Bannatyne Health club Not suitable but wasn't able to find out without "joining"

BobbieHC

I went to my local Bannatyne (Perth) and had a tour on 17th January 2022. I wanted swimming and possibly yoga or pilates classes.  I told the manager this several times on my tour and diverted him away from all the equipment being used by the gym bunnies.  I asked him about classes for yoga or pilates - he showed me the studio but was not able to tell me when classes were held.  The website does not show you any classes available at all until you join and get the login permissions (trust me, I tried to find out exhaustively before going to the venue).  He also told me that there were maybe 5 or 6 regulars in the pool in the early morning sessions.

I took out a monthly membership. I had to go premium ie outside office hours because I work full time and wanted to do things before or after work.  Having downloaded the app and looked in the portal I found out that there are NO classes at times I am able to attend and even the classes scheduled between 09:30 and 4pm are always full with a waiting list.  I had to take a premium membership to use a service which wasn't actually available to me in the premium hours. I was not able to establish this fact without first joining.  I did go for a swim the very next morning at 07:30 and very nice it was too. But there were at least 5 times the number of people I had been led to believe might be there. So my intention to batter out a mile's worth of lengths was foiled by traffic in the pool.

I cancelled my DD having not paid the first month (I got a January discount on the few days left of the month in which I joined and paid that outright) and sent them notification of my cancellation both by email and letter and screen shots of the Class schedule on my app showing nothing was available. It is impossible to cancel on the login portal, you can only pause and they charge you for that! 

Of course they are now claiming that I have to pay the first month.  I have already cancelled the direct debit so good luck with that.
But, my point is, how can I know if it suits me if you hide all the relevant information which would help inform the decision? It's fundamentally dishonest.

Have others fallen into this trap? You don't know what you are signing up for, but you can't find out until you sign up?