Shame on you Virgin Active!

My husband I are senior citizens both recovering from major surgeries. We join Virgin Active Mbombela (Crossings ) through our Discovery Vitality specifically to participate in aquarobics for our rehabilitation after major life changing surgeries and to improve and maintain a better level of fitness and flexibility. Despite some teething troubles with reception and general day to day issues with this particular club, we were very happy with our aquarobics classes and our amazing instructor and biokineticist Annamarie van Zyl. Over a few months we both felt the improvement in our movement and strength from the classes and seriously looked forward to our sessions in the pool. Classes were always popular and full, with up to 20 people participating regularly.

To our utter dismay, as winter approached there were constant issues with the pool temperature making it impossible for the Aquarobics classes to continue. Initially we were patient and accepted that the management were working on it. After 2 months of no classes in the pool, I contacted the supposed Customer Care line for Virgin Active South Africa on 9 July 2025. The first call was placed at (12.49) and I spoke to Nakita who was not particularly helpful. I was told to send an email through to her. The email address *** was wrong so I called back again (13h29). I asked for the email address again and was given a completely different address *** the second time. The email address failed again. I am afraid that I was potentially, deliberately mislead with incorrect email addresses. After a month of more excuses from Mbombela and alternative classes offered on the squash court, I emailed *** and now almost a month later, I still have not had a response from customer services. We have we been able to participate in any aqua classes as the temperature and heating problem has still not been resolved. After members of our class put together a petition, we finally had a response from Mbombela Crossings management only to be informed that the club had been closed for renovations and we should make use of another Virgin Active club. Unfortunately, there is only one other club in Mbombela and they have no pool. We in fact especially travel further to go to the Crossings branch because we needed the pool facilities. They also changed the Whatsapp group that we had used for months and blocked messages from the members and made the group an admin only messages group. We were effectively gagged. On the 24 August, the management finally gave us some honest feedback with the following statement. "This is a bigger issue than we thought. We need to replace the plate heat exchange. All the heating systems are working 100% but due the end of life of the PHE the pool is unable to get warmer. We have a quote that was pre-approved by NHO. The supplier will inform us on Monday on the ETA. We had 2 external expects on Friday that they have advise that we must replace the old PHE as it has rust and some of the plates are showing signs of deterioration. Further more, Daniel (regional facility manager) will be in the club on Wednesday. His aim is to try bypass or create a way to warm the pool. We will keep you updated. We again apologize for any inconvenience." Our question is what are they going to do about compensating us for nearly 5 months of membership fees for both my husband and myself. The same question asked by other members and the response from Virgin was that unfortunately they could not offer affected members, either partial or full refund for the services they had not received!! This is a company endorsed and in partnership with Discovery Medical Aid and Vitality. We as pensioners have lost 5 months of fees X 2 (not a small amount of money) and experienced the regression of our health and fitness as result of this complete debacle. I feel we have been **** to and misled by the call centre, ignored by the management of Crossings for months and have not been offered any solutions other than alternative classes that we cannot participate in safely. We have lost out on our Virgin Rewards and our rewards on Vitality over the last 5 months. The ultimate insult was receiving this cheery message today from Virgin Active! "Roberta we've genuinely missed having you in the club and wanted to reach out. We understand life can get hectic, but we also know how important your wellness journey is to you. We're always striving to make Mbombela the best place for your health, fitness and wellness goals. To do that, we need your insights. Could you spare a moment to share why you haven't been in lately? Your feedback helps us ensure we're truly supporting your well-being." And then you are invited to click on an automated response which will simply become a statistic! Mind blowing how arrogant businesses are in South Africa! Customers are just a source of revenue! Please don't pretend to care because it’s evident you don't. No integrity Virgin Active, shame on you!!! And Discovery? Where do you stand on this as we pay our Vitality membership every month and receive no back up or assistance. We would at least like our Virgin membership to be credited and receive acknowledgement and compensation for Virgin Active Rewards and Vitality Rewards that we have lost out on. So what have you got to say. I look forward to your response.