Virgin Active — Attraction in London

A lovely club, with decent facilities and a nice location, reasonable staff. Why the low rating? Why I have no intention of ever commiting a membership with Virgin Active again? Because they have abjectly the worst management staff I have ever had the displeasure of working with. Due to an issue with my bank account my direct debit was cancelled and so my monthly charge bounced, this is often an issue that happens when setting up new direct debits, especially with gyms, and as I've always done I simply called them up to clear the balance and reset the direct debit, I inquired as to the exact balance which was said to me to be £91, and then authorised a charge from my account for the Virgin Active to collect the full balance. All good.

A week later I finally get a chance to pop into the gym and I'm told there's still an outstanding balance on my account. I try to call them up, no answer. After a ridiculous amount of tracking becase Virgin Active does not provide any method of contacting customer service to it's members (their "contact us" page literally feeds directly back to an FAQ page with 3 answers to irrelevant questions and not even a contact form) besides a day time number, I send them an email regarding a clarification. After the reply I find out that I'd been misinformed and mischarged, apparently my outstanding balance was not £91, it was £100, and I'd been charged £91 as some sort of a joke, furthermore because my direct debit had failed, my account was handed immediately to a gotdamn f**g collections agency, which meant that an additional £50 was added to the balance, which I was not informed of when I explicitly called up requesting understanding of all matters related to my account, perhaps they wanted it to be a surprise that a defaulted balance had been placed to my name, especially considering I was neither called, sent a letter or even given an email regarding this balance.

Edit: A fair few weeks later I have finally managed to have the issue resolved, a short summation of my further experience:

after only achieving a faux resolution on my first call (due to a processing error on the Virgin Active side, though in this case it is the one part I don't feel to hold against them), I decided the safest option was to attempt to email the customer service team and enquire as to resolving the matter.

Now I don't know if the email in inquiry department and the call in inquiry department are different, but I would assume so, because when I called in the first time while the final result itself was disappointing the service itself was fully according the expected standard of a large institution, the service operator was recently, patient and earnest to help my issue, and even managed to confirm a solution on the first time I called in (though obviously that solution was not reached), whereas when I emailed in to the Virgin Active team, I received one of the worst customer service experiences of my life, the team were uninterested in my issue or helping to resolve it, completely ignored my complaints and the points I made regarding the inconsistencies I experienced with my account balance (which were later confirmed due to an issue with internally processing the payment I had made) and were extremely callous in insisting that I make the payments that they had stipulated or face the consequences, a truly horrendous face to the Virgin Active representation.

Fortunately I decided to return to the call in customer service team, and a special shoutout to Sophia with the team I believe affiliated with this branch, as she was not only kind and considerate, but who, after some unfortunately stretched on attempts, managed to fully resolve my issue with the account and reactivate my membership without any ludicrous fees or issues.

Thanks to her I've raised my review from 1 star to 2 stars, and I will be considering to further ameliorate my review as long as I do not face any more unreasonable issues or unreasonable customer service for the remaining 2/3rds or so of my one...

It's rare that I take time out to write one of these reviews but I feel it appropriate to share my awful experience with the Virgin Active in Canary Wharf. The attitude of the staff, members, and the range of equipment are all incredibly poor, especially if you consider the cost. To preface, I had to change my weekday gym from Reebok due to a job relocation and this Virgin Active in Canary Wharf ended up being the nearest gym to where I live.

Firstly, for the amount you pay per month this "gym" has to be one of the biggest scams going. Virgin Active have a tiering system for their clubs (tier 1 being the most expensive down to tier 3 I believe, based on facilities and equipment) and somehow the Canary Wharf branch managed to get awarded a tier 1 demanding membership rates up to £195 per month (with an eye wateringly egregious £100 joining fee, even if you only want to join for a month).

The floor manager lured me into a membership with the promise of 3 free guest passes up on joining which I thought was a good way to ease the daunting process of starting at a new gym. My very first visit I decide to bring along a friend and try out a spinning class, we arrived with plenty of time to spare before the class was due to start and proceed to sign in at the front desk only to be told that there are no guest passes on the account and I owe £30 as I hadn’t pre-booked my guest. It does seem like the staff say anything to get you to sign up and then are completely rude and incompetent when you require anything further.

This brings me onto the facilities, the room where the spinning class takes place is pretty much the size of a cloakroom in a central London apartment, into which they have crammed the spinning bikes so close together you’re rubbing elbows with the people next to you and getting sweat-spray from people on the other side of the room. About 15 minutes into the class its quite clear the air conditioning isn’t adequate for the heat generated by the people crammed in there. I’d say this probably one of the most disgusting experiences I have partaken in, closely followed by the central line at rush hour in summer.

The basic layout of the club is arranged over for floors, on the basement is the spa, ground floor is the reception, first floor is cardio and the second floor is the weights section. If you actually go up to the weights floor only about a third of it is designated for weights with the other two-thirds just open floor space where personal training sessions occur. This bring me onto the other massive let down of the club, the weights section is absolutely tiny. There was 3 other people up there when I was going to start my work out and this remarkably made the place feel busy constantly manoeuvring around each other, I’d hate to see what its like when it gets busy. The range of equipment up here is incredibly poor and the weights offered along the dumbbell section left a lot to be desired.

Onto my last criticism of the club, the levels of hygiene in the spa. Around peak times and weekends the spa section is constantly busy, in fact the amount of people I saw walk straight from the changing rooms, not having a shower and entering the spa pools directly just shows this entire area is harbouring diseases and germs. On just my second visit alone to the club I managed to contract a verruca and this is the only public pool area I had been to for months so its quite clear they have an issue here.

This is a great gym for people who want to claim they’re a member at a gym and never actually turn up as it carries the prestigious Virgin brand name but for people who actually want to work out, lose weight, get fit, save yourself the time and hassle I went through and please just join Reebok which is a 5 minute walk away. Reebok is by far the best gym in London and anyone fortune enough to require a gym in the Canary Wharf area will find the facilities are a pleasure to use, the staff are extremely polite and they also charge far more reasonable...

This place …. Positively the staff are friendly and helpful and facilities are good although worn and tired. However there where four lads in there today causing continuous affray and taking pictures of female members leaving the female change rooms from behind the spa area glass panel whilst making grotesque animal noises and gloating about the things that they will do to the girls. This is the single worst thing I’ve ever seen in a virgin active in 25 years. It’s totally unacceptable. Although this is the worst scenario it’s not an isolated incident at Canary Wharf, I really regret becoming a member here. 25 years a happy customer at VA (various locations pre-covid) and now this, at such elevated prices is insulting. There are many aggressive members with no social standards, despicable manners and obscene personal hygiene in the communal areas. Human debris in the shower, spitting snot, urinating…it’s vile. This is a terrible club! I really wish I wasn’t a member here, I cannot in any good faith recommend this club to anyone especially women who want to feel safe after what I saw today. Nobody should ever feel apprehensive or afraid of going to a place of leisure and exercise. Nor feel dirty leaving it.

UPDATE: Thank you for the time to reply to my review. The request for me to forward a date and time of the incident disturbs me, as I made a personal alert to 3 reception staff simultaneously at my exit that very day and they all declared that they will act accordingly and clearly did nothing nor put anything on file. This was after several people had left the spa area already and a member of staff had asked the lads to stop the behaviour and was told in no uncertain terms what she should do (you can imagine what was said). She had not reported anything by the time I did. My reporting it again that same day on the app, resulting in a generic apologetic reply from club management, with a futile promise to investigate (just like your reply). Therefore you (VA) are already aware of the Date and who 'dealt' with it . It frightens me to think that nothing is on record for you to investigate. That raises even more flags. You have a strict No-Photography rule according to your T's & C's in those areas of the club and yet in the 6 months of my membership not one member of staff has ever intervened in stopping people filming, Tic-Toc's (as also happened to me) or photos being taken. Personally I won't be coming back to this club, I took a hiatus from coming since that day and the culminative awkward apprehension I get (for the first time ever at VA in 20 happy years) is enough for me to never come again. I have 6 months left on my membership and I can only assume that there will be no release form contract. I cannot continue at a club, sharing confined spaces with convicted criminals openly wearing ankle tags nor the low level of personal behaviour that's rife all the way through. If you want to know the date and time of the incident then perhaps start with confronting your own staff and management for the records that they where supposed to hold on this since it happed. Its tiring living in a world of generic corporate apologies and inaction. If you want to apologise to me for what I've experienced in this club, release me from my contract, either way I...