Save yourself now - Massage Therapist Still Point Spa Employee Review

Although lengthy, we believe now is a great opportunity to publicly share what we went through with a law suit with The Columbia Association that ultimately ended with us losing the business to a corporate giant. The Haven on the Lake location closed in August 2018 due to the increased costs of a legal case against our business partner, The Columbia Association. The cost of this case was well into six figures and we owners worked for nothing for 2 years. The employees and clients didn’t feel the impact of the financially stress since payroll was always made and the business was still busy. As owners of this business we feel we need to point out some key things that this former employee did not share. 1) When the business partner removed access to their side of the retreat as well as to laundry, the business had to take on new expenses for linens as well as drop service prices to accommodate the unannounced change. The employees NEVER had a reduction in pay, even with a decrease in service prices by 12-15% and significant increase in expenses. The owners also laundered robes daily, on their own time, to make sure the impact was not felt by employees or guests. Let’s be clear about this, at times it was 2-3 hours nightly in a laundromat. It would have been easier to cut the robes from services, but we didn’t want to create too much change. From a legal standpoint, employees were informed of the situation when our attorneys advised it was okay. The attorneys met with staff for questions and made themselves available if anyone had additional questions after the meeting. They also advised the employees that only a certain amount of info could be shared otherwise they could potentially be subpoenaed to testify. We wanted to shield our employees and prevent that from happening. 2) We don’t need to explain personal vacations- trips were planned 6 months before taken and knowing about having to close. Our trips were cut short and the timing of closing was due to the time of the month and being advised to close before Sept 1. No business ever wants to close and while the impact was felt by all, we are still dealing with the financial and legal responsibilities of closing a business. 3) Clients lists were NEVER given away or sold. We were approached by many businesses and refused to sell our list. Selling lists is actually illegal and HIPPA wouldn’t allow it either. When an employee, the client list actually belongs to the business, not the practitioners. Because we felt horrible about the circumstances, we agreed to provide existing client lists to our practitioners. That required legal approval as well as working with our software company since we cancelled our membership when the business closed. Again, with the laws, practitioners could not be given names of people they randomly saw 1 or 2 times over a year. Existing clients was always defined at the spa as repeat clients seen more than once in the last 90 days. We used those same parameters to provide lists to our practitioners. Some practitioners only received 10-15 names because their retention was low and that’s all they had. Given the circumstances and financial impact of years of an ongoing lawsuit, we had no choice but to close. We would never wish this nightmare on our worse enemy. While it pains us to know people lost jobs because of the closing, it’s important to understand we lost a viable business and our livelihood. Our families suffered and we continue to pay for something that was not our fault. We worked to help practitioners find jobs elsewhere and wanted everyone to land on their feet. It’s a year later and someone posted this review so clearly there is still upset. Trust us, we’re upset too. We apologize for creating upset with our staff from the former location, it was never our intention.