Local leisure centre websites 🤯

[TwinklyTornadoBear]

Why, for the love of god, are local leisure centre websites so catastrophically shite? We’ve lived near three different ones now, and each time it feels like a competition to see who can design the most user unfriendly site. They’d get a slicker result if they outsourced it to a bunch of 12yr olds.

Want to see the timetable? Just scroll past the Ts & Cs, GDPR statement, parking policy, contact info, and probably the town’s coat of arms, right down at the very bottom. Because obviously that’s the most logical place to hide it.

They’ve got three completely separate systems depending on what you’re doing. Booking a session - use the main site. Want to see lessons, go to Course Hub. And don’t forget the HomePortal which you occasionally end up in, and looks the same as everywhere else, but is just designed to send you on a wild goose chase. You also get to re-select your “home” centre from a randomised drop-down list every single time. Maybe Exeter, tomorrow Dundee - does your local
pool even exist anymore?

Swimming lessons are a whole new level of joy. First you’ve got to find where to book them on the site (which should earn you a Duke of Edinburgh badge in orienteering). Then you can add your child to a waiting list… except the staff say the waiting list doesn’t exist. Not to worry, just keep refreshing at 6 a.m. every morning like it’s Glastonbury tickets.

All the while you’re tripping over lengthy statements about their “mission and values.” I don’t care if your mission is world peace and your values are kindness, courage and turmeric smoothies - I just want to know when the pool is open, how much it costs, and whether I can book a gym session without studying computer programming. 🤯

Is this just a local curse, or are leisure centres nationwide engaged in some secret pact to make their websites as unusable as humanly possible?

Yes! And I'm in a fairly decent sized city. Multiple pools and one really, really bad website for them all.
Forgot your password? Don't worry, we won't send the link to reset it until about an hour after the link has expired.

Actually managed to get a working link and want to pay? Ok, let's make sure the site freezes for so long that by the time you get to putting your details in, the time slot has expired.

Try calling to book in person? Oh no sorry that's not allowed, we don't take bookings over the phone. Online only please madam. Forgot your password? Ok, just wait for this link.....

So many websites where you want to make a (seemingly) simple change but the back end architecture means it would require a full rebuild!

Totally hear this. You go on holiday and you have to work out a new system everytime.
And to be honest I've never quite cracked the local ones to me either. I keep trying and giving up and just ploughing on with my private hotel gym membership... because I can just turn up and swim whenever I want, and I can take my son for free until he turns 8.
It's just easier and more convenient to keep paying the extra money to access a system that works.

Absolutely agree. I'm going to have to go into my local leisure centre and ask a human.

I agree with you. I can’t even find ours online because the name is so unmemorable. And the carpark has more rules and signs than a prison. I’ve joined a hotel gym and pool now.

Absolutely - we’re between three different providers and all the websites are terrible (but different). Obviously you can’t ring for advice or booking ss no one ever answers the phone. One of the providers has just been taken over by someone else so we’ll see what delights they have for us…

I never quite understand it. When i was a kid if you wanted to swim you just turned up. There were lessons or a keep fit clas in 1 or two sections and the rest of the pool was free.

Now there's a bewildering array of 1 hour sessions and often no availability, lessons have a massive waitlist and are at stupid times - 7pm for a stage 1 or 2 class which is primarily going to be attended by 4/5 year olds!

Mine is fine. There's also an app which makes it even easier to look up times and book classes.

Hey OP,

I feel your pain too. We have Better now, and it’s rubbish.

Your style of writing made me chuckle though 😜.

I ended up going across the border to a different country and booking expensive one to one lessons for kids as more hassle to try to book lessons here on crappy website. Conscious they obviously need to learn to swim. I did complain to the council and got no response from them even though meant to acknowledge in 3 days

I also struggle with our local centre. Timetables are never up to date, times are wrong, and the Facebook page offers totally different information.

I agree!!! Once you've navigated Mordor to get to the swimming session times, there's no visual timetable - you have to pick a random session from the list - say 'family swimming', scroll down and then read the session times that are listed in text. And if there's not a time you like you can go back to square one to choose something else random like 'family swimming with lanes'.

And theeeeeeen, of course you have to try and book. Heaven help us all.

During covid restrictions, we were on holiday and DS wanted to do various activities that ended up being closed or cancelled. In the end we decided to play tennis on some local courts. I had to join the leisure centre (free) get a membership number, and then they would email a pin number. Once I had got the pin I could log in to book the tennis court. Once booked they hsd to email or text a code for the padlock on the gate. It was such a faff all to play tennis for an hour.

Our local leisure centre closed a facility because it was underused. Lots of people wanted to use it but the booking page was buried so far into the website they didnt know how to book, or even that it was an option!

Agree, Better website is as bad as it gets!

Ours is equally awful. It also lets you book a diving session when the diving isn't open 🤣

Yep then add in the trying to get into the centre. Must use the qr code via your phone only there’s no bloody signal in the building and their WiFi doesn’t support the amount of customers attempting to use it to get through the bloody turnstile… arghhhhhhhh

Yes everyone active websites so user unfriendly!! To find out the pool timetable during holidays...bonkers!!

OMG yes! I haven't been swimming in about a year because I just can't face renewing my pass online.

Yours sounds even worse than mine.

On ours there are separate pages for different things, and they are not always cross-linked. So, you want a timetable, you go to the Timetable page. There is a class called "N.R.G" and one called "Work It Out" - no links to help you find out what on earth these classes are. To find out I roam around the website and end up on the Activities page, where I have to guess whether they are "Gym & Cardio" or "Fitness". And I can't set a filter on this page to show only the ones at my local centre (there are several in the city).

But the most annoying thing of all is the actual booking/class usage. I am not a member and go ad hoc, and pay for each class, while members can book a place in a class for free. But the popular classes fill up instantly, so I can't book. Sometimes I get the last space, turn up and the class is only half full, presumably with members who don't lose any money doing this. I've pointed this out to the staff but they can't see any problem with it.

There is an element of the website platform creating a problem that can't be easily fixed, but there is a strong degree of human error involved too in my experience. For example round here the council was advertising sports coaching at a local park over the summer. They provided a link to a brand new booking system and I couldn't find the sports coaching anywhere. It was all organised by venue, and whilst the park was listed as a venue there were no activities associated with it at all. I called up the old booking line, who told me they could no longer accept phone bookings and talked me through how to access the online system. It turned out that buried towards the bottom of the list of 30 odd venues was a category called 'Sports and Drama' and that's where the specific sports coaching I wanted was. When we eventually got to the coaching sessions there were only 3 other kids there and the coaches told us it had been poorly advertised 'yes' and people really struggled to find it on the booking site 'double yes', and it wasn't going to run the following week if more people didn't book. That wasn't an infrastructure issue, that was people setting up a new system who just didn't think things through.

Yeah. I think this is a Covid hangover. When things started reopening after Covid everything had to be booked and places seemed to think this was better.

We’ve just got back from a caravan site which ran hour long pool sessions throughout the day which had to be booked o line. All booked weeks in advance so by the time I looked 3 weeks before we left there was hardly any slots left. You could chance it and turn but we were turned away once doing this. So annoying. I don’t want to plan my swimming weeks before my holiday, I want to swim when it suits me.

Agree, the Better website/app had a search function years ago which seems to have been removed. I emailed their customer services recently to ask when a certain class was run in my local centres. I was told that they weren't able to tell me where & when this class was on & that I should search each centre separately, day by day to find the class I wanted. Better need to pay their software developers to improve their site/app

Ours is also awful and they have about 8 centres so imagine the fun!! The app is slightly better but back in the days when you had to book everything session even the kids had to have their own account, you couldn’t just book an adult and a child for a swim session, you had to go through the whole palaver twice!! My private gym is a lot better, all based on an app, one click and you’re booked in the class.

Yes totally agree 100% i live on the boarder of 2 local authorities so i use facilities run by both councils. omg both have completely horrendous unuser friendly websites. its a huge faff to book a swim session.i have got incredibly frustrated many a time and wanted to fling my phone.
God I miss the days when you could just freely walk in your local pool without booking and swim there and then.

I use leisure centres far, far less since the web based pre-booking. There's 3 in range that I can reasonably use including one 5 minutes away. I used to use it a lot; pick up the timetable/ info booklet every few months when it updated, turn up for the session, pay, do session. Now everything's "interactive lists" that are a pain to sort through, aren't organised by venues and booking seems to go in mysterious loops.

It's totally off-putting and far easier to go for a run or be signed into DH's gym as a guest instead.