The instructor cancelled the class citing water temperature issues, but the swim school management refused to offer a credit or arrange an alternate class, claiming it was not their responsibility. If they are not liable for the facility, that should not excuse the cancellation of classes without proper resolution. The teacher often arrives late, and again, they claim no liability. Water temperature is inadequate -- still, they take no responsibility. Honestly, it's hard to understand what they are actually accountable for. read more

Total Scam..!! I rarely write reviews, but after several weeks with Starfish I feel obligated to share my experience: lessons were repeatedly canceled--often on short notice--after full prepayment, the instructor changed nearly every week with limited experience and no continuity in the curriculum, and my requests for credits or make-goods for missed sessions were declined. Communication was slow and inconsistent (emails went unanswered and phone messages weren't returned), rescheduling options were limited to inconvenient times, and no proactive solution was offered despite the disruptions. The constant turnover meant each lesson restarted from scratch, undermining progress and value. Based on this pattern of cancellations, inexperienced rotating incompetent instructors, and refusal to credit missed sessions, I cannot recommend Starfish. read more

Worse experience I ever had. No professional instructor, staff is so rude, charged your account without notification & no regularity of classes. read more

This swim school is a scam, we had signed up for the August session and the pool at LA Fitness at Randolph was closed most of the session and they only gave us credits that we could never use. We find out that they terminated there contract with all LA Fitness and all classes are canceled and moved to another swim school with no timeline. The whole August session only had 1 week of classes. They refuse to give refunds even though there company is closing. read more

Terrible experience with this swim lesson provider. I enrolled my son thinking it would be a great opportunity, but it turned out to be a waste of money and time. They rent the LA Fitness swimming pool and claim that if you pay for 3 classes, you get a 4th one as a bonus--but that bonus class never happened. My son was scheduled for lessons every Monday, but the pool was under maintenance every single Monday of the month. Because of their rigid and unreasonable policy, we lost the bonus class and weren't allowed to reschedule. On top of that, if you miss a class for any reason, you simply lose it--no makeup, no credit. For how expensive the program is, the service and policies are extremely disappointing. I do not recommend them at all. read more

I double booked 2 classes by mistake and didn't realize it until a few days later. I called to cancel the one class and was refused a refund. They acknowledged that it was made in error but still only offered to give me credit. This business is unethical. Do not give them your money. read more

Horrible. Cancelled several classes. Instructors always calling out and rotating with substitute instructors. No consistency. Horrible customer service. Unwilling to accommodate any requests. read more

I would like to begin with I never write bad reviews because small business's get effected tremendously.That being said, this was my worst experience of customer service or even customer interaction. I enrolled my teenage daughter for private swim classes so that she can be a strong swimmer. during her initial classes she was told that there was not much the instructor can teach her. so for weeks he had her do laps. she is not in a swim team, nor do we have a pool, she received two years of lessons when she was 5-6yo, so this was shocking to me that she was branded unteachable by a swim lesson instructor. finally I gave the school a call and they switched her time slot and instructor. but to find out that was not going to start for another 2 weeks.we showed up the following class after the phone call assuming the class time and instructor would be changed immediately and no one was there. when I finally got in touch with someone they were rude and unsympathetic to the dissatisfactory of the communication. it its 2/27 and we were automatically enrolled for March and had 3 classes that were not taken. 1 my daughter was sick - which they said she can make it up.-they did not allow. 2. the instructor was sick- again no makeup was going to be given. and 3. when they moved the time and instructor. so therefore I lost 3 classes . let me fast forward. the point is that as a parent I enrolled my child to learn a skill that this place was supposed to provide. instead they made me and my daughter feel like a number. they don't care if they are actually teaching kids, or anyone anything. they just are concerned about the money they get. at the end of the conversation with Angelica as I was desperatly trying to have her understand why I was upset a man jumped on the phone and screamed at me to "SHUT UP!!!" I then hung up. member beware!!!!!!!!! read more

​Be AWARE. This company needs to be shut down. My experience with Star Aquatic has been very horrible. They are very unprofessional, unethical, and marked by poor communication. The manager Danielle is unresponsive to emails and calls and displays unprofessional behavior. She takes weeks to reply to emails. Their advertising seems misleading. I enrolled my three children in private lessons. My two girls shared one instructor, while my son had his own. Starfish would often text me a few hours before a lesson, claiming it was canceled, but they wouldn't specify which instructor was canceling. When I called for clarification, they never answered. Despite session cancellations done by them, they refused to provide credit for the fourth session of the month, stating it was a makeup session. They advertise four sessions a month but claim only three are paid, with the fourth as a makeup. When I requested credit for the canceled session or extra time due to the instructor's canceling, they said they couldn't honor it because I wasn't being charged for the fourth session. During the summer, my desired location was under construction for four weeks. Starfish Aquatic changed my children's swimming class location without consulting me, even though the new location posed challenges for me due to my work schedule. Manager Danielle refused to pause my sessions until my desired location was available again. I eventually stopped taking my kids to the new location because couldn't make it on time and when we attended we would receive shorter sessions than paid for because I was late which I did not think was fair because the location was further from my house and I work. Though my sessions returned to the desired location, they couldn't find an instructor for my son, leading to frequent cancellations. While they offered to move his sessions to a different day or location, it wasn't feasible for me. My girls experienced confusion as their instructor changed four times and the instructor all had a different style of teaching. I had to insist on credits for my son's canceled sessions, which they finally provided. I decided to withdraw all three children due to the lack of a consistent instructor for my son and the constant changes for my girls. Despite having a credit on my account, they refused to refund the money to my credit card, claiming the money stays on the swimming account until I sign up for more classes or return to the program. I explained that I wouldn't be enrolling again and asked that they continue to provide my girls with lessons until my account is zero balanced but Danielle said no. Beware of this company read more

As a former employee of starfish aquatics, the management is HORRIBLE. They do not help their staff create proper lesson plans for the students. They just leave the employees on their own and have them figure out lesson plans on their own. I have worked with teaching children to swim before but my other colleagues had no idea what to do with the students. If your kid is on the spectrum the staff is not prepared to teach them properly. On top of that, they say that they can offer full-time positions, but if students are not booked, we do not get paid. I would not send your child here. It is a complete waste of money. You are better off having them watch YouTube videos and taking them to a local pool. read more

I wish I could give 0 stars , The rude staff , bad behavior , no consistency in the classes or the instructors . Never going back to them again. read more

Yes, I signed a cancellation policy. However, if there's anything I thought businesses learned through this pandemic was that we have to remain flexible within reason. People's comfort levels change based on new information that keeps coming out regarding COVID. I was so happy when I found an affordable option of swim classes for baby & me. However, I should've listened to the reviews on Yelp. The classes were good. However, now that COVID cases have started to rise pretty high again. This strain seems to be hitting very young kiddos a little harder. So, I asked if I can wait to do the next round of parent child classes until case numbers go down again. They don't take any COVID precautions and my child is unvaccinated. They said no... The only thing I can do is "ask the instructor to wear a face shield" (it's not a private class, there are other people). So this means I have to choose between possibly getting sick or wasting my money. I was definitely planning on being a repeat customer, but not anymore. I'll take my business elsewhere, even if I have to pay more. read more

Nothing is explained in details on the website. They charge my card for a whole new session when I was not even done with the first session. When I called them they started telling me about a drop off letter which was never mentioned to me when I registered. They cancelled 2 of my classes and tell me that I need to register for another session in order to recieve credit for the ONES THAT THEY CANCELLED. My kids were ready with their swim wear and 2 staffs seating there availble and still had us walked out without making up for the 2 days THEY STOLE FROM ME. It is such a shame and I am very angry that this happened!!!!! Mother of 2 From West Orange Aquatic Club read more

This company is bad. The instructor are pretty decent. But the whole organization is horrible. Their website is very unclear. You can't really understand how the classes work before hand. It's just very tricky. I hate it. If you don't like wasting your time, don't go there. read more

Do not work for this company. One of their supervisors is misogynistic and literally said, "I'm sorry you're having a moment" when enquiring about pay policies. Are we in the 1970s? They treat their clients terribly and also tried to fire someone for calling in sick and when they came to work were wheezing. They do not care. They like to get 1 ups on their employees regularly. They mistreat their supervisors and mistreat the pool companies that they have contracts with. They even forced one of the supervisors who got a cut on their foot to keep working even though it was bleeding badly and required medical attention. They treat their employees like garbage and don't even train them to teach lessons. Buyer beware. read more

If there can be zero stars i would give it to them. Operations staff is very rude and arrogant. My wife has enrolled for march and april month swim training on february 22nd and her fees of $122 was deducted, on enrollment form which i filled online it was mentioned that i have to cancel the enrollment before 10 weeks if i do not want to extend my monthly classes. Very First class on march 10 was cancelled due to some trainer issue. On match 10 they sent an email saying if only i have completed 2 classes and i do not want to extend classes for may month then i have to click on google link to cancel it. Since my wife has not completed any class on that day she could not cancel it. On march 13th they again deducted $97 and i assumed they took march and april month fees so i was okay. Now on march 31st they ask me to pay $97 again and when i call they say they have deduced fees for april and may and now they want it for march month. I told them i do not want it for may month and asked them to cancel may month and how can u first deduct for may month and not for march month? Staff who was very arrogant says i should have cancelled may month enrollment on march 10 when they send email which clearly says i can cancel if i have completed 2 classes. Also while enrollment i was told to cancel before 10 weeks of training. Staff i talked to told me very rudely that i owe them this money and i can do whatever i want they want refund or adjust may month fees. Also i enrolled for parsippany location since it is convenient to me and now they are asking me to come to randolph location which is far to me. Ideally they cant change location and refuse to return money if person do not want to go other location which is far. To me this is fraud. I recommend not enrolling for there classes and find people who are genuine. read more

poor communication,a lot of unanswered emails, sent to wrong location for a lesson once, and scheduling is apparently not flexible at all which they failed to mention. Your first lesson you schedule will also be the same time and day for your entire contract. billing is setup on a very awkward cycle to help increase the confusion. read more

Dont do it!!!! Money hungry and sooo not worth it. Ihated the cleanliness of the gym I chose. If you have a little one I suggest going to an actual swim school. I don't know what I was thinking signing up for this. Never again! Make sure your months are consecutive . If not you will continue to be charged until u have 2 consecutive months of practice. God forbid some comes up and cant show for a month. When you do continue the month that you've completed does not count towards anything and u will start all over again. Make sure that you will be commited to the 10 week schedule Or else! read more

SCAM ALERT! My son took one 20 minute lesson. The instructor watched the clock the entire time and ended the session 3 minutes early. The lesson consisted of using a kickboard and being told to kick. I tried to cancel and get a refund for the remaining lessons, which they refused. They automatically reenroll you for next session and automatically deduct the fees from your account. Getting out of that is also difficult and involves filling out a form and emailing it to them. I guess that these unethical practices are the only way they can stay in business. read more

Horrible group of teenagers to pay to teach your children to swim. If i could give 0 stars i would. What a waste of money. The lessons are repetitive unless you pay for private lessons. An ear infection and fever does not count as a sickness to reschedule a session. I also had asked if i could PAY for a makeup session with our instructor that we normally use and i was absolutely rudely told that i could not reschedule with him because he works only on weekends when i had spoke to him he said he would accommodate us and our time slots but his boss would not let him. Two of the instructors that my daughter normally had ended up quitting last minute and instructors have not been consistent since and classes have been canceled they credited my SWIM account only for 1 class. Why can't my credit card be credited back? I am no longer interesting in working with the company now that our instructor is gone. The girl who seems to be running the company is a rude young girl who had no regard for the children. I would never ever recommend them to anyone, ever. This was at the Clark LA fitness location, which i love the gym and pool, i have a membership but they are no way affiliated with this starfish disaster. read more

These people are unethical and thieves.. After first lesson my 13 months son was sick because I had to change him in a cold locker room sink... There's zero accommodation for kids/babies. When brought up to the director she didn't care and said she's going to charge anyway. I didn't mind paying the first session but to put him through the torturous 7 more sessions will be traumatizing. Stay away!! there are better swimming sessions like Goldfish swim where the facility and staff care about babies not just trying to scam money from you. read more

If you're trying to find a great swim practice company for your children, let me be the first to steer you towards British Swim School in New Brunswick located at the LA Fitness. I'm a member of the gym in Clark so that's why I took my child to Starfish, but honestly a young bimbo runs the swim lessons and she has no compassion for children whatsoever. I've lost great amounts of money because they don't reschedule and are thieves. They don't work with you at all and all the lessons are short and not efficient. read more

We took lessons at la fitness in Clark . Pointless . There were 2 other kids in the class but they spent over half the lessons fixing googles etc . What a waste of money . After 15 classes there is 0 improvement . read more

Unethical. Beware. My wife was a member of this outfit before it was owned by Gold's Gym. Eventually, it became Zapp. We moved and about two months before moving my wife tried to cancel membership. Despite promises that "we'll take care of it", nothing ever happened and our credit card kept getting charged. We had to cancel payments by going to the credit card company and telling them these charges were no longer authorized. Three months after we moved we got a bill forwarded to our new address. Not only was swimming there a source of great irritation due to sanitary issues and sloppy scheduling of pool use, but their financial practices leave a lot to be desired. There are many better places. read more

DO NOT BUY THIS GROUPON/LIVING SOCIAL DEAL or book any lessons with this company. Swim the other way... Their scheduling process and website are awful and nearly possible to navigate. It's 2013. For my first lesson, the instructor wasn't aware that she had a student that day and was over an hour late. You are sharing the rented lane with other students - who are not all working together or on the same level. The expiration date is ridiculous. They gave me a free lesson due to the first mishap in scheduling and then had the gall to tell me that expired with the groupon (of which they never advised). I am so unhappy with their services and am relieved that the last one expired before I was able to drive an hour and a half for a 23 minute lesson to use it. WHAT A COMPLETE WASTE. The instructor was nice - but she quit. The JCC in Bridgewater where this company rents space has JCC lessons and they were very nice and the students seemed very happy there. I also bet their prices are less. Go there instead. read more

I'm torn between two and three stars, but I think three is fair enough. We've done a couple of lessons here. The first time two of my kids took pay-as-you-go private lessons (1/2 hour each), except one got 1/2 hour and one got about 23 minutes. Given the price this works out to per minute, that was kind of annoying. They seemed to like their instructors/lessons well enough. The second time just one kid had a lesson, and she really had fun and enjoyed the lesson and liked her instructor. Figuring out their weekly schedule and availability on their website is next to impossible, as it is a crowded text-filled table, and I had to find a slot listed and email them. [This might have changed; you seem to be able to register online now, but I am not sure if that was available at the time or not.] Except it's one person manually signing each person up, so mistakes get made, and you drag your kids out to the pool on a day when they are not expecting you. The setup is strange, a bunch of separate private lessons going on at the same time in a lane or two of the pool, but it seemed to work okay. read more

Registration and the site is cumbersome. The instructor seemed pretty burned out, presumably we had the last class of the day. The instructor didn't seem familiar on how to teach toddlers to swim...the building blocks of swim skills or engaging the child. read more

I have had NOTHING but a headache from these people. I bought the groupon for lessons in January...it took me until the MAY session to finally get my daughter scheduled!! FIVE MONTHS OF TRYING! The office never answers thier phone, and when they do, they have NO CLUE what is going on. To top it all off, they specifically state there is no make up policy, well apparently that does not apply to the instructors. My daughter's has decided to take a vacation day! Really? So what should be my daughter's third lesson will actually be spent trying to get her to trust and interact with a completely new person rather than spent in the pool. Because afterall, every two year old will willingly run off into a large body of water with a complete stranger. And when I called the office, low and behold, "Oh I don't know XXX's schedule. You'll have to discuss that with him." Oh but they have been great at filling my in-box with constantly pitches for more lessons and "reminders" about not offering make-up lessons and not honoring coupons for anyone who isn't a new member. just keep swiming...swimming...swimming...in the other direction. read more

I highly recommend that you do not use this company services. They are very rude and un proffesional. The swim services that they provide are horrible. The swim instructor focuses more on who using his chairs instead of the little kids in the pool. read more

I have been taking my two kids here for over 2 years. And once they reopened after covid we quickly signed them up again as we were loyal customers. My son broke his elbow this week so we obviously had to cancel his session. We also wanted to cancel my daughters session, as we are working parents and didn't want to drag our son to sit pool side with a full arm cast while his sister enjoyed the pool. Starfish aquatic club was extremely unreasonable and unacommodating in cancelling our daughters session and has refused to give us a credit for her lessons as well. Especially during these times it is extremely unacceptable that they would not work with us. All we asked for was a credit so that we could schedule their sessions in the future when cleared by a doctor. We are extremely disappointed and dissatisfied with the customer service, or lack there of, as well as the director which refused to work with us. They have definitely lost loyal customers and I would never recommend these swim lessons to anyone. read more

The phones are never answered. Voice mails are not returned. If you "talk" to them through emails it takes weeks to solve an issue. I purchased a groupon for my kids (went though a lot of trouble registering it on the website). After swimming at the Y for years, was very disapointed with the school. Teachers looks like they do not want to be there. Whenever they get a chance they go on their phone... My one child goes to the Friday night class, the teacher tells the kids NOT TO SPLASH. They are in the pool - they are supposed to splash. Oh wait, but they need to be aware not to get wet the teacher's hair! What a disaster that may be! SIGH This is not the only issue. They charged my credit card for the next session without my permission and when I contacted them about it they said it does not show any charge on their end. There is no phone number or a person for you to talk to. I was emailing back and forth with this Paul Morse who told me he is the middle guy and the owner will be contacted. It has been 10 days since this issue and it was not solved. Please stay away from Starfish Aquatics. It is not worth the trouble. I'd rather pay more somewhere else than save money with Groupon and lose my sanity! read more

This company all that cares is about the money, specially the owner, she is, and has poor customer service and manners.They rent space in golds gym, if there is any concern with water and temperature, she says that we have to deal directly with gold gym and she is not concerned with it and she still collects money to run the classes in Golds gym. She wont refund the money and no make up classes, even your child is sick. You try to talk to her, she yells and screams at you.absolute money minded. read more

i arranged for a lesson from an experienced swim instructor only to find out after paying for a 3 lesson package that all instructors are high school or college level and many have only just started swimming. called after my first lesson to ask for a refund of some kind or some amount shuffled me around, never returned my calls and then finally refused very deceptive business practice read more