My friend and I had a terrible experience with this company. I bought two tickets online for the general trapeze class, which cost me $152.00. This already rubbed me the wrong way because the site said the tickets were $65 dollars a piece. They hide a $22.00 application fee in the process. I was annoyed by this, but went ahead with the purchase anyway. On Sunday, my friend and I briskly walked 25 blocks in the summer heat to make sure we'd be there on time for our class. We were so excited that we'd get to do something we'd never done before. When we showed up, the lady told me that we didn't have a reservation. I assured her that I did as I was wiping sweat off by brow (the place has NO air conditioning). She was being blatantly rude, which was absolutely apparent to my friend and I. In fact, we kept looking at each other thinking, 'wow... she's in a funk of the worst sorts'. I started digging through my emails and pulled up my reservation. It turned out that my reservation was for Saturday, rather than Sunday. This was an honest mistake and had anyone with compassion been there to see this would have immediately recognized that. Instead, the lady at the front desk said that we were out of luck and she couldn't help us. I expressed my apologies and tried to suggest that we attend the current class which had availability. She said she wouldn't allow us to do that. I then said that I didn't want a refund, and 'would it be possible for us to get a rain check or a credit for another class which didn't fill up?'. She said no and that she couldn't help us. Throughout this process, she didn't even say that she was sorry. In fact, she rarely looked up from whatever tasks she was doing to acknowledge that we were engaging her in a conversation. Realizing that we weren't going to be able to get anything going at that time combined with the fact that the place is easily 110-120 degrees, we decided to leave. As we walked away the feeling sank in that the situation was just really uncalled for and that the lady was one of the rudest people I've experience in NYC to date. My friend and I decided to wait till the following Monday to call the school and try to reason with them. I called on Monday and got an answering machine. I left a message stating that I had a bad experience and encountered a situation with one of the employees that I'd like to discuss. I didn't receive a returned phone call. So, I followed up with a detailed email which was apologetic but informative. I explained everything in immense detail. I think the email took me 20 minutes to write. Another day passes without a response. I follow up by email again. This is now the third time that I reached out to them to try and speak with someone. Eventually, a guy by the name of Michael Mantell (apparently the Office Manager) called me and left a message. He said that he didn't have a return phone number that I could call him back on but that he would follow up by email. The email I received from him basically said that he wouldn't do anything to help our situation. He wasn't apologetic for his employee's behavior, nor was he sympathetic to the fact that I paid $152.00 to waste several hours of my and my friend's lives. He wouldn't even offer a discount for signing up for another class. I feel like the whole situation is just poor business. This company is a tourist trap which I fell in to - and I'm not even a tourist. I can honestly say that you'll get extremely poor treatment from the staff if you encounter any situations here. I can't imagine what would happen if you or your children were to get injured on the property. I wonder how it would feel to try and call the company for resolution on something like that when they don't even have someone answering the phones. Buyer beware. This company is definitely a scam. I feel cheated. I bet it won't be long till someone shuts them down over a lawsuit. Or maybe they'll get a few more years of digging through people's wallets without a care in the world.

Posted by Ira Bell on July 29, 2010 at 03:55 PM EDT #