SAADI Gymnastics Club

Thank you very much indeed for your positive review. I will share it with the team and I know it will really motivate them.

Thanks so much for this kind review. We love seeing you come with you 8 seater push chair!!!! Thank you for taking the time to review our business.

That’s such a lovely review. Thank you so much.

Thank you so much for your kind review. It means so much to our staff to receive positive feedback.

Thanks so much for your lovely review. Glad Mia is enjoying her class. This means a lot to our coaches!!

Thank you so much for this lovely review. Our staff will be chuffed to bits.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this review. It’s great that you love the class. Hope to see you again soon.

Thank you Vicky. Robyn is an absolute star and such a role model in the club.

Thank you Kirstie for taking the time to write a review. Your comments are greatly appreciated by everyone at the club.

Thank you so much. Your comments are greatly appreciated.

Thank you for sharing your feedback. While we regret that you were unhappy with your experience, we feel it is important to clarify the situation for accuracy and to provide a complete context for others reading your review.

When you contacted us at 9:01 AM on the day of your son’s session—just 30 minutes before the start of the class—we responded promptly at 9:20 AM to explain that, as per our clearly stated terms and conditions, all booked sessions are non-refundable and non-transferable. These terms are necessary to ensure fairness for all customers and to manage the administrative demands of rescheduling, given the thousands of families we serve annually.

Despite this, we offered to reschedule your session on this occasion as a gesture of goodwill. You acknowledged this in your reply, writing at 10:26 AM:

“Thank you for explaining. I don’t really feel like this is a friendly place and don’t wish for my son to come now. So don’t worry about rearranging to a different day. Thank you for the offer though.”

We were surprised to find that your initial review, which claimed we were “money grabbers” and that we “don’t care for customers,” was posted online almost immediately after the session had started, at a time when we were actively working to assist you.

Our original response, which you characterized as rude, stated:

“Morning, Thank you for your email. This is a standard response that is aligned to our club’s T&Cs so sorry you think this is unfair. Sometimes it’s helpful for us to explain our full offer and why we have these rules in place. We give our customers the choice to either book online or pay on the door. The latter gives people the flexibility to come or not come, the former the certainty that they can get a place. The price for our play gyms is just £5 for over an hour play and we haven’t increased this price for over 7 years. We limit the number attending to 60 children, not because we are legally obliged to, but because we want to ensure that the environment is comfortable for those using it. We have over 20,000 families use this class every year, so if we were to say you could swap and change classes whenever you like, we would have to increase the prices to manage the administration. We therefore give customers the choice to either book in advance and agree to the terms or not. If you let us know which day you would like to change to, I will move you on this instance, and hopefully the fact that I have explained the options available to you is helpful.”

We believe this response was polite, professional, and thorough in explaining both our terms and the options available to our customers.

We also want to highlight that we provide flexibility through our pay-on-the-door option for those who prefer not to commit to booking in advance. These policies help us maintain the affordability and quality of our sessions, which are valued by thousands of families every year.

We are disappointed that you chose to describe us as “money grabbers,” as this does not reflect the care and effort we put into ensuring a positive experience for all our customers.

Rather than shy away from your review, we intend to share it with all our Play Gym customers as an example of the challenges small businesses face when policies designed to be fair to all are met with backlash. Negative reviews have a significant impact on small businesses like ours, and we feel this review was both completely unfair and defamatory. We take great pride in the service we offer and trust that the majority of our customers will see this situation for what it truly is. A full response has been published on or blog here https://www.saadigymnastics.co.uk/blog/the-impact-of-false-and-defamatory-reviews-on-small-businesses

We wish you and your son all the best and hope this response helps clarify any misunderstandings for others reading your review.

Kind regards,
The SAADI Gymnastics Team

Thank you so much for taking the time to leave this review. I will pass it on to the coaches who always love to hear the positive feed back.

Ahh thanks so much for taking the time to write this review. It's hugely appreciated by all of our staff :-)

Thanks Ryan. Really appreciate the time you’ve taken to write this. It really motivates our staff to receive such comments so thank you.

Thank you for the review following your short stay at the club Sally. I’d rather address this in person with people than on here so instead we’ll simply wish your daughter a speedy recovery from her injured toe and wish her and any future club she may attend the best of luck.

If you have read this review and would like to know more then I would love you to talk me or even better visit us. My name is David Brooke (Co-Owner) and I always welcome the opportunity to talk to people about what we are trying to achieve at SAADI. I’ve lived in Harpenden all my life so if you see me around just grab me (I’m usually wearing a SAADI top if I'm out and about). Feel free to ask me anything you like, about this review or anything else about our business.

If you visit the club I will happily buy you a coffee and introduce you to our amazing coaches who are the bedrock of our business. I’ve worked in a number of industries around the world in many different positions and can honestly say that being a coach is one of the most challenging and most scrutinised roles I’ve encountered. I can explain to you why I have so much respect for those who choose to do it and why sadly, so many are leaving the industry.

Better still, I’d encourage you to talk to some of the 1800 parents who visit our club every week. The parents who bring their under fives to our play gyms, the parents who bring their toddlers to our incredibly innovative Pre-School programme designed by our talented coaches, or the hundreds of parents who bring their children to our Recreational Programme.

I look forward to talking to you.

Kind regards

David

Hello Anna. Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a positive review. It’s very kind of you.

Thanks for taking the time to leave a positive review Roger. We’re glad you enjoyed your visit and hope to see you again soon.

Thanks for the lovely review Helen. Very kind of you to take the time to write it.

Hi Anna, thank you for taking the time to leave this kind comment :-) it means a lot to me and the whole team. Thank you.

Thank you for your feedback. We’re sorry that in your case we were unable to resell your place mid term and refund your money. As explained back in November, once a term has started many on our waiting lists will sign up to other activities so it maybe the case that in a small number of cases we can’t make a refund. We would however like to thank you for your support for the term you spent with us and for renewing for a second term.

Asking our customers to commit to a term enables us in-turn to commit to those financially dependent on us, notably our staff. SAADI have an exceptionally high staff to gymnast ratio which is one of the factors that make our classes so popular. At the start of each term we ensure that we can meet these high standards based upon the number of people committing to the term.

We understand that this can be a significant commitment for our members which is why, if we have availability, we offer the option to trial a class before you commit to a term. We notice you did take us up on a trial before confirming that you would like to join. If children would like to change class we also do our best to accommodate this. Again we notice that we were able to change the days for you when you requested it. We also offer payment options for those most in need. Furthermore, despite our costs going up by over 20% in the last 12 months, we have still not increased our fees to our customers like many others (a strategy that makes our customer’s commitment to us even more important).

At the time, which was three months ago now, we explained this to you and at no point were rude or dismissive. We were simply applying our terms and conditions.

Thank you so much for leaving us a positive rating.

Thanks so much for taking the time to write this. Hugely appreciated.

Thank you very much for your kind review. Apologies for the slow response but we have only just appointed someone to manage our social media!

Thank you very much for your kind review. Apologies for the slow response but we have only just appointed someone to manage our social media!

Hello Jessica,

Thanks you for your review and we're sorry that your experience didn't meet the very high standards that we set ourselves as a club. We took over the management of SAADI last March (2020) and it is obviously sad for us to read such a review. When you wrote your review in 2019 SAADI was a small, voluntary, part time club open mainly on a Saturday at Redbourn Leisure Centre. A lot has changed since you wrote your review and I wanted to take the time to highlight some of these changes and invite you to drop by to see for yourself :-).

SAADI Gymnastics is now a privately run club with permanent gymnastics facility open 7 days a week. We are still located at Redbourn Leisure Centre and have invested over £100,000 into the facility since March last year ensuring the whole gym is kitted out with the very latest Gymnova equipment. We now have over 850 members who attend classes every week and 2000 non-members who visit the club on a pay-as-you-go basis.

We are proud to be one of the largest employers of young people in the area and are committed to their training and development within the British Gymnastics organisation. We have brought many through into permanent employment who all have British Gymnastics Level 2 or higher qualifications (with many working towards high levels that we fund for them). One of our unique selling points is our very high ratio of coaches to gymnasts. In many cases it’s 1 coach to 4 gymnasts or 1 to 5.

Our geographical location combined with this commitment to both training and coaching ratios does mean that in some classes our pricing may be a little higher than other clubs that don’t face the higher over heads. That said we know through bench marking exercises that many of our classes are cheaper. Our Drop-In classes for example (that run 11 times per week and have been sold out since we opened) are just £5 for 1 hour and a quarter!

Just a few months ago we were nominated for and won all three categories of Best Under 5's club, Best Over 5's club and best Holiday Club in the Mum's Guide To Harpenden Awards. This was a very proud moment for all the team and a statement about how far we have come as a club.

We hope that you may drop by to see the new changes and apologise that your experience didn’t meet our high expectations on this occasion.

Kind regards
SAADI GYMNASTICS