[Resolved]  136.1 Yoga — Unethical and unprofessional

Address:

Bangalore, Karnataka

On March 3, 136.1 Yoga in Indiranagar, Bangalore suddenly informed us (via email) of their immediate shutdown as of March 4, 2014. Another email followed informing us that we could get a refund or transfer our membership to the Whitefield studio. Having no interest in the latter, I decided to request for a refund of my annual membership having signed up in January under a discount-offer scheme. Thus began the long, tedious interaction with Yash Saran (presumably the owner of 136.1). There are so many complaints, I don't know where to start! I was extremely sympathetic in my first series of emails and was met with a lot of explanations and promises by Yash. As the weeks passed, my patience started to wane as I was constantly informed that the money would be refunded the next day; the next week; in 2 weeks. Speaking with a lot of other students who went to 136.1, it seems I was lucky to even get a reply from him. I was then put in touch with Ram who I assume is the accountant and finally after about 40 back and forth emails (which included me threatening legal action), on April 28 I checked my bank account to see less than ONE THIRD of the refund amount. Around the same time, I had left a complaint on the wall of their facebook group and had a few fellow students reply to the post. Promptly after, they disabled their wall on '136.1 Bangalore' group as well as the '136.1' group so there was no way for me to contact the other people that had complained under my post. Shortly after, emails to their official 136.1 Indiranagar email address started to bounce back. People began to complain under the last image they had posted on facebook and finally they provided an alternate email address. A few other students and I started another email thread to Yash demanding to know what the refund status was. As expected, there was another slew of false promises and lies and after being threatened with legal action and reporting them to the police, 30 emails later we received our refunds on June 13, 2014. Of course there was an issue with the refunded amount as well. When asked for the tabulation, they had deducted 11% of the annual amount as “tax we want to pay to govt.” – in Ram’s words. This doesn’t seem right. Why should I be taxed such a high rate when they shut down after 2 months of class?! When I brought this to their notice, Yash replied with "We have wired what was due..If your lawyer wants to contest our service tax deduction then please proceed..from our end we have wired our liability." I have no fight left in me to pursue this further and I think they know that. In conclusion, I would strongly urge anybody considering going to 136.1 to reconsider their decision. They lack professionalism and are extremely unethical. Yash's tone through most our communication was arrogant and unapologetic – as if he was doing us a favour, and he lied constantly. This whole ordeal took a ridiculous amount of time and effort and I would not wish it upon anyone else. It seems once again that the Indian consumer is least important.