shocking service. Cancelled my son's lesson then make me jump through all sorts of hoops to get a refund. Shouldn't have to do anything to get a refund - this should be automatic as per every other business in the world. Clearly they are hoping that this will be too much hassle for people and people will just let it go.

Absolutely shocking customer service. My son was moved up a group and his teacher had no space so I had to change to another class which is fine. I went online( logged in on my existing account) and chose a teacher that was available. It charged me an additional £40 on top of the £55 I already paid. I have now had two direct debits taken for £55. When I called to explain this is a clear error and requested it to be refunded, they refused and said they are unable to refund the payment as terms and conditions were accepted. At no point on their shoddy website did it state I was entering an additional booking for my one child. A manager who can not process a refund, what's that about? He then explained I was paying for group 3 and 4, why on earth would I want my child to attend two separate level swim lessons which are on at the same time? It's clearly a mistake and an error. When he refused to refund he also refused to allow my son to take the ADDITIONAL lessons I have paid for. Absolutely shocking company ripping people off. Even when my son had chicken pox they refused to even move or refund two missed lessons. Was he meant to just crack on and infect all the other children? Support your local swimming pools and avoid this company. THEFT and robbing scammers. Paid a premium price for a p**s poor service, I stupidly thought this would be a great company. How wrong I was.

The actual swimming staff are lovely but the customer service and admin from head office, including the owners JD Gyms, is appalling.

Impossible to get them to get them to re-register email.

Durham swimming lessons great, teaching staff great, IT rubbish