A WARNING - BASS ski schools - Chatel

A snowHead

I have used this forum extensively over the last couple of years and thinks its only fair to provide the BAD news with regards ski schools as well as the good.

Last year, we took lessons with BASS ski school in Chatel and thought the service was great. We had great instructors and our kids (and us) thoroughly enjoyed it.

This year, we booked again, in fact we booked early as BASS emailed us to say that "places were filling fast" and we promptuly paid out £600+ for a weeks group lessons for us and our kids in two seperate groups. Our money sped out of our account and we looked forward to our trip.

On Monday, when we arrived in Chatel for our lessons, we were suprised to see we were the only ones at the meet point! (Places are booking fast?). We were then told, wjilst ascending the lift, that "as there are only two of you for this week, you are only getting three days lessons"

We asserted that we'd paid for 5 days and were told that "you need to read the T's and C's, It says that any less than 3 and we can treat you as a private lesson. Therefore, we can stop your lessons on Wednesday"

Of course, wew were mortified. BASS charge a premium but we notcied that every other ski school had groups of 5 and 6 other than BASS. We offered to chabge times (they had other people who were booked at other times) but although today they offered to group ours and our childrens lessons together on Thursday and Friday (a solution we offered to help them reduce costs) I got a call from the head of the BASS chatel school today to say that "we shouldn't have been offered that and they were officially invokinv the clause"

I'm really dissapointed and would urge others to consider this clause when booking BASS. I was given the impression they were busy (remember the emails) and they could have called me last week to tell me the situation but I feel they have cashed the cheque and waited until we were here before they let us know.

Interestingly when I let the head of BASS Chatel know how unhappy I was, he told me I should be grateful as he could have cancelled the lessons. Then, of course, I would have my £600+ and we could have booked a full week with another ski school (who would have been MUCH cheaper)

So we have two days this week without lessons!

I won't use BASS again which is a pity as their instructors are friendly and helpful. A pity the people who run the business don't put customers first.

My advice is think twice about booking as, although the quality may be great, you can't be sure you are going to get what you ordered and you can be sure they won't let you know if the same situation happens again.

A snowHead

Sounds pretty unfair to me. It's not your fault if they can't get the clients. I always view the group lessons turning into private ones as a bonus for the client and just a cash flow issue for the provider. I don't see why they should alter the T&C under which you booked i.e. a group lesson at group lesson rates and hours. I can see that they would not be making as much money with a smaller group - but they should have offered you the refund in that case.

A course I wanted to take with BASI was cancelled last minute because of lack of numbers. I understand their point of view but all the same I had moved my schedules around and paid for the course, I see it as their problem to fill it not mine. Better to take the £600 and run a small course than have no income at all I would have thought.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

"BASS, how low can you go?"

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I don't see a problem to be honest. What you actually got instead of 10 hours of group lessons was 6 hours of private lessons (based on 2 hours per day), which would have cost a lot more I would guess, with much more personal tuition. Many ski schools have this in their T&C's and I know which I'd rather have (and it's not the group lessons).

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Colin B, that's only part of the point though. We've often arranged lessons for us and kids to be at the same time for obvious reasons - when lesson times get changed this can get really inconvenient. They're expensive, so it's quite fair to expect better customer service than this.

BASS have have problems in the past with admin and it seems it still has not been fixed. Very sad as they have some great instructors, but if they can't connect them with punters, what's the point?

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andyph, I agree, they don't seem to have handled it very well.

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I think BASS is a franchise (stand to be corrected). I wonder if this is a general policy or a local one.

After all it is free

Hmm - I had a similar problem a couple of years back in Val D'Isere - we were bumped with no notice at all to another school. We stood about for around 15mins until only a random instructor and us were left and then he asked us if we were looking for BASS - and if so it was him, despite the jacket saying something else entirely...The school filling in was fine and we let it be, but our instructor let us know it was happenning quite often, and I was most unimpressed that they didn't even bother to let us know. On the plus side their organisation was so bad I am pretty sure I got at least 2 hours for free in all the messing about with billing, hence never really chased them on it.

As above, I've avoided them since, while there was nothing wrong with the tuition all it would have taken to make it work organisationally was either a notification upfront OR a spare jacket to lend the ringer, just seemed to me like the office/mgmt might be a little too laidback about it all.

aj xx

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I had a similar experience when in Jasper - the ski school changed the kids lessons on the day according to how many turned up, with no consideration that it may be very difficult for parents (who may be in their own lessons) to accommodate last minute changes. I made a fuss and they agreed, reluctantly, to put our son in the creche until the scheduled of his lesson, but even that was badly handled.

That is a contributory factor in our not returning to Jasper, despite liking the town and enjoying the skiing.

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A quick update....

I got a text from BASS this morning offering two hours for our family (as a group) tomorrow. I appreciate the offer and have accepted it, but still feel its "just enough" and not "more than enough"

In a tough economic climate, in a resort that's trying to build its base of UK skiers (similar to BASS) then I think you need to go the extra mile (I've only asked for what we paid our £600 for)

Anyway, there you go.

The instructors, as usual, have been superb.

Mark and Lucia have one of my children (6) carving and the other (9) skiing almost parallel. For myself, I feel like I've come along massively and I'm now hitting those scary looking Reds with only the respect they deserve (don't want to be OVERconfident)

Currently sitting eating lunch in Avoriaz, sun has just come out and the snow isn't bad at all.....

Other than the BASS thing, we couldn't wish for more!!

snow reports

Didn't realize you were on holiday right now. Hope you're enjoying the skiing!!

Great day on the PDS today. Our first trip over to Avoriaz and the sun shone and shone.

Some of the runs that got the sun all day, did deteriorate but skiing the shadows was fine. I'd rather be here than home!

You know it makes sense.

I have used BASS in Chamonix a few times. They have always been superb, the level of instruction is second to none. I booked a two day course at xmas for my girlfriend as a present. The max class size was 6. There were 3 the first day and just two the second, so it was basically a private lesson, with no mention of cutting back on time.
I think there are 5 instructors and no fixed office.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

In response to Mark's comments the policy that BASS Chatel has (and many snowsport Schools have a similar policy) is that we only run Group lessons with a minimum of 3 people on the course, we loose money otherwise, however in the situation where there is less than 3 rather than cancel the lessons we reduce the number of hours. This means that we still provide an execellent service rather than letting clients down. this is the first season that we have done this and we have had a few clients in this situation this January. Apart from Mark all of our clients have been very happy with this arrangement. The majority of our clients would prefer this arrangement to cancelling the lessons, mostly because they cannot get the same level of lessons anywhere else and believe that this arrangement is much better value for money than any other option. Where a significant number of our clients feel unhappy about this arrangement I will look into a different process.

I am always happy to review our policies, however the current policy seems to suit the majority of our clients.

Obviously I am dissappointed that Mark feels he did not recieve the best service, I still believe he received value for money and that we have an unbeatable product.

On some other comments regarding administration I am happy that BASS Chatel administration is effective and prompt particularly when clients follow our on line booking system, if anybody has had any specific problems with communicating with us I would like to know the details so that I can look into resolving any problems.

Peter BASS Chatel

A snowHead

pksue@tiscali.co.uk, I think you should offer your clients the choice - convert to fewer pvt lessons or full refund. BTW thanks for coming and putting your side and welcome to snowHeads

A snowHead

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

slikedges, Higs, thirded. I too would have gone for the fewer private lessons option, but can see that different considerations apply for people with kids.

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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Of course, as people have alreayd commented, it would have been nice to have had the chance to make the choice rather than being told what we were going to get.

And let's not forget the opposite of PRIVATE is PUBLIC not GROUP. The benefit of private lessons is that its just the people you choose when what we recieved was a lesson that could have been bumped up to six people at any time (based on BASS's marketing success)

As many have said, BASS's instructors are second to none. Indeed Peter taught my kids last year and they loved him. My issue has always been the way this has been done. We were TOLD on Monday.

We would probably have just put all of us (kids included) in a group lesson for the whole week rather than take the option that was forced upon us)

Anyway. Nice to see new people on Snowheads! I'm off for a fondue and a couple of grande bieres.

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Product was not as advertised, refund offered. That's how it should work. Everybody's got small print that means they can basically do whatever they like, but it's a real quality of organisation that doesn't need their small print boffins to bail them out. I know if I walk in and ask my legal guys to help that fundamentally I have failed the client.

Just because you lose a bit of money on the deal, doesn't mean you should change the deal to suit you. There's a lifetime value to Mark and his family, who clearly aren't going to be coming back. You wonder why you haven't got many customers right now? There's your reason - all the ones that haven't come back from last year...

Great to see the other side of the coin, but it doesn't really change how I feel about it. You've offered the lessons, if you can't sell your business well enough to fill them the lessons still need to happen. Just because they can't sell many tickets, my local cinema doesn't cancel the film when I arrive. If they did, I'd expect some advance notice to make other arrangements. You didn't offer the client that, and as a result I wouldn't consider you for future trips (will be in PDS in April, probably looking for some lessons during the week) - you put profit above client experience. We've all got to make a crust, this isn't the way to do it. Welcome to a booking lost from me because of somebody else's bad experience.

This system might work nicely in the short term and keep you profitable this year, but if bad news travels fast (as it does on the internet) you very soon find people use Google and spend their money elsewhere, as well as the customers who lost out in the short term.

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They don't always know how many are booked onto groups until quite late due to people rocking up in resort and booking lessons. A couple of years ago I booked in advance with Summit in Zermatt and when I popped into their office the night before they told me that I was the only one currently booked and if that remained the case they would reduce the time and effectively give me one to one private lessons. The next morning though there were actually 3 of us, the other 2 had arrived the previous evening and booked on arrival. Go at half term instead, no such problems, everything fully booked months in advance Toofy Grin

After all it is free

One to one? Now THAT'S a private lesson.... And at least they told you the night before and not hslfway up the first lift of the day..... Smile

pksue@tiscali.co.uk, Sorry ... what does Mr Monney say ?I think that is appalling behaviour, you should read what Monium wrote rather than re-gurgitating Ts and Cs and blaming 'Mark' for being the only(allegedly) one to complain! It's the ones who don't complain you need to worry about ... they tell their mates and you end up with ... ergghh... underbooked lessons.

If ESF or ESI had behaved like that over a £600 booking during one week, then this forum would be calling for Sarko's head!

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I should add that if offered 6 hours private in place of 10 hours group I'd be fine with it (in fact probably quite pleased!) - I was just annoyed no one warned us to look for a different ski school which seemed a really basic organisational fail and if we'd been a little less patient might well have resulted in us missing 4 hours of instruction (we were 2 sets booked in for 2 hours each), it knocked my confidence in the brand. aj xx

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So BASS take all the money for a product up front, then later on, when they discover they cannot make a profit from what they have already sold, they give the customer something they did not want instead (if they wanted private lessons they could have booked them!), just to preserve the profits of BASS. Seems all the risk is being passed to the paying customer - pay in advance for something you may or may not get, and not even a refund if the substitute is unsuitable. I would certainly never pay up front for a service like that.

You know it makes sense.

A couple of years ago my friends daughter was doing her gold with ESF at Tigne Breviere and she was the only one in the group initially. They didn't cancel, though they did team her up with a couple of french lads from the competition group later in the week. Not sure they got such a good deal.

I'd be dissapointed not to be offered a choice of money back or reduced hours.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

I can confirm that everything the op has mentioned is true. We arrived in Chatel on Tues 26th jan so our first ski day was the wednesday. My fiancee was having lessons as she had only skied once before. When i rang BASS they told me there was nobody else having lessons so if this was the case, instead of 5x2 hour lessons, then she would have 2x2 hour lessons. We were not bothered by this as this works out at £38ph and she was having a private lesson bacically, as there was nobody else. So, when we arrived at the ski school meet point (BASS was deserted and the otheres were full) the woman instructor came over and explained that there was only my fiancee in the group so they would have to trim the lessons down, i pointed out that this was fine and explained when we booked in December. Then she said " so the lessons will be 3x2 hours" so me and my fiancee looked at each other and just nodded and said yes thats fine, so we got another 2 hours tuition for nothing!!! So my fiancee had 6 hours private 1 on 1 tuition for £152, so basically £25 per hour instead of the £60 that it should have been. I can understand the frustration that you were not informed of the changes that there would be nobody else in you lesson, but the group was smaller so you would have benefited from this anyway. Bloody cold last week wasnt it!!!

A snowHead

A quick Google through the booking conditions of all the BASi ski instructors I have skied with suggests they have similar terms and conditions. However, I would have expected to be told in advance that this was the case.

A snowHead

Skiing last year I would have been unimpressed to have got fewer private lessons rather than a week's worth of group lessons. With my budget I could have got a few private lessons or a week worth of group lessons. I went for the group lessons because effectively I wanted the lessons to "babysit" me around the resort as much as to improve my skiing. Sometimes the time spent in lessons supervised by someone else is as valuable as the quality of instruction, even when the pupils aren't children.

My OH enjoys "pistes reservees a de bons skieurs" while I am not ready for them - so doing 5X2.5 hour lessons meant that he could go off and play every morning other than the first morning when we relocated our skiing legs together and we could them meet up for lunch at 1pm or so. That way I could decide after lessons whether to have a gentle play on my own, or sit down and relax my toes if I'd being trying to use an imaginary toe brake... I would have been bored or nervous to ski on my own in the morning, and my skiing wasn't really compatible with the other people in the group I was with, who were either total novices or much more experienced than me. Given that I have to really grit my teeth to go on a chairlift or gondola on my own, playing around on my own was not really an option then.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Helen Beaumont, When you book on a BASI course, they advise you not to make any travel, accommodation arrangements etc, until there are sufficient numbers for the course to be confirmed as running.

BASS's policy is fine as long as they advise their client's in advance, ideally at the time of booking. There should be a period of say 7 days before the lessons are due to take place, when BASS should advise their clients that the minimum numbers have not been achieved and either offer cancellation or reduced hours, both of which options should be at their Clients choice.
Telling a client once the course has already started is unethical and very bad customer relations.

I can see why the email chasing up bookings was sent out, obviously to drum up confirmed business, but it seems to have backfired on BASS severely.

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Interestingly New Generation have changed their policy this season so they only require 2 in a group lesson for it to run for all 5 days compared to needing 4 in a group in seasons past. Guess they thought the cost of covering the small groups was better than bad press like this. Worth considering in the resorts where they operate.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

And also thumbs up for New Generation because when I booked them last year for Les Arcs they actually phoned me at home a few days beforehand to say that the group lesson didn't yet have sufficient numbers and I had the choice of taking the chance and possibly having fewer private lessors, or the option to cancel completely and book with another ski school.

Unfortunately for me, I made the mistake of cancelling and booking a whole week with Spirit instead. What a disaster, the instructor was as bad as ESF for "bend ze knees and follow me" and at one point the rest of the group even disappeared off down the piste when I had fallen over and I couldn't find them for ages until he found me again at the 1950 resort level. I was so peed off that I didn't go to the last 3 days lessons. (I did have the courtesy to phone the office to tell them I would be absent).

Next time I have lessons, I'm going with New Gen or Easiski for sure.

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Difficult one this, and i have sympathy for the OP

This year i have to give Top Marks to Esprit and to the SkiSchule Oberschneider in Kaprun. Our daughter was booked into her 3rd year of lessons and on day 1 they told us that she was the only 1 for a whole week; yet no hour/day reductions and no concern on the ski school's part for their profits.

As it turned out one other family in our party put their son in as well from day 2, which actually made it better for all. But i have to give them credit for being willing to run the whole week on a 1:1 if they had to. A reduced number of hours would really have affected our arrangements, as would have been cancelling. Some good customer care there

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BASS should either offer what the customer has paid for (a week of group lessons) or offer full refund. They should also give sufficient notice (a couple of days) to enable the customer to book another ski school prior to the beginning of the holiday. If they want to offer a third option of fewer lessons in a small group/private lesson fine but the customer shouldn't be obliged to take it.

How would the BASS representative on this thread feel if he paid for a service and discovered he was being offered a different service at the last minute?

Also why was the poster told the lessons were busy that week when they weren't?

After all it is free

snowymum,

yes, how woould teh BASS rep feel getting a letter from his boss, 2 days after pay day saying (s)he would only be getting 80% of their pay packet this month, because it wasn;t such a great month

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Bertie B

Do BASS send out their terms when bookings are made though? I can't find the term in question on their website.
What do you think about BASS saying they had lots of bookings when they didn't asssuming original poster is correct?

Help!!

A WARNING - BASS ski schools - Chatel

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