Hidden Costs, Horrible HelpDesk, and Headaches: Real Nightmares from Users of the MindBody Online Scheduler and App

We’ve been speaking with WellnessLiving customers over the past month who made the switch from MindBody Online Scheduler and App, and we’ve noticed one common trend – in the end, they all ended up losing more time and money than they gained using MindBody to run their business! It makes sense – we all know how widely-used the software is, and while they were the only show in town (which was quite a while) they could run as they please – but with other options out there more and more people are making the switch.

Meet April and Jackie from Hi-Ignition Fit Lab – they are two of the many studio owners who have made the switch from MindBody. They both describe having stressful experiences with MindBody’s scheduler and online app. The constant software troubles and poor customer support had April and Jackie actively avoiding logging onto their business computers due to the stressful reactions it produced.

“I started as a personal training studio and when I expanded to group fitness as well, at a larger location with more staff and clientele, I needed something to keep track of everything.” Jackie told us. “It seemed like every spa and gym I came in contact with were using MindBody. I don’t think it’s because it’s the best system out there; I think it’s because it was the only one at the time that had the features fitness studios needed,” she says.

Just what was it about this troublesome software that caused April and Jackie to throw in the towel on MindBody? Read on to find out!

MindBody Isn’t User Friendly

You’ve probably already heard about former MindBody clients being fed up with paying tons of cash to attend MindBody University to learn how to use software they were already paying for. Just like many other MindBody users, the ladies of Hi-Ignition Fit Lab found the software to be incredibly difficult to figure out and use.

“I didn’t find it user friendly. We would make changes with MindBody and go through the pages we thought would fix or change something, then go live with it and it didn’t work how we wanted it to,” April explained. We’d call into support and endlessly wait on hold.”

After spending a great deal of time on hold, April and Jackie discovered that even when they reached an agent, the customer support at MindBody still had a hard time helping them with their problems.

Clients Have to Rely on Tricky Workarounds or Customer Support

Just as anyone would, April and Jackie expected to receive an answer to their issues with MindBody quickly and effectively – at least once they got an agent on the line. After multiple support calls, they realized that they weren’t going to receive the kind of help they needed to figure out how to use the software. In fact, it seemed like the people in customer service weren’t able to figure out a way to fix the problem in a user-friendly way.

“You would have to ask and prompt…They weren’t intuitive about their own system. There was too much staff and not enough training,” Jackie filled us in.

“They would tell me to put in a feature or build something a certain way and we would point out to them the error in the way they were telling us to do it. They would say, ‘Yeah, that’s right. I never thought of that.’ And I’d say, ‘That’s great because you’re supposed to be helping me,’” she says.

Lack of Timely Help and Poorly Timed Callbacks

When they weren’t waiting on hold or talking to a support associate who couldn’t figure out how to help them, April and Jackie were struggling to deal with the lack of availability of MindBody support managers for tough issues. During one stressful support call, they were told that there was no one to help them and their problem would have to be escalated. As busy studio owners, they asked that someone call them so they wouldn’t have to wait on hold a second time. What happened next surprised them:

“They called me back at two-thirty in the morning. They woke me up. I get up at five AM! I was working on the operating system until nine at night because I’m a small business owner. And so I said call me back when there’s the next available agent and they call me at two-thirty in the morning,” she says. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Another incident occurred when they asked to speak with a supervisor. Instead of being immediately put through to the supervisor, they were told, again, that the supervisor would have to call them. An hour and a half later, the phone call from the MindBody supervisor arrived. An hour and a half may not seem that terrible, but this happened during an inconvenient moment when she was training a client and couldn’t take the phone call – which began the entire cycle again.

Third-Party Apps and Features are Costly and Difficult to Use

Even these two fitness pros were starting to get run down when they encountered yet another frustration with MindBody’s scheduler and online app: the need to use third-party apps in order to have all of the features they needed to run their studio effectively. Fees started adding up. In addition, they found that the third-party apps often didn’t integrate well with MindBody’s system – at all..

“They farm you out to other companies for different features…We were paying three or four companies a month. We were drowning in fees to get everything we needed for our small business…If you need this, you need to pay for that.” April told us.

“They all promised to seamlessly integrate with MindBody and that was never the case. We would have issues with things not working properly and all the companies would blame each other. Miraculously, the problem would get fixed and nobody would cop to who fixed it,” she says.

This made dealing with issues overly complicated and frustrating – especially since no one would take responsibility for the error, making it impossible to evaluate which apps were the problem and where MindBody just inherently had errors. At times, April and Jackie felt as if they were losing their minds while trying to figure out how to balance running their business with learning how to use a complex piece of software that never did what they needed it to do in the first place.

Choose a Better Option

The stress and frustration of constantly dealing with MindBody’s many issues began to add up. April and Jackie were tired of wasting their time and their money on something that had turned into a huge headache for them and their business.

To make matters worse, they both felt as if they didn’t matter to MindBody.

“It didn’t seem to matter. We were a number. We weren’t an important account or client. We didn’t seem significant,” Jackie explained.

When they made the leap over to WellnessLiving, they found user-friendly software, a all-in-one system that worked the way it was supposed to, and customer support that cared about them and their business. April and Jackie were able to do exactly what they wanted and needed to be able to do in the software without any of the problems they encountered throughout their time with MindBody. We asked April to put it in her own words:

“When I’m comparing WellnessLiving to MindBody, I compare like an iPhone to a Blackberry. When you get the iPhone, a two or three year old could use it, it’s intuitive and it makes sense – like WellnessLiving. Whereas, with MindBody, if you don’t have experience with the system and stay 24/7 with them on the helpline glued to your head, it’s a really frustrating system.”

Let’s be honest – who ever sees a BlackBerry anymore? It’s definitely not us! If you’re like April and Jackie and find yourself sick and tired of using a software that causes you to feel nothing but frustration and stress, make the smart choice and switch to WellnessLiving today! With all its features included and a team who really cares, we’ll help you stop sweating the small stuff with your software so you can focus on your clients. Contact us to schedule a demo and find out the difference WellnessLiving software can make in your business.