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Watford's School of Karate ( TAI ) |
Do karate schools rip people off? I've recently had a bad experience: Watford's School of Karate rips people off. They are part of the TAI Karate System. My wife and I had signed up to attend classes at Watford's School of Karate. I signed an agreement that obligated me to 1 year's tuition with Watford's School of Karate via electronic funds transfer from my checking account. That was foolish on my part, because I couldn’t get a refund if I had decided after a few weeks I didn’t like Watford's School of Karate. On the day I signed up, I asked Mr. Andy Watford at Watford's School of Karate if the payments could be suspended if I became injured or couldn't attend Watford's School of Karate for some reason. He said yes, I could request him to put the membership on "freeze" and I would not be charged for that time, I just had to notify him when I needed to do that. I also added my wife to the membership at Watford's School of Karate (bringing the total to $140/mo). In October of 2005, I notified Mr. Watford that I needed to freeze my wife's membership since she was 5 months pregnant. He assured me that her membership would be frozen and she would not be charged for classes at Watford's School of Karate. In December of 2005, I notified Mr. Watford that I also wanted to freeze my membership at Watford's School of Karate, since I needed to be at home with my wife during her later months of pregnancy. He assured me that my membership would be frozen and no charges would be incurred during that time for my membership at Watford's School of Karate. He never asked for a duration or a specific date when we would come back, but said that it would be for as long as I needed, until I notified him we or I would be coming back. When I balanced by checkbook, I discovered that he had continued to charge the full amount and never froze our Watford's School of Karate memberships at all, fraudulently charging $790. I made repeated attempts to get in contact with Mr. Watford immediately and left many messages. After repeated attempts and 3 weeks, I finally talked with Mr. Watford. He stated that he remembered my requests to freeze the memberships. He then started a series of excuses to exempt himself from responsibility and giving my money back. He first blamed it on Mr. Forrest, stating he gave the request to him and he didn't do it. I then pointed out that as the owner of the business, he (Mr. Watford) was still responsible and should reimburse me. His next attempt was to tell me to take it up with the company that handles his electronic funds transfers, Education Funding Company (EFC). I pointed out that they act based on his requests, and they were not responsible since he and/or his employees never sent the request to EFC. He made another attempt to dodge responsibility by saying that we could have attended classes if we really wanted to (after that statement, I decided more action was necessary). I pointed out that my wife and I could not, since My wife and I were preparing to have our first child. His next attempt was to say he's going through a bad divorce and doesn't have the money to give back. I told him I was doing everything I could to resolve this but he was leaving me no choice but to take further action. Watch out for Watford's School of Karate, and never agree for electronic transfer of funds for year of a service which you don’t know if you’ll like or not. Beware of any TAI Karate Schools and Watford's School of Karate. My question is, is this common with martial arts schools? I am now a skeptic of them after this fiasco....
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