I’ve had a chance to play around with ClassPass but these are the reasons why I will not be on ClassPass anytime soon.

1. Cancellation notice

As compared to GuavaPass’ cancellation notice of typically 2-4 hours and a late cancellation fee of $5, ClassPass 12-hour late cancellation and a late cancellation fee of $20 hits a sour note for me.

Personally, I work in a fast-paced and team-work based job which makes it hard for me to predict my schedule at times.

2. Fastest fingers first game

With a limited number of slots for classes at the studios, it is a ‘fastest fingers first’ and has resulted in a ‘camping’ syndrome for its members. I have a couple of friends who will just keep refreshing the studio page at a certain timing (when the classes are being released) so that they’d be able to book the class they want.

3. Uniquely Singaporean behaviour

The reason why I like GuavaPass better is that the platform is built in Asia first. Its founding team includes an Asian co-founder and one of the co-founders rightly pointed out that you cannot plug and play US technology in Asia and I cannot agree more.

On the other hand, ClassPass feels like a US app that tries to implement a tried and tested model in US to Singapore.

Why do I say that?

ClassPass’ system without certain safeguards in place has resulted in what I call ‘Uniquely Singaporean’ behaviour. Some of them include booking numerous classes since there is no maximum number of reservations you can hold (and dropping them last minute before you incur a cancellation charge), groups created to swap popular classes and even, peddling class credits (how do you even do this baffles me).

No offence to those who want to maximise their class credits – I’m merely pointing out that this is not something I want nor would do.

ClassPass is still in its early stages though, perhaps, with a few more months of operations, I’m sure its model will tweak. Until then, I’ll be a keen bystander waiting to see its improvements.