jack of sports inc. lack of organization, professionalism and client care. toronto Ontario Canada

(apologies in advance for the length of this - I'm still worked up!)

Jack of Sports is very expensive for childrens' swim lessons, but we assumed that the cost would be reflected in the instruction. This is definitely not the case. The average instructor is a student doing a part-time job. Class levels are blended in order to save money on separate instructors - and this seriously impacts the level of personal attention.

We had been willing to overlook all of this as the locations were convenient and the class calendar fit the school year perfectly. But our last (literally) experience has hammered home that we should NOT have overlooked these horrible business practices.

Here was the straw that broke the camel's back:  our son had to miss two lessons due to a family emergency, and the funeral that followed. So the following lesson, we asked the teenage instructor if missing those lessons would impact his ability to pass his level, and whether should we book make-up lessons. We were emphatically told no, that "he was doing fine". Now, since that instructor was standing in for the regular teenage instructor (who missed more than two classes, btw) we repeated the exercise the following week with the usual instructor. Same response - he was "fine".

The last lesson of the season arrived. As part of the finale, the kids picked their favourite stroke to do their final laps. My son chose breaststroke. After he completed the laps, his instructor said verbatim "so, breaststroke is your favourite - you did a great job!"

But when it was time for the pass/fail portion - our son failed. There was only one element that he failed - yep, breaststroke. He was told this in line with other students, and was devastated. Crying inconsolably - both because he failed (but had been told he was passing) and due to embarassment over being called out in front of the rest of the class.

When we spoke with both the "supervisor" (surprise! another teenager) at the site, questioning why we were told he didn't require make-up lessons if he was so weak he'd fail, AND how is it he can be told he did a great job on the very stroke he failed. The responses were nonsensical - and frankly, completely ridiculous.

We then called the owner - we had spent many hundreds of dollars with his company, and expected at least a semblance of a rationale. Or potentially a refund of some amount considering the lack of organization and the outright errors. We were disappointed. Again, the explanation had no relationship to the issue AND Larry had zero interest in a resolution.

You would be best served to utilize the City of Toronto's lessons - the cost is nowhere near Jack of Sports, and at least the teenage instructors have supervision, versus an organization with an absent owner and an extremely arbitrary method of instruction.