When Frustration Boils Over: True Feelings of a Club Member?

March 24, 2004

The General Manager
Grove Isle Club and Resort
Noble House
4 Grove Isle Drive
Coconut Grove, FL 33133

Dear Madam:

As condo owners, we are forced to pay the private profit-making enterprise Noble House D/B/A Grove Isle Club and Resort $1500 each and every year and that’s what we get for our money.

It must cost many thousands of dollars to replace the clay [on the tennis courts] that gets blown away when the wind is blowing much, and that is happening frequently. Why don’t your workers turn the sprinklers on for a little while early in the morning? That will keep the clay from being blown away.

Don’t you find it appalling that we have to pay when the club runs a tennis round robin and we are even asked to bring food? We have brought friends to these affairs and they could not believe that a private club maintained with member dues would scoop so low and ask for $10 and bring-along- food.

These tennis activities are like a needle in a haystack. We don’t even have one every month. And what happened to the social calendar of club activities? We don’t get anything for our money.

We have been members of several private clubs for many years (some charged much more than per year). Never have I seen so little respect for the members by the club. They stand around instead of offering service. They don’t treat us with the respect a private club member deserves. It’s like visiting $1500 Kmart. They get chummy with us and call us by our first name. They engage in talk of a personal nature that’s not appropriate. They even make passes and engage in conversation with sexual overtones. This is the first and only club where we experience such behavior.

Every club we ever belonged to presented its members with a member directory so we could know who to call and where. At Grove Isle, management believes we are a secretive society or they are simply to lazy to prepare such a directory and make it available to the members.

How serious are you treating your members according to your promise, including a break on hotel rates? I simply made a mistake identifying myself as a “club member.” Had I not done so I could have gotten a better rate at the hotel for friends who came to visit us in Miami. So you are discriminating against members.

Here is my assessment of why the service is so terrible at the Grove Isle tennis courts, the Baleen restaurant, and the two bars. The staff is not properly supervised. There’s no management. The staff has no one to look up to. Leadership does not exist. And here’s the worst assessment — management’s priority focuses on their own agenda in conjunction with laziness. Of course, there is also incompetence. Supervisors and managers do not know what it takes to serve the club members in a professional manner. That’s why the Grove Isle Club and Resort cannot be a first class private club.

In the restaurant and at the bars we are charged 18% gratuity. That is effectively a 24% tip we are forced to pay even when the service is terrible.

Your accounting department does a terrible job. We talk about it a lot at tennis. Charges show up on our monthly statements that are wrong and we have to fight to get it corrected. That’s why many members do not charge anymore. Strangely enough, these wrong charges are always in favor of the club. That’s shameful. We simply cannot trust our club.

Why have the unit owners received their club membership bill and the off-island members have not? It just shows the unit owners carry the club's budget load.

We go to the pool and the service is lacking. Often we can’t get service and can’t get towels.

A number of our neighbors do not play tennis and they are very upset because they do not get their money’s worth when they pay the $1500 club membership fee. All they get is the 25% discount at Baleen and the hotel — that’s not even guaranteed — and that just is not worth $1500 each and every year. Some of the reasons are identified above. They get much more and much better service for their money in fine restaurants located in the neighborhood.

I could be selfish and say that’s wonderful if all condo owners pay the annual fee so I can play tennis in style. I don’t think that is going very far. These people are going to rebel and stop paying the club dues. They are even talking about suing because they don’t get what they were promised and simply don’t get their moneys’ worth. My tennis friends would ostracize me if they knew I wrote this letter. They love having all those non-tennis players pay the club dues.

I am reminded of my MBA days studying and observing the performance of the supervisory personnel: It’s the “Peter Principle” confirmed.

You should do a survey on how many of the condo residents eat at Baleen, visit the 2 bars or make reservations at the hotel.

Obviously, there’s something terribly wrong when we get a new “General Manager” for the club on the average less than every 12 months. That’s evidence proving the club’s poor management that can’t be hidden when it comes to a court battle.

I wish you the utmost best in your new endeavor.

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We are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead,nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)3rd United States president

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