Dear All,

I wish to inform you my unsatisfactory experience so far and of some anti-consumer practices followed at Fitness First Bahrain.

I have joined them during a "special offer" in August 2010. They pushed me to either pay at one time of commit without an exit clause to paying in 12 installments for a year membership. Looking at the location and the brand i understood it stood for, after brief inspection of the equipment, etc. i joined for a year membership.

At the time, i was not informed of any facilities not working, and the first day i went in, i found that the Sauna was not working. upon inquiry the staff told me it will be working in few days. Even after 2 weeks the case was the same. I wrote a complaint and was called by the General Manager, who told me it will take 5 days since the parts needed to be imported. I later found out that the Sauna had been in-operational since many months. WHY WAS I NOT INFORMED WHEN I JOINED ? i pointed this out to the manager and asked for some confirmed time frame or some form of compensation, which he promptly denied and said the club does not have any policy for compensation for non-functioning facilities.

After almost 2 months, the story was still the same and i wrote a formal letter complaining of the issue and demanding extension of my membership by a small duration. After handing this over to the staff, still i received no response.

My letter also indicated the basic other things that were wrong, some of which are:

1. Sauna not working
2. Shower area unclean (broken door rubbers, fungus in places, celing dripping water, etc.) and in need of repair
3. Quality of soap provided is horrible (compared to Adidas branded soap offered in Fitness First Dubai) - something i would expect a club charging so much to provide is good quality soap
4. Towels are torn / dirty at times

Although the sauna has been fixed recently, the problems continue:

5. Sauna door handle broken
6. Sauna Lights not working properly - like sitting in a dark room
7. Weighing Scale not working (removed) for long time
8. Some machines the Heart Rate monitors don't work (especially two of the cybex machines)

This is even after being taken over by the Landmark Group, which was supposed to improve things !

The small little things which cost almost no money to fix are also not done, like no one is interested at all.

My point is after charging for something supposed to be a Premium Service, the service provided is no better than the small gyms around Bahrain charging less than 1/4th the price.

I have been a member with Sheraton Fitness earlier and i have to say their service is comparatively top notch for a similar price and includes a Steam Room and a Jacuzzi.

Whenever i have tried to ask for an explanation, no one in the staff has been able to provide any comforting answers.

I tried to complain by email, but even their website for Bahrain is under construction for almost 4 years, and the contact us link on the UAE website is broken since at least 6 months !

My recommendation at this time is to anyone looking for a good fitness club in Bahrain, is to NOT opt for the Fitness First, its not worth it - and looks like they don' t care about customers or customer service.

For any queries or an update please write to [email protected]

Best Regards,
Unsatisfied Customer of Fitness First Bahrain