Member-only story
ClassPass Has a Spam Problem
The company’s customers say they’re inundated with emails from gyms and studios, and there’s no good way to make them stop
When product designer Celia McQueen moved to New York, she immediately joined ClassPass — it would be a fun way to find new exercise studios, she thought. For $125 per month, the subscription included access to hundreds of boutique studios. The only limit was two classes per studio per month. McQueen found a studio she loved about a month later and canceled her ClassPass account. But the emails from ClassPass didn’t stop. Nor did the emails from the many, many studios in its network. She received offers, updates, and ads from studios all over New York, many that she’d never even tried. “I thought it was lame,” she said. “I’ve had emails from companies I’ve never heard of before, but I knew exactly where all of these were coming from.”
ClassPass is a startup darling, a female-founded company that’s raised $255 million at a valuation of $610 million. But it’s not all rosy in Lululemon land. Customers like McQueen are starting to notice a spam problem, and many of them are not happy about it. Search Twitter for ClassPass and you’ll see many tweets like this one from former customer Ryan Case: “Who emails more — 2020 presidential candidates or that yoga studio you tried out once on Classpass in 2015?”
ClassPass’ privacy policy says it shares users’ emails with the studios they frequent, so that users receive class updates and relevant promotional offers. That sounds reasonable, but the point of ClassPass is to try multiple studios, so users unwittingly find themselves overloaded with emails they didn’t ask for — many of which arrive with no opt-out button, a violation of federal law.
The reason that so many people are frustrated with ClassPass’ spam — me included—is that they really like using the service.
ClassPass’ response to users’ complaints on social media is to deflect; your problem is with the studio, not…
