Virgin Active - help!

KatyS

Hi all,

Just need a bit of advice. I had my locker broken into in my local Virgin Active and then entire contents stolen.

I rent the locker on an annual basis from Virgin active and had my own combination lock on it.
I told the gym straight away and the duty manager had me fill out a locker theft form and then helpfully told me that combination locks are easy to break into, which I find ironic as that is the type of lock they sell.

The duty manager told me that the General Manager would be in the gym on the Monday (I discovered my things missing on the Friday) and that he would contact me about this.
In the mean time I registered the theft with the police and got a crime reference number.

When the manager didn't call me on the Monday I called and left a message for him (he was too busy to speak with me when I called). He then contacted me the following day to tell me that he had received my form and that Virgin Active do not have insurance for locker thefts. He could offer me a two month refund on my locker (£10) and cancel my locker for me.

I was not offered an apology and I feel that by way of compensation I was severely short changed as the contents of my locker was £250 worth of gym gear including some irreplaceable items that were specially made for a rugby tour a few years ago.

My plan is to write to customer services, with managing director, Richard Branson and the general manager of Ealing Broadway cc'd on the letter.

Any help as to what else I can do now would be gratefully appreciated.

Thanks

jenniewb

Wow! Thats really bad customer service. Agreed they are not liable for whats inside the locker, think most contracts have that written in somewhere, but they could have gone about dealing with it in a much better way!

I'd try to find the contact details and go ahead and write. Leave it for a week or two after writing and try another approach, meanwhile the best form of advertising is word of mouth, and that works two ways. Bad news travels fast. But make sure your just saying what happened and how you felt as if karma does exist, you don't want any negative come-backs!

Have had my stuff stolen from a gym locker in the past before, (brand new 18 month contract mobile phone I could ill-afford which I was only 3 weeks into the contract for) gutted and asked about it but it never did get returned.

Have you also tried leaving messages up inside the gym? if some of the stuff has sentimental value its definetly worth doing but ask first for permission, they should at least allow you to do this if not write the messages themselves as good will.

barjam_2

do they have cctv at the locker area, my daughter had her locker broken into at a swimming pool, money and phone stolen, when i went to collect my very distresed daughter all the manager said was you can probably claim off your house insurance as he wasn't particuliarly bothered, :eek: i informed him the police were on their way he changed to all nicey nicey, the police viewed the cctv and within 20 minutes caught the boys who done it, they spent some of the money , which the mother agreed to payback, and a slap on the wrist for the boys,

KatyS

Thanks for the advice.

They don't have cctv in the changing rooms where my locker was, but they must have it in the main entrance and my gym bag was pretty distinctive. I might see if they can look at that for me.

Will write and see what happens - watch this space!

jenniewb

They don't have CCTV in any locker rooms, virgin active or any gym. Same goes for public toilets and clothes changing rooms, its against privicy rules. (Nude people getting changed...etc). There is nothing they can do about changing room CCTV things, the issue you have I think is the way the problem was dealt with and the lack of respect or help you were/not given.

Have you tried contacting their head office?