Anonymous
map-marker Richmond, Virginia

Terrible experience at AM Richmond

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My fiancé and I were DRAINED (mentally and our wallets) after our few classes at AM in Richmond. We went in for help with a first dance. The instructors were very outgoing and kind and we enjoyed our initial basics lesson....then they showed us our contract that it would be close to $900 for eight 45 min classes. We were not happy about the price but figured we would go for it. Worst decision ever. Our lessons after that mostly considered of multiple employees asking us what we had going on later in the week & weekend trying to trap us into coming to the other free classes and social. They also text your personal phones multiple times a week to push you into coming into the studio more. At first we tried being polite but after our 5th class my fiancé was firm in saying we were not interested in anything but learning our dance. They will use phrases like "haven't seen you in a while, we missed you! You should come to more classes!" And they barely knew us. Every class we learned the same steps and never really moved forward. After all those classes they still had not put together an actual dance for us. We started hearing other customers around us being pushed to sign up for more and more classes after they had already paid all the money for their original agreement. They convince you to buy more and more but teach you so slowly you have no choice. We were very displeased with the entire experience and ended up walking away from our final classes we had paid for because we truly never looked forward to going. Beware!
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User's recommendation: Try to find a local, small studio instead that is not so sales based

1 comment
Guest

It is so true. A beautiful place and they throw great parties.

The play to your ego and tell you what a great dancer you are just to get you to sign up for more lessons. There teachers are inexperienced but you pay at least $140 for a 40 minute lesson.

If you want to learn to dace definitely check out other places. Dont give them your credit card they make to many errors in their favor.

Joseph M Mdi
map-marker Napa, California

I have a question about the dance a Rama in Cancun that I participated in last week

I could not leave my number 707346****
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Pros:
  • Helpful

Preferred solution: Ibfo

Anonymous
map-marker Germantown, Maryland

Avoid AM Studio in Ashburn VA at all cost

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The owner and his wife hardly there if you have any issue with any of the instructor or the unethical conducts occurs at the studio, the owners will not care to take steps toward resolution. Teachers turnover rate are high, sometimes just disappeared leaving the students wondered what happened. Constant high pressure sales and if there is any indication that a student will not continue signing additional new packages the teachers will intentional not put any efforts into teaching you the rest of your already paid lessons. Their units packages are outrageously expensive for such subpar teachings. Until you kept coughing up tons of money they will not teach you anything but kept repeating the same basic steps. Very dishonest approach and their instructors are trained to use sales tactics to that are at times unethical. Every aspect of this studio is about their bottom line and they do not care about the students. Phonies and disgusting behaviors. The instructors who stayed at this studio long enough are very groupies and gossiping, no teaching talents and not even that great of performers outside of the Arthur Murray chain “cult”. Students are sheeps to them and the only pretend to miss you and value you if you are ok to continue dumping big money on them and not questioning why there is so little progress in your dancing even at a silver level student, they suck.
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2 comments
Guest

Arthur Murray dance studio is a *** business, high fees, low quality teaching, a bunch of unethical *** DO NOT give away your money to them, AVOID their SALE PITCH! Check out local dance studio in your areas instead.

Guest

OMG! Shame on you AM at Ashburn!!!!

My personal dance experiences with AM at this same studio (Ashburn Virginia) have not been good neither. After the intro lesson, this supposedly dance instructor hard sell me a Bronze package and overcharged me from what the cost of the package supposed to be and clearly stated in their binder. When I confronted her right then she claimed that she overcharged my credit card “by accident”. Then again, she purposely scheduled and locked in private lessons for me when she been notified in advance I couldn’t make it due to health related issues, lessons that were already prepaid just so she can pocket the her shared of the money claiming no show.

She also harassed me repeatedly on my personal phone even after I’ve asked her to stopped. When I called to report the incidents to The studio Owner, the Owner choose to do nothing and continue to let this very unprofessional girl works there. The time and money I spent at this studio were my biggest regret and overall a very disappointing experience. The owner’s friend who is also a AM dance teacher was temporary teaching at this Studio and one two occasions was inappropriately touching me, another time was flirting with a female teacher who was at the time giving me private lesson.

This idiot then relocated to Richmond Virginia to open his own studio and franchisee of AM. The teacher turnover at Ashburn location was high most aren’t qualify to be teaching, and for the few who performed well can’t really teach neither. They seem to be showing off their dance routines a lot but they can’t teach. It’s shameful to be charging the very high prices they charge students for such mediocre quality of dance lessons.

They constantly pushing additional lessons sells down your throats often using your paid time. Many of those working in the studio are so phonies, lack integrity, and down right disgusting in their conducts. It’s so cult like and such a dishonest business model. I couldn’t have quit that place any faster.

Will NEVER recommend anyone to waste their time and money there. And if you already there, GET OUT quick. These so call dance teachers are nothing more than unethical low life salesmen/women whose only agenda is to take advantage of people’s passion for dancing and for the art and take advantage of the elders, loners, and widowers.

There are so so many better high quality fun Dance Studio in the areas you’ll be better off sending your hard earn money elsewhere. These days anyone mentioned AM, my immediate response is “DON’T” or “Get the *** Out”.

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Resolved
Patrece Kor

Resolved: Small Charity Fundraiser Almost Goes Bust with AM

In order for the local Arthur Murray to send 1 - 2 or 3 dance hosts for one hour for a small local charity funsraiser they requested $850. To give more money to the non profit mission, instead of AM, a volunteer set up an Epson projector and showed dancers in action from YouTube while the DJ played the dance music. The DJ donated his time for the cause. Luckily much more money was raised by not going with the Arthur Murray $850 proposal - it seemed exceptionally expensive for just one hour.
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Pros:
  • Talented people
Cons:
  • Community concern
Reason of review:
Pricing issue
Anonymous
map-marker Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Biggest rip-off in Lancaster PA

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Signed up for a "complimentary" 30 minute lesson. Then bought a Groupon for $49. It included 2 private and 2 group lessons and 2 parties. When I tried to use it, AM said that the Groupon can't be used as it is also a "promotion" as is the free intro lesson. Groupon gave me my money back, but I will NEVER go back to AM. There was a group of people taking a group lessson and I can't imagine them paying "full price" of $979 for 8 lessons!! This is what we were told was their base price for lessons.
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Reason of review:
Problem with delivery

Preferred solution: Full refund

Anonymous
map-marker Los Angeles, California

I never had that problem with Arthur Murray Long Beach

I was graduating from school in 2011 and, I wanted to do something else and I had two relationships went down like the Hindenburg. In 2010 I was looking at the Arthur Murray website and saw the pictures of people dancing and having fun!

I called them and they called me for one year straight. Finally, I went into AM Long Beach and went for the $20.00 new student offer, I tried it and I went for the group class and I did not feel pressured at all. They were kind, professional and they were funny. I was a total corporate snob, little confidence in myself, always wanted to ask a woman to dance, but could not (had to make fun of them to feel good not cool.) The people there are warm and friendly to me as we are a family.

As the story went I love it there, to those who felt ripped off, you get what you pay for, Arthur Murray is a fantastic school, these people work their tails off! Not fair how some of the people on this posting talk negative about them.

If you want to dance come to Arthur Murray or Fred Astaire or an Independent studio, if you do want to dance there are other things you can do, but stop saying negative remarks about Ballroom Dancing, yes it is expensive but the memories last a lifetime. I am there for the fun and dance with the pretty women!

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Reason of review:
Good customer service
2 comments
Krissa Gff

Arthur Murrays is a rip off. They just want to get their hands on your credit card.

Many of there teachers just started teaching but you are charged $150 for a 40 minute lesson. People are fooled by their friendliness, constant compliments. There goal seems to get deep into your pockets and keep trying to get you to buy more and more lessons. When that doesn't work they ignore you.

I have a friend who is owed $27,000 for one of their Dance O' Rama's and they refuse to give her a refund. It is a disgusting place to dance inspite of the fact that the facility is beautiful.

BEWARE OF ARTHUR MURRAYS. The best thing I did was get the *** out of there.

Guest

You are a gullible and inexperienced consumer, the type of vulnerable sucker who are perfect for this type of franchises. Glad you have tons of money to flush down the drains, then again, you are paying for overpriced phony companionships and unauthentic friendships.

Hiring gigallos and escorts probably cost less.

Good for you for drinking their coolaid. Obviously you are not someone who care about dance as an art form.

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Charnetta Bcs
map-marker Ann Arbor, Michigan

AM withheld instruction to try to sell more classes.

Horrible.?My husband and I went there with the goal of learning to dance for our daughter's wedding. We purchased 4 lessons (45 minute) for $500 and got little from it.?1. A good 10 minutes of each lesson was devoted to trying to sell us a Bronze package for $5000, which I believe was 40 more lessons. So we were effectively paying them to deliver a sales pitch to us.?2. We were given 15 minutes on one dance and then another 15 or 20 of another. Overall we were taught the basic steps for up to 3 different dances per session rather than learning and solidifying a single dance at a time. It was difficult to keep it straight or to know what dance to do to what songs.?3. There was a lot of false flattery. Each time that I went there I was told how wonderful I looked. After a while it came across as insincere.?4. The instructor acted as if she was teaching children or prepping high school kids for a big game. Lots of hand slapping, hugging and insincere closeness, when what we wanted was a professional dance instructor. ?5. They were deliberately withholding instruction as part of the ploy to get us to sign up for more classes. Part of this was teaching us dances that we would never use such as the Polka and the Quick Step. Little time was devoted to waltz, fox trot, swing and other dances appropriate for our event.??I would not recommend anyone to go there.
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Loss:
$500
5 comments
Guest

Your comment is EXACTLY how AMDS works and also how FADS works--same thing year in and year out. Both major chains are the same ILK of people having cross bred back and forth numerous times.

You sign-up for a teaser package and they work a "procedure" on you. That procedure is to sell you the next package of lessons--typically around a couple hundred dollars. They'll sell you a package of so many private, group and practice sessions. [FYI: Only the private lessons are typically contractually binding.] You THINK that is ALL there is to it.

In other words, you THINK their goal is to teach you how to dance under that package. NOT TRUE! [yeah, you'll learn something and probably be confused...] Their goal? They're actually working ANOTHER procedure on you where EACH lesson is carefully constructed to determine your objections to not signing up for the next package which is in the THOUSAND dollar range.

They spend a lot of time working their FRONT DEPARTMENT people in sales training so that when they present the CLOSER with you the student at the end of your package, that the closer knows all your objections to going on and can hence sign-you-up easily. YOU KNOW WHAT?? It works WELL IF they follow the procedure, get the student pumped up, etc. Now I'm NOT saying they don't deliver something--many people have fun there...and VALUE is determined by who will pay for it.

But what EXACTLY IS the "something"? I contend AMDS and FADS are not really DANCE STUDIOS but are "SOCIAL CLUBS"...that teach a little dancing.

How do I know all the terms only employees would know? Take a guess...

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-953128

Thanks Anonymous. It is always refreshing to have your impressions validated.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-953286

So true. Sad when they are ripping off old people.

Widowers and widows. Ones who are a little confused but have a credit card.

Really, really, low. I've seen them in action and it sickens me.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-1325697

Actually most of the people who were there were not particularly old or confused. I think they were all people who just wanted to learn to dance and were being taken advantage of. But my husband told our "instructor sales girl" no and when she persisted he said to her "How many times to I have to tell you NO?" He was quite stern and she cowered down after that.

Guest
reply icon Replying to comment of Guest-1325697

I have completely see the same unethical conducts at the AM Ashburn Va location, in which the elders already with Alzheimer’s, and widowers are most vulnerable. One elder student couldn’t even recalls people’s name or remember what she just said to someone few minutes after she said it let alone actually learning dances, yet the studio kept taking her money and ‘advanced’ her levels and hence selling her more packages.

I recognized very early on that these supposedly instructors are not true teachers they are low life losers who are mere scammers and cheap salesman(women). The ones who have heart and any level of integrity and good moral left the studio quickly.

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