at least, not unless you have the money to throw away or you’re 100% sure you can finish your course of classes.

You know I normally don’t write posts like this but this but I’ve been back and forth countless times with this company and I just feel like I need to let you know what you may be in for.

It took a loooong time for me to fall pregnant so my doctor told me no exercise in case we jeopardise this pregnancy unless you want to join Preggi Bellies.

I’d always been reasonably active, wanted to stay fit throughout my pregnancy so I joined up.

You have to pay upfront for your entire course of classes – either 25, 30 or 35. I’m not a fan of the paying in advance thing since you never know what might happen so I took the least amount of classes (25) and paid my R2500.

Long story short… I have a busy life, went to Ireland, and had two preggy “incidents” so I only used 8 of those 25 lessons.

After the two “incidents” the doc told me to stop exercising as we didn’t want any more drama!

So I contacted them to request a refund. And there the trouble began.

• They avoided my emails and phone calls for over a month. I started getting a bad feeling…
• Then after the babies were born (8 weeks early as it happens), I started chasing up again.
• Finally got an email telling me they don’t do refunds but I’m welcome to use up my remaining 17 lessons. First of all, I have twins. Who has the time to go back to classes (9 weeks of them as I’d think 2 maximum per week) with twins??? I barely have time to brush my teeth!
• After lots of back and forth, they eventually offered me R660. Work that out – I’ll wait… R2500 for 25 classes = R100 a class. 8 classes taken means I should be expecting R1700.
• Apparently there’s a 15% admin fee. Okay….. even so, HUGE jump from the R660 you’re offering me to the R1700 I’m expecting.
• How can you take off a 15% admin fee PLUS only give me half of what’s left? Daylight robbery!
• I tried to reason with them… “I didn’t not use up the classes because of laziness; medical reasons prevented me from continuing” and “this will result in reputational risk for you as I write a very popular blog…” but they were not having any of it.
• So eventually I stated my case one last time (I do like to get my opinion out there!) and decided to conserve my energy, take the R660 and let it go.
• I was also going through bouts of crying every day and this wasn’t making me feel any better.

Hence this post!

So a warning to any other pregnant ladies out there. Please please please learn from my mistakes and don’t sign up with Preggi Bellies unless you have the money to throw away if something goes wrong with your pregnancy.

Of course the irony of it all is that once this happened, many of my friends said that having to pay upfront was what held them back from joining up. AAAARGHHHHH!