SafeSplash Swim School - West Warwick — Local services in West Warwick

Due to poor time management and a crowded pool, children don’t spend enough time learning and perfecting their skills. They just wait in the water for 15 minutes or so taking turns. The class is dismissed 2-5 mins before the full 30 minutes but I still have to pay for a full 30 minute class. That equates to me paying around $1/minute for my child to learn for only 5 of those minutes. My daughter has been swimming with Safe Splash/Ripples since April 2023, yet she is only at Beginner 3. That is absurd and goes to show you that she could be learning a lot more as well as the other children if these issues were resolved. This is why I sought lessons at YMCA. Their set up for classes match my child’s needs and are up to my standards. Plus I’m saving over 50% of what I spent here at Safe Splash. I have complained about these issues multiple times and have been told that “someone from management would be reaching out” to me within 24-48hrs but that’s never happened. While most of the personnel are very kind, the management is just terrible to say the least. My suggestions were:

To have 5 minute gaps in between each class so everyone gets to be in the pool the entire time they’re paying for without anyone rushing in or out of the pool. Train your instructors to have better time management so every child gets enough 1 on 1 time. If a child is inconsolable and causing a disruption to the class because they’re not in a good mood or maybe they’re still scared to swim, instead of taking time away from other students, cancel that child’s class and grant them a makeup class (everyone’s happy). If that inconsolable child needs more 1 on 1 than others, maybe a semi-private or private class is more suitable for them. Offer less classes at a time to leave room in the pool for group activities instead of only focusing on 1 on 1. This would allow the entire class to be included while learning the skills at the same time which makes it more fun, and worth the money if they’re not just sitting in the water doing nothing majority of the time.

I strongly believe your customers will be a lot happier when most, if not all, of these suggestions are actually used. Not that you care about losing one customer, but I would love to come back with my child if you ever improve. Wasted over $1100 for my child to not even be able to swim across the short length of the pool. Shameful to keep funneling money into unnecessary renovations instead of coming up with a better system for children to consistently move up in skill level.

Another thing I will add - unrelated to her lessons.. I requested my daughter’s name to be spelled phonetically next to her name on their board/chart to make it easier to pronounce. Since I noticed no one was saying it right, I decided to compromise. Yet everyone STILL butchered it and didn’t bother to say it correctly even after she and myself corrected them. I find it to be very disrespectful. She has a beautiful name, and it was very annoying to hear them call her a bunch of other things that weren’t even close. Make more effort learning names of children that are there every week for almost a year. It only has 3 syllables, are...

The people at the center are wonderful, the instructor and the folks at the reception are great. They know our kids by name, and we have had no trouble with the people there.

However, the customer service folks are horrible. The customer service is handled by a centralized call center, which is horrible. This message is for the owners, please see if this culture could be changed. This morning(May 4, 2025), I called the customer service. I called to reschedule a make-up class. First off, "Aaron" who received the phone, did not have to be rude. They simply let me know that they could not reschedule a make-up class. The tone was indignant. I asked where I could find this policy. He did not know, said 'somewhere in the parent portal'. I insisted that if he didn't know, could he please ask someone who knew? A few minutes later, I got an answer. I called after reading the section I was pointed to. I read the paragraph to him. Nowhere did it say that I could not request a reschedule before missing a make-up class. Then he looked for a long time and said there was nothing available(son takes private lessons). I asked if I could be connected to the West Warwick center directly, and after some time, I was told the location didn't respond. I would have been fine otherwise, but at this point, I wanted to see if they truly didn't have any availability. My husband drove to the location and was able to reschedule with a smile. No questions asked. The person behind the phone from the centralized call center wanted to enjoy their Sunday and didn't appreciate us bothering them.

This is the second time we have had a terrible experience with the...

I am not sure what has happened at Ripples in the past 6-8 months, but 10/10 would not recommend. Class was canceled with no notice on us multiple times. Showed up to class on three separate occasions only to be turned away at the door after our 35 minute long drive to get there. No phone calls, no emails...nothing. When we expressed how frustrated we were we were told there was nothing they could do about it, it was a matter of the chemicals in the pool being safe. Our class was at 10am. Is no one getting there earlier to check on the chemicals being safe? Have your staff come in at 6am if you need to, to ensure you give parents the proper notice. Aside, they were very unapologetic and so we told them we wanted to cancel. We were told that not only were they going to keep the money from the classes we weren't able to attend because of them, but because of our contract, we had to pay for another month.

This was over a month ago, and they're still trying to charge us.

Run. Customer service is horrible, the place is run by a bunch of kids who are more interested in chatting with each other than teaching our kids to swim and its truly not worth the headache, money or frustration with so many other options in the area (URI,...