I know i missed my exercise class but so what?

[notacooldad]

I pay in advance for my Pilates class. It is £30 a session
You can cancel the class as long as you give 24hrs notice, if not you lose out.
Quite reasonablely you can't be more than 5 mins late.
On Thursday I had an appointment before my class which over ran significantly, on top of that I encountered three lots of temporary lights and traffic has backed up.
By the time I got to the car park I was 10 mins late. There was no point rushing, I'm late, I've missed out. There isn't a reception where I could have explained this to, just the instructor doing her thing with the group.
I went home.
I got an email which was,imo , quite snotty, telling me i should have let them know if i wasn't going to turn up so they could have given that place to someone on the waiting list.

My feeling is I've paid for that space, whether I was there or not.

If they gave it to someone else they would have had £30 from them as ' as a place has become available '
I wouldn't have got my money back as it clearly says no refunds if you are late or a no show.
Therefore, I feel like the sharp tone of the email is a bit ridiculous. The company hasn't lost out and as far as I can imagine, most people want to turn up and don't deliberately miss classes once they've paid for them.

What do others think?

For reformer Pilates or mat?

That would be a steal for reformer Pilates and it’s difficult to imagine the studio could cover their overheads at that price point as it would only be about £42 per hour (to cover the hourly rate of the instructor, rent of the studio, insurance, utilities, capital cost of the very expensive equipment and cleaning.

As mat Pilates has no fixed equipment and therefore the space can be used for other purposes and you could have up to 20 in a class in a large enough room, the economics would potentially work at that price point though it’s still cheaper than is available near me.

Not really sure what the crying hilarity face is for? Let me rephrase. Everyone has to share the space with fewer people. If a person is absent, that creates a space in the class (which the instructor wanted to fill). Everyone in the class benefits from that. The instructor has one less person to deal with. The entire AIBU is about whether the instructor is right to be miffed that they didn’t get to fill the space even though it had already been paid for.

But the equipment is heavy and can’t be moved around. So you have the same amount of space to perform your exercises whether 2 people turn up or 6 is the point.

Yes if 2 people turn up you have more of the instructors attention but when there are only half a dozen people in a class max having one less makes very little difference as a participant.

I do these classes regularly and it makes no difference to my enjoyment whether the class is full or not. It does impact me though when the session is fully booked when I want to attend and I can’t find another convenient time hence why I said in my first post if you can it is considerate to cancel rather than no show (accepting that on this particular occasion that wasn’t possible for this OP)

Why is it frustrating when the client has already paid for the class in advance? The teacher is not out of pocket financially.

Well, I think the money-grabbing gits have a bit of a bloody cheek!

It would be too much aggravation for me to bother with a Pilates teacher like that. You’ve paid and you respected the rule to not barge into the session late, so that should be the end of it.

I'm in Lincolnshire and the class is in our village hall (sort of sets the scene there) All mat based exercises.

I have attended Pilates classes for a while with a variety of different teachers and this class is as good as any of the others I have attended.

So you aren’t comparing like with like at all. You have said the equivalent of “mine cost £7.50” on a thread about the price of food processors when you are referring to your knife and everyone else is talking about their magimix.

Just saying that's all... Chill..!

But the OP didn't know she was going to be late.
If she'd sent an email from the car park, would you have read it?
She still paid for the session, you haven't lost anything.

Staggered at how expensive that is

Tbh if Ihad an appointment prior to a class I would have cancelled the class just to be on the safe side and to ensure someone else could have my place in the event of any holdups.

But the teacher hadn't lost anything because OP already paid up front. Though not content with that it appears the teacher wanted OPs £30 plus another £30 on top by bringing in a replacement student from her waiting list, and that does seem a little exploitative of the situation especially as she wasn't out of pocket anyway.

It's not about money, it's basic good manners. It seems very expensive, is it a very small group?

@KimberleyClark

Tbh if Ihad an appointment prior to a class I would have cancelled the class just to be on the safe side and to ensure someone else could have my place

Most people manage to do more than one thing with their mornings.
A routine ' how are you doing' appointment at 8 o'clock would not mean I can't do something at 10.30, especially for something 20 mins away.
Normally I have this appointment and make it to work days for 9 o'clock with time to spare and work is 6 minutes further away from the class!

Yanbu not to expect a snotty email about this. I hope you sent a similarly snotty one back.

If I’d paid £30 I would’ve just gone in 10 minutes late, they’re hardly going to order you to leave when you’ve paid.

But what “safe side”? OP wouldn’t get her money back, so it’s not cancelling to be on the safe side. Once the money is spent, there’s no point in the OP when she could very well have made the class.

I'm often staggered at what people spend on shoes, bags, clothes, hair, nails, cars etc - but we all have different priorities when it comes to money, so it's pretty pointless comparing. For the op, her fitness is worth that cost.

Absolutely and as the class is so inflexible why let them sell the place twice? I understand that if they can’t use the place, you should have to pay. But to moan that they could have filled it but you won’t get a refund, is out of order!