SINGAPORE: Police on Thursday (Sep 15) said they are looking into the closure of two fitness studios that customers say shuttered without warning.
Reports have been lodged over the closures of X Fitness spin studio in GR.iD mall and affiliated brand Kyklos Studio in Tekka Place, police confirmed.
A third outlet is located at the Hougang Sports Centre, according to a cached version of X Fitness’ website, which has since gone dark.
A customer who only wanted to be known as Weiling, 26, told CNA that she has been attending spin classes at X Fitness since July 2021 and had a pleasant experience.
“I didn’t receive any bad customer service,” she said, adding that instructors were friendly and X Fitness’ price point was more affordable than other studios.
“The only reason why I even knew about them in the first place is because during then they hired a lot of TikTok influencers,” she said, adding that one such influencer worked as an instructor.
Weiling said there were no signs anything was wrong until Sep 12, when she tried to book a class at the GR.iD outlet.
About a month ago, X Fitness informed customers it was migrating the class booking platform from its own mobile app to an aggregator app like Mindbody, she said.
During the migration, students were asked to book classes by sending direct messages to the studio’s Instagram account.
Weiling told CNA she successfully booked a class in this way on Sep 6. It was the last class she attended at X Fitness.
On TikTok, another X Fitness customer who goes by Elyssa posted that she last attended a class on Sep 10 and had 35 classes left in her package.
When Weiling tried to book a class on Sep 12, she could no longer find the gym’s account on Instagram. She also could not find the studio on booking apps like Mindbody.
She realised something had gone wrong when she checked X Fitness’ website and saw that it was down. The gym’s website and social media accounts were still dark when CNA checked on Thursday afternoon.
Weiling made a police report on Sep 13.
She said there has been no communication from X Fitness about the closure of the gyms. She has contacted one of the gym’s instructors, known as Alan, on Instagram, but has not received a reply.
The only update came from an instructor who posted on Instagram saying that she was trying to contact the owners of X Fitness to find out what had happened, said Weiling.
Weiling estimated that she has 16 classes left in her 20-class package, which she bought for S$320.
She has filed a claim at the Small Claims Tribunal, but told CNA she has “sort of given up on getting the money back”.
She said the experience has been a shock, adding: “It just didn’t occur to me that it will happen in Singapore.”