Schools Plus Arvostelua 287

We really have great time using the hall the staff are great specially the manager Ms Shilla kind and caring lady 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

As a club we use Schools Plus at The Latimer Arts College. My experience with them has always been really positive from booking to the service you receive in the evening. Paul is so accommodating and looks after us all. Coaches and parents all speak very highly of him and his enthusiastic/ diligent approach to his job.

Avoid! Our school was unexpectedly removed from the premises in London in the middle of the academic year, leaving us in a state of confusion and disarray. The administration announced the cancellation of our classroom spaces with only a week's notice, forcing us to scramble for alternative arrangements with little time to prepare. The problems began back in May 2024, when we had settled on a specific rent price. Just as we thought everything was in order, they unexpectedly proposed to double that amount, throwing our agreement into disarray and raising concerns about their reliability.

Hi SchoolsPlus Team,

I hope this message finds you well.

I am writing in response to your comment on my review from around a month ago. While I do not wish to repeat what my teammates have already mentioned in their comments, I would like to provide one point of clarification.

There was a particular statement in your response that I found troubling: Your comment regarding the authenticity of our feedback was disheartening and seemed like "the pot calling the kettle black." Given that the "5-star" reviews appeared immediately after we raised our concerns, I couldn't help but question their authenticity.

I was quite surprised and disappointed by this type of response from SchoolsPlus, as I expected a higher level of professionalism. After numerous emails and phone calls, I received two calls from your operations manager, which seemed to indicate a willingness to address the matter openly.

The current replies received by my teammates appear to have been sent shortly after my second conversation with the operations manager. While this could very well be coincidental, the timing made the response seem somewhat contrived.

During my discussion with the operations manager, he expressed regret about the unfortunate incidents that had occurred, apparently due to the actions of a new area manager. He also mentioned that measures were being taken internally, though he was unable to share specific details due to GDPR compliance, which we fully respect.

However, what I found disappointing was the lack of follow-through. The operations manager ended our call by mentioning that he would further consider how our club sessions could resume at our original venue—our home for league matches. Despite waiting for almost a month and following up with multiple messages, I have yet to receive any form of communication from SchoolsPlus.

This experience has left me with the impression that SchoolsPlus, as an organization, may be struggling to make the right decisions in challenging situations, and I fear the issue may be getting overlooked. It's not simply a matter of losing a long-standing customer; it's about the trustworthiness and values of SchoolsPlus as a company.

While I understand that there may be valid reasons for the delays and challenges in response, I believe that making the right decision, even when difficult, sends an important message both internally and externally. As a club, we have moved to a new venue, though it has not been without inconvenience—particularly as we lose our home advantage for matches. Nonetheless, I hope SchoolsPlus takes this opportunity to reflect on how similar situations could be managed more effectively in the future.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. I hope for positive changes that benefit all involved.

Best regards,
Pravat Mishra

AVOID ........called and spoke to a staff member to make a booking .at Blenheim high school epsom......they took £700 from our football club saying the pitch was available....and on the night of training suddenly their was a computer error and the pitch is fully booked.....!!!!
ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS....whole womans team now without training venue.....

I am writing this review again, as i could not reply to the response of my original review and thought Management would look into the concerns which I have raised seriously but looks like the response atteched at the below as well is a copy& paste for all the negative feedback.

Was expecting the management to involve more find out details of the issues faced by the customers and understand those. we been customers here for schoolplus at this venue (ARK Poineer Academy) for so long and all this started with unnecessary and irrelevant arguments with that area manager and his rude behaviour.

As pointed out in our your response we are not trying to extract any special terms for us in this case and tried to bring to your and every one else attention to be aware of that new area manager's behaviour through these reviews and also would like to bring to your notice that even though every one had their bitter experience with this new area manager and we are not only 15 people but are around 70 people utilising this venue Ark Academy on multiple days and various sessions.

So once again to reiterate and assure you that we didn't expect any special terms for us but the behaviour of that particular individual had saddened and had to look for other options as there wasn't any responsive actions were taken.

Reply from Schools Plus

Updated 16 Oct 2024
Hi there,

Thank you for sharing your feedback. We take all customer concerns seriously and have been in ongoing communication with the owner of the Badminton Club to address them. Regarding the arrival time of your booking, our area manager was simply following company protocol. It is our policy that if a club's time at the facility extends beyond the booked period, we must charge for the additional time used. This ensures fairness for both our customers and the schools we partner with.

We have truly enjoyed having your club as a customer over the past few years. It saddens us to see so many negative reviews, especially when the number of reviewers claiming to be members of the club is far greater than the 15 people who have been attending your sessions! Please note that we do not enter negotiations with customers to change their reviews, good or bad. Customers cannot extract special terms from us through the threat of negative reviews, or as a bribe to take negative reviews down, and we do not appreciate the proposal that we do so.

We are also very sorry that you felt the area manager was impolite, and I assure you that this has been escalated internally. You'll understand that out of respect for the affected individuals this is being dealt with privately, not in public. However, any outcomes that are specifically relevant to your club will be communicated directly and professionally with you.

We’ve made extensive efforts to help, from the area manager to customer service, head of customer service, and now the operations director. Our aim remains to find a resolution that is satisfactory for both parties.

As an organisation, our mission is to generate much-needed funds for schools. Thank you for your business to date which has been valued and appreciated. If we are unable to resolve your requirements going forward, we wish you the best in finding a venue that meets your very specific needs.

Best regards,
Schools Plus

Great customer service and very prompt response from the account managers. The venue managers at all our venues are approachable and friendly. The new Enni application is very user friendly and help us to manage the bookings effectively.

Schools plus are very responsive and are very helpful. Have never had a negative experience using their service.

After having bad experience and writing the review in trust pilot, I was expecting that school plus management will seriously look into the issues faced by the customers and help with mitigating the same. But I got completely disappointed by seeing the schoolplus management response which was simply having a blaming tone, questioning the integrity of customers itself and justifying the illogical demands of the area manager about restrictive play timings, gate opening and him arguing on the courts during play time (in the name of company protocol).
I don't know wherefrom the management got the number "15" that we are only this much strength of players. We are playing 5 days every week within multiple sessions and each session has around 20+ players. I will leave the simple maths on the management itself, considering them well educated so they won't copy paste same message back again and seriously work on improvement.
After playing at the venue for 4-5 years (within peaceful arrangement, before this new Area Manager turned up since last 2-3 months), I personally wanted to continue here and hence raised my concern with a good faith but this response from the management has let me down.
We want that our local community schools will get financial help with these extra hours, as it will provide growth to the school's infrastructure which in turn result in bright future of our own kids studying there. That's the reason we are giving our best try to sort out the teething issues caused by the latest management changes of schoolplus and we all can play peacefully again. But if this is their behaviour in responding to the reviews then it seems not possible any more.
Please don't copy paste the same response again to the issues raised. We are community run club and will seriously look forward to a positive response this time in the best interest of community and schoolplus.

When making the transition to schools plus there were a few problems setting up payment but I found the person I dealt with extremely helpful and supportive. I had to call several times and without fail was contacted within a couple of hours when call couldn’t be taken. All in all everything went very smoothly thanks to the support I had.

Brilliant Online Portal,
Fantastic customer Service.

Appreciate the copy paste of the same response given to everyone. I noticed few points mentioned by you are not seems correct.
Point 1: "Regarding the arrival time of your booking, our area manager was simply following company protocol"
We would like to know what is your protocol?
7.55 PM the person entered into the car parking area was asked to go out of the premise because our session starts at 8 PM, entering to car park 5 minute earlier is a big issue?
Is this your company protocol?
Making everyone waiting outside the campus until 8:10 PM for the 8 PM session by 1.creating traffic on the road 2. purposefully delaying our start?
Is this your company protocol?
How do you justify your area manager's behaviour with this technical term "Compony Protocol"
I can not understand that.
Point 2: You also mentioned 15 people session, this is completely wrong.. we play Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday and 2 sessions on Sunday, not all the same people play everyday, we operate as a club and have over 60 members.
Point 3: We are not writing reviews to get into negotiations, instead we are trying to help your company to notice why we are leaving.
You shouldn't be viewing it as a point of negotiation.. very sad to see such response from School plus management.

The response what we received for our reviews on the problems faced upon using ARK Academy recently was very much disappointing as it portrayed as a mere copy/paste of the same content.
But in fact we have a huge members running across around 5 sessions and many of us faced similar issues affected by the rude behaviour of the same area manager.
We don’t want any extra time but wanted to allow us using our booked time and slot correctly.

It is a very narrow road and if the gate is not opened prior to the start time of the slot, it resulted blocking the road and causing issues with the traffic and also affecting the residents near around.
Also the gate was opened hardly two minutes exactly from the start time of slot. Upon sorting out the parking and getting into the badminton court, we lost few minutes at least by 15 minutes from our booked slot. We have been playing there around 4 years and there was never this kind of issue with opening the front gates. Due to the current area manager imposing this new rule not only affected around 60 to 70 odd members but also cause chaos in terms of traffic accumulation during the start time.

After all we just want to use the time we’ve paid for. Going forward any management should try to address and rectify this issue, that is the intention of posting this issue and bringing to the management and not to do any blame game. Hence rather trying to portray defensive response from your management side, please try to address and sort out this issue. Thanks.

Thank you for your response to my recent review. Unfortunately, Trustpilot does not allow me to respond directly to your comments, which is why I had to post another review to address the factual inconsistencies in your response.

I would like to clarify a key point: our club has around 70 members, not 15, and all reviews were written by genuine participants. We have played at Ark Academy Barnet for many years, as well as at other venues, and the concerns we raised were made in good faith, not as a means to negotiate special terms.

Regarding policy enforcement, we experienced an incidents like: the main gate was only opened for two minutes for our 8:00 PM session till 8:02, creating unnecessary pressure on our members and stranded cars on the public road. If this is indeed your policy, we would have appreciated consistent enforcement, as this had not been the case in previous years or on subsequent days.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. We appreciate your efforts to resolve these concerns internally.

The response is factually incorrect. Let me try explaining again, even though your senior management and possibly the person who posted it are well aware of the facts.

We have 60-70 members running 5 different sessions, and there is an overlap in the members playing these sessions. Hence, you would have seen more than 15 people posting their feedback as many are affected by different days and sessions.

Second, it is not about exceeding the usage time. If we have booked the court, say, at 8 o'clock, we expect to start using the facility at that time. But the area manager is acting like a dictator, and he wouldn't open the main gate of the building before 8 o'clock, which means reaching the sports hall after parking the car takes about 15 minutes, leading to losing that 15 minutes.

We have been using ARK Academy for nearly three years and never had any issues until the current area manager arrived. We do not expect to get any favourable treatment or benefits; we just want to play the game for the time we paid for.

Over the last couple months, we have had some bad experience at Arc academy where we play badminton especially with the change in personnel from school plus. This would include simply not understanding the needs of a customer and how to treat them correctly. I would suggest looking into the matter and foremost considering how to treat the customers correctly.

Rude Area Manager
We were booking the school plus at Ark Pioneer Academy, Barnet for last 4 years and was going well until the new area manager joined. He is very rude towards the customers. He has a very bad attitude towards people and no decency at all. He shouldn't be put in front of customers.

I recently had a very unpleasant experience with the area manager at the Ark Academy in Barnet, who is employed by School Plus. During my interaction, I found him to be rude, dismissive, and unwilling to listen to my concerns. His behavior was unprofessional and made me feel unwelcome. I believe that customers deserve to be treated with respect, regardless of the situation. I hope that this feedback will be taken seriously and lead to improvements in customer service. We have been in Ark for 3 years now and never had an issue. It only started happening since this month after a new manager was appointed.

Reply to your reply regarding No of members.
Just seen your reply in which you stated we are only 15 members.
This is truly incorrect. We have booked four courts, with 24 regular players as we rotate the games to take rest and efficiently use of the four courts.
Please correct your statement.
Thanks

Friendly, warm and hospitable venue team in Eastlea Community School. School Plus has a very customer friendly people on board and we had a memorable time during our contract time. We would have love to stay if they had provided a storage for us.

Really helpful and accommodating staff at the Aldercar site who support us to run our community football and youth club sessions.