The recent Fitness 'Buffet' craze in Singapore gives our health-conscious Singaporeans a wide range of gym, dance classes, yoga classes etc access island-wide. The term 'Fitness Buffet' means you only need to pay for one subscription and you get to access to different fitness studios. To name a few, there are KFit, GuavaPass & Passport Asia.
Well, I've personally tried Passport Asia...halfway.
I saw their Facebook Ad sometime in July and was curious about it. As recently I am into getting fit, I downloaded their mobile app from iTunes. At that time, they were offering one month FREE trial as their introduction promotion. That entitled me for 4 free sessions to try out their partners' services.
I was thrilled by this and immediately booked my first session on 24 July (Body Sculpt by Rasa Fitness) but because of my work commitment, I have missed that session. So technically, I still left with 3 sessions. And subsequently, I've booked 2 sessions and left with 1 session.
However, just before I can attend those 2 sessions that I've booked, there was a notice in the app and all the 3 sessions that I have left were suspended.
I was very disappointed as I was looking forward to try out their services.
The sudden notice gave app users insufficient time (or rather no time) to re-schedule the sessions that they have booked or left to an earlier one before the expiry of the promotion.
There was some 'good news' though, Passport Asia offers a service recovery promotion by giving 50% off the subscription fee till 31 July. If I didn't remember wrongly, this was an extremely limited-time offer as the notice was out around 27 July and wanted app users to make decision by 31 July to enjoy the 50% discount.
I felt that this was so unfair. Firstly, I still had 3 remaining unbooked sessions. Secondly, they suspended all sessions suddenly without giving us time to complete our free trial. Hence, I wrote in and hope that they could reinstate those sessions that I have left and this was their reply.
I hate it when customer service officers just copy and paste their SOP templates to reply to complains or feedback. The reply didn't address the request I've made to reinstate those remaining sessions. They just apologised for ending the free subscription abruptly. I can understand that they couldn't cope with the overwhelming responses but that doesn't mean that they can take back what was already given. Even though I did not pay for anything but I still felt this was unethical. Hence, this made me have no confidence to sign up for their paid subscription.
Looking at what had happened, I guess these could have been the possible reasons that made them suspended their free trial promotion abruptly:
1) In order to get people to download their mobile app or Like their Facebook page, they came out with unrealistic promotion.
They started their business in January this year and launched their free one month trial with UNLIMITED classes in Februrary and then extended it by giving one more month of free trial in March. Can you imagine the number of free sessions their partners have to fork out?
2) They did not protect their partners' businesses.
Without any last-mintue cancellation charges, this could lead to high no-show rate and their partners' business will be affected.
Each yoga classes, for example, will have limited space for a number of participants and because they do have paid customers from other sources, they can't afford to have no-show from free trial participants.
3) Too many complains from partners resulted in immediate termination of free trial promotion.
As explained in Point 2, I guess Passport Asia had received too many negative feedbacks from partners that they need to stop the promotion and even went to the extend of taking back those free trials which were given earlier.
Suggestion:
Offering free trial is a great promotion to allow greater number of people to try your product/service without paying for it. However, especially for this type of service-based business, last-min cancellation policy has to be established. Passport Asia should have asked for credit card details and only charges it when there is a no-show. This will reduces the chances of no-show and their partners will be protected too.
