GolfTEC - Time Limit on Lessons Makes no Sense

[Elee913]

Does anyone else think that the time limit to take lessons under any of GolfTec’s lesson plans is crazy?  If you sign up for a 10 pack, you have 3 months to take them or you lose the ones you don’t use.  What happens if you get injured or are traveling?  Or God forbid your swing is in great shape after the 5th lesson and you don’t want to mess with karma and take another lesson, and you want to wait until later in the season?  I’ve been a loyal GolfTec customer, but I can’t sign up for something with a ticking bomb attached to it.  

 

 

[iacas]

They likely price them knowing the average usage out of ten is… six or something, and by selling them as "ten lessons only $xxx" it sounds less expensive than it is.

[Hawkeye77]

“Ticking bomb”?  LOL. 
 

 

[MonteScheinblum]

I just had a guy use a lesson he bought in 2013.  Someone else moved away and asked if they could use credit for face time or golf school.

 

It doesn’t kill you to provide FAIR customer service at the individual or corporate level if the request is reasonable.

Edited February 23, 2024 by MonteScheinblum

[Hawkeye77]

25 minutes ago, MonteScheinblum said:

I just had a guy use a lesson he bought in 2013.  Someone else moved away and asked if they could use credit for face time or golf school.

 

It doesn’t kill you to provide FAIR customer service at the individual or corporate level if the request is reasonable.

But it was 2013 and inflation - he gets 5 minutes of plane and release by feel! (And nothing wrong with that, lol).

[Elee913]

Agreed. I had a lesson “expire” in December and couldn’t get it honored in February. 

[Hawkeye77]

8 hours ago, Elee913 said:

Agreed. I had a lesson “expire” in December and couldn’t get it honored in February. 

Find a good pro and count your blessings!

[Soloman1]

plenty of stack & tilt videos on youtube. no expiration.

[TimGru]

Agreed it’s a terribly policy! I injured my shoulder and am finally back to swinging a club. Originally they gave me an extra three months but that was nowhere close to the time I needed to recover. I now have a month to use all my lessons or I lose them.
 

In the future I’m going to go with a local pro or someone like Monte for online lessons.

[KMeloney]

I think it makes a lot of [business] sense. You don't have to like it -- but it makes a lot of sense.

 

...And if it doesn't make enough sense to enough people, I'm sure the offer -- and maybe even Golftec, itself -- will go away.

[nosil]

12 hours ago, MonteScheinblum said:

I just had a guy use a lesson he bought in 2013. 

 

I think I have one from 2015;  still haven't mastered the stuff you told me in the  first video lesson.   your last message to me was "it takes months of constant effort to fix this issue"  🤣

[jut111]

I'd argue taking lessons at golftec period makes no sense.  but maybe thats just me.  

[betarhoalphadelta]

It appears that GolfTEC was acquired (majority stake) by Golf Digest Online in 2018. Golf Digest Online is a public company. 

 

I wonder if this is similar to paid time off rules. Unused PTO shows up as a financial liability on a balance sheet, and Wall Street hates financial liabilities. It's why a lot of businesses have maximum PTO balances (to force you to use it), will sometimes offer PTO buyouts when flush with cash (to get it off the books), and some companies such as the one that I work for do away with accrued PTO entirely and making it purely a "if you and your boss agree, you can take PTO". (Which sucks BTW--I and most employees don't take NEARLY as much PTO as I would have accrued under the old system...)

 

It's the same thing as gift cards. When you buy a $50 gift card from, say, Target, it doesn't show up as $50 revenue to Target. It shows up as a $50 liability that they carry on their balance sheet. It's why gift cards USED to have expiration clauses that if unused for a certain period of time, they would start reducing in value or expire completely. That was changed by legal force--federal law limits the ability for gift cards to expire or have value-reduction clauses. Now most gift cards are non-expiry. But companies hate zombie gift cards that someone lost because they had to carry that liability for a number of years before they could count it as revenue under the assumption that it would never be redeemed. 

 

Unused GolfTEC lessons are likely a financial liability on GolfTEC's [i.e. GDO's] balance sheet, exactly like a gift card. You buy a lesson pack and that is not realized as revenue until you redeem the lessons. So they force an expiration so that they know they won't have to carry this financial liability forever--and it's probably no accident it's 3 months, given that public companies report earnings on a quarterly basis... 

 

Someone like Monte obviously doesn't have to worry about this--at least not until Rebellion Golf's IPO 😂

 

(Edit to add: I still think it's a horrible BS policy for golf lessons. I'm just explaining a likely reason they have it.)

Edited February 23, 2024 by betarhoalphadelta

[TonyRo]

I bought a ten pack from GolfTec 2 seasons ago and also had a lot of beef with this policy. Trying to squeeze that many lessons into a short amount of time made me feel like I didn't have enough time to digest and work on the previous lesson, which led to me trying to bounce around between driver, short game, putting, etc and then looping back around to full swing stuff again. I will say that my coach was quite nice and was able to extend a few of them such that they expired way later. Might be something worth bringing up in a lesson to see what they can do!

[snagy2000]

It's their business model and you don't need to buy their services. Some people are more visual learners and prefer the video sessions/technology they offer compared to some coach taping front and/or back, drawing lines and not providing much detailed input. To each their own. I do know, COVID issues caused a lot of problems for them and they had to come up with a solution and are trying to be firm within reason. They'll work with people, I had meniscus surgery and they accommodated, but people also don't stop trying to take advantage of situations either. 

[Elee913]

I’m not sure what you mean by taking advantage of situations here. By that you mean buying a 10 pack, and then trying to use part of the 10 pack 1 month after expiry? How is that taking advantage? Or god forbid stretching a 10 pack over a season? But you’re right…no one needs to use them. $100/half hour session even with the lesson packs is 30% more than any other pro in most major metros so they’ll just have to see. Or not. 

[JohnB92]

On 2/23/2024 at 9:39 AM, betarhoalphadelta said:

It appears that GolfTEC was acquired (majority stake) by Golf Digest Online in 2018. Golf Digest Online is a public company. 

 

I wonder if this is similar to paid time off rules. Unused PTO shows up as a financial liability on a balance sheet, and Wall Street hates financial liabilities. It's why a lot of businesses have maximum PTO balances (to force you to use it), will sometimes offer PTO buyouts when flush with cash (to get it off the books), and some companies such as the one that I work for do away with accrued PTO entirely and making it purely a "if you and your boss agree, you can take PTO". (Which sucks BTW--I and most employees don't take NEARLY as much PTO as I would have accrued under the old system...)

 

(Edit to add: I still think it's a horrible BS policy for golf lessons. I'm just explaining a likely reason they have it.)

 

Ehhh that's not how PTO works in accrual accounting. PTO is recorded as part of accrued wage expense in external reporting, such as a public company 10K/10Q. Many companies don't report accrued wage expense as a separate line item in their accrued expenses liability account. It's all part of the higher-level balance that gets reported to investors. I'm not aware of any (American listed) company that reports accrued vacation expense as a sub-item of accrued wage expense in their 10K/10Q. If you know of one, I'd be interested in looking into it.

Additionally, the way that the accruals are done is on a per-period basis for the allocated amount of the employees' vacation for the year. It's not a lump sum, it accrues each month as new hours are placed into the balance sheet (not the HR system, HR can issue the hours however they want) at an even interval. Vacation hours used are deducted from that accrual to reach the monthly net accrual amount. The net movement is pretty small and tracks with overall headcount more than vacation utilization.

Also don't forget Accounting 101. For every Liability, it has to be matched to an Asset (or offsetting contra-Liability). Accrued vacation expense is matched against is pre-paid salaries or cash (depends on if the employee got paid yet), both are current assets. Therefore, the more accrued vacation on the books the more cash or pre-paid expense is on the asset side of the balance sheet. Thus, accrued vacation hours isn't going to change the leverage ratios of any company by an amount discernible to a public company investor. What CAN affect an investor's perception is the total SGA Expenses as a percentage of revenue and as compared to your industry peers. In short, if wage expense matters enough in your company that external investors start talking about it the result is layoffs and downsizing. Not "Use it or Lose it" vacation policies. Think about it in terms of cost. 4 weeks of vacation time for 13 employees is the same as 1 employee salary for a year. (13 * 4 = 52 weeks).

What is easier? Find 4 weeks of vacation hours (per year) to remove from 13 people, or firing Joe/Janis who spends all day on their phone looking at cat videos?

Forcing people to take PTO is one of the easiest ways to detect people who are committing various types of fraud. When you're Out of Office someone else handles your job duties. Which gives opportunity to discover your fraud. Another thing Use It or Lose It does is avoid someone running up 6 months of vacation time and then one day does not show up to work for 6 months, while getting paid and having no legit reason to fire them. 

Most reasons PTO expires are for the employees' benefit (with increased employee retention as a side effect). It prevents supervisors from obstructing employees from actually using their PTO. Managers who refuse to allow PTO is one of the top reasons companies lose high performing employees. If a group constantly has their vacation expire, management and HR should be looking at the Supervisor for a good reason why that is. At my company having a high PTO utilization percentage is actually a positive for a manager. Additionally, employees who don't take vacation are more likely to quit. "Use it or Lose it" policies are very helpful in getting employees to actually use the benefit, which increases retention. 

I got no idea why I rambled on about this. Probably because it overlaps multiple things I audit in my job.

TL;DR: Wall Street doesn't care about your vacation hours. They would rather just eliminate your job completely.

 

[Chunkitgood]

An accrued wage expense is not a liability?

 

Did he ever say it was a separate line item?

 

When you match an asset to a liability doesn’t it doesn’t actually add to the amount of assets, does it, just makes some assets more liquid?

 

I know nothing about these things, never had to, thank God, and you’re out there auditing things, but it sure seems to me that accrued wage expense would be included in total liabilities, and its existence there would not make additional total assets magically appear.  And while it in itself may not be a big deal, when you combine it with a bunch of other non line item items, they may just mean something in the aggregate to investors.

 

Don’t know why I made these comments, just rambling about things I don’t know about and have no interest in, because what you said the fact that keeping accrued wages on the books wouldn’t change leverage ratio perceptibly (which may well be true) is somehow connected causally (“thus””) with liability/asset matching, which seems untrue in that matching would necessarily seem to relate to liquidity rather than the amount of assets (because as I said the idea that the existence of a liability brings into existence additional assets seems somewhat strange).

 

 

[snagy2000]

IMO, rambling about accounting in a golf forum is way worse than employees committing fraud or watching cat videos...Just not good for anyone's eyes...

 

[Soloman1]

selling timeshares, but for golf.

 

surprised they don’t try to sell you a year supply of supplements formulated to cure your weak slice. here, take these for one year and your handicap will go down by 6 strokes. vitamin s&t. just sign here.

 

screwing the customer is the engine of economies.

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

17 hours ago, JohnB92 said:

 

Ehhh that's not how PTO works in accrual accounting. PTO is recorded as part of accrued wage expense in external reporting, such as a public company 10K/10Q. Many companies don't report accrued wage expense as a separate line item in their accrued expenses liability account. It's all part of the higher-level balance that gets reported to investors. I'm not aware of any (American listed) company that reports accrued vacation expense as a sub-item of accrued wage expense in their 10K/10Q. If you know of one, I'd be interested in looking into it.

Additionally, the way that the accruals are done is on a per-period basis for the allocated amount of the employees' vacation for the year. It's not a lump sum, it accrues each month as new hours are placed into the balance sheet (not the HR system, HR can issue the hours however they want) at an even interval. Vacation hours used are deducted from that accrual to reach the monthly net accrual amount. The net movement is pretty small and tracks with overall headcount more than vacation utilization.

Also don't forget Accounting 101. For every Liability, it has to be matched to an Asset (or offsetting contra-Liability). Accrued vacation expense is matched against is pre-paid salaries or cash (depends on if the employee got paid yet), both are current assets. Therefore, the more accrued vacation on the books the more cash or pre-paid expense is on the asset side of the balance sheet. Thus, accrued vacation hours isn't going to change the leverage ratios of any company by an amount discernible to a public company investor. What CAN affect an investor's perception is the total SGA Expenses as a percentage of revenue and as compared to your industry peers. In short, if wage expense matters enough in your company that external investors start talking about it the result is layoffs and downsizing. Not "Use it or Lose it" vacation policies. Think about it in terms of cost. 4 weeks of vacation time for 13 employees is the same as 1 employee salary for a year. (13 * 4 = 52 weeks).

What is easier? Find 4 weeks of vacation hours (per year) to remove from 13 people, or firing Joe/Janis who spends all day on their phone looking at cat videos?

Forcing people to take PTO is one of the easiest ways to detect people who are committing various types of fraud. When you're Out of Office someone else handles your job duties. Which gives opportunity to discover your fraud. Another thing Use It or Lose It does is avoid someone running up 6 months of vacation time and then one day does not show up to work for 6 months, while getting paid and having no legit reason to fire them. 

Most reasons PTO expires are for the employees' benefit (with increased employee retention as a side effect). It prevents supervisors from obstructing employees from actually using their PTO. Managers who refuse to allow PTO is one of the top reasons companies lose high performing employees. If a group constantly has their vacation expire, management and HR should be looking at the Supervisor for a good reason why that is. At my company having a high PTO utilization percentage is actually a positive for a manager. Additionally, employees who don't take vacation are more likely to quit. "Use it or Lose it" policies are very helpful in getting employees to actually use the benefit, which increases retention. 

I got no idea why I rambled on about this. Probably because it overlaps multiple things I audit in my job.

TL;DR: Wall Street doesn't care about your vacation hours. They would rather just eliminate your job completely.

 

 

Thank you. I think you probably know the accounting side much more deeply than I do. I do think there are many reasons for use it or lose it policies... But I can say I've seen things that suggest getting unpaid PTO "off the books" is more than fraud detection or just trying to get people to actually use the time they're entitled to:

1. My company used to enforce semi-annual shutdowns, right at the end of the fiscal year (beginning of July) and the week between Christmas and New Year's. There are many reasons for doing this (esp for the Christmas/NY break as very little gets done anyway), but generally well over half the company would be on PTO those weeks (there was some basic coverage for people who simply couldn't take off (i.e. production) or needed for things like closing a quarter or prepping quarterly financial reporting, so it definitely isn't fraud detection. I believe the main reason was to burn accrued PTO. 
2. At least once or twice that I recall, the company offered PTO sell-back. Essentially they would allow workers who had accrued a lot of PTO (often the ones who had a lot of seniority and were accruing it VERY quickly and bumping up against the accrual limits) to sell back a certain number of hours for the equivalent cash salary. Clearly this isn't aimed at getting people to "use" their PTO; it's entirely designed to get it off the financial books. 
3. My company (and I've read a lot of tech companies) have moved to an "unlimited PTO" model. Literally they don't have to carry PTO on the books AT ALL. I can only imagine that the primary benefit to the company of doing this is to not carry that liability. For a few years this was untracked, but now they're moving to a model where you still have to enter it, I think largely getting back to your final point about making sure that people are actually utilizing their PTO enough (usually w/ unlimited PTO, people aren't), having the ability to track whether certain managers have their workers not taking it while others do, or things like that. 

Either way it's a financial liability, much like gift cards, and likely much like GolfTEC unused lessons. I think a lesson package MAY be treated financially in the same way as a gift card. It's not counted as revenue until that lesson is actually taken, or expires. Whether this is the reason for GolfTEC's policy or not, I put it out there as a potential explanation for why they wouldn't want to carry these on the books forever. 

[NateMorris]

Beginning in 2020 after Covid , Golftec sold a majority stake in the company ( and its soul) to a Japanese company called golf digest online . The company has since evolved into a “revenue at all cost “ type operation. They teach new coaches how to sell big packs and not how to teach. The average time a coach spends as an employee of golftec is around 3 years. Turnover is high , burn out it high now and the income promises made to new employees are unattainable. So most coaches leave to do their own thing . Prices equate to about $ 200-$275 an hour for lessons 

[Canada8888]

May vary with the local provider?

 

In my case and for a few of my buddies we were all able to carry our lessons forward.

 

Life and health gets in the way and you never know if you will be able to get them in.

 

My instructor had to make the change manually and it became live online in my profile a week after he requested it. (ie I could see the lessons appear online with a new end date and I could book online again)

 

Check with the instructor (what his personal approach is) before you pay?

[Pnwpingi210]

17 hours ago, NateMorris said:

Beginning in 2020 after Covid , Golftec sold a majority stake in the company ( and its soul) to a Japanese company called golf digest online . The company has since evolved into a “revenue at all cost “ type operation. They teach new coaches how to sell big packs and not how to teach. The average time a coach spends as an employee of golftec is around 3 years. Turnover is high , burn out it high now and the income promises made to new employees are unattainable. So most coaches leave to do their own thing . Prices equate to about $ 200-$275 an hour for lessons 

Same model as pre Covid, or atleast when I had two friends use them 2015-2018.

 

they basically spent time rebuilding there swing to fool the launch monitor into saying that had this great in to out path.   Really want golf tec did is align their feet about 80 yards right of target and strengthen their grip so when that made the same over the top move relative to their setup, they came through with a square club face and hit massive pulls that looked straight cause the other he difference in launch monitor alignment and their setup.  Both of them spent a couple years un doing that crap

 

 

[sundaypins]

On 2/23/2024 at 10:20 AM, jut111 said:

I'd argue taking lessons at golftec period makes no sense.  but maybe thats just me.  

 

 No knowledge about GolfTEC, but an argument against lesson packages period is easily sustainable.  They're a waste of time and money, but maybe that's just me.

[snagy2000]

Shortly after Covid openings began, Golftec ran into issues with scheduling conflicts and personnel issues and implemented new policies to address these concerns. They now have a more stern timing policy on when you can use your purchased "credits" for lessons. This usually runs in conjunction with the timing of your purchased packages. For instance, 3 months, 6 months or year, etc. However there is some flexibility based on life issues, but those usually need to be run through the store manager or area managers for approval. Seems like every case is taken up on its own. 

 

GolfTEC isn't for everyone, but it does have some advantages as well as disadvntages. One thing I would suggest is to understand where your game is and where you want to end up and whether or not you have enough time to practice in between lessons or you're going to be stuck in a repeated lesson circle chewing up all your credits leading you to either extend into new packages or disconnect all together. To each their own, but if you choose to go with them just understand they're a business looking to make money and won't try too hard not to sell you more packages. 

 

 

[mikpga]

Students have the ability to PAUSE their LP or GP once, up to two months.  

[bladehunter]

On 2/23/2024 at 10:39 AM, betarhoalphadelta said:

It appears that GolfTEC was acquired (majority stake) by Golf Digest Online in 2018. Golf Digest Online is a public company. 

 

I wonder if this is similar to paid time off rules. Unused PTO shows up as a financial liability on a balance sheet, and Wall Street hates financial liabilities. It's why a lot of businesses have maximum PTO balances (to force you to use it), will sometimes offer PTO buyouts when flush with cash (to get it off the books), and some companies such as the one that I work for do away with accrued PTO entirely and making it purely a "if you and your boss agree, you can take PTO". (Which sucks BTW--I and most employees don't take NEARLY as much PTO as I would have accrued under the old system...)

 

It's the same thing as gift cards. When you buy a $50 gift card from, say, Target, it doesn't show up as $50 revenue to Target. It shows up as a $50 liability that they carry on their balance sheet. It's why gift cards USED to have expiration clauses that if unused for a certain period of time, they would start reducing in value or expire completely. That was changed by legal force--federal law limits the ability for gift cards to expire or have value-reduction clauses. Now most gift cards are non-expiry. But companies hate zombie gift cards that someone lost because they had to carry that liability for a number of years before they could count it as revenue under the assumption that it would never be redeemed. 

 

Unused GolfTEC lessons are likely a financial liability on GolfTEC's [i.e. GDO's] balance sheet, exactly like a gift card. You buy a lesson pack and that is not realized as revenue until you redeem the lessons. So they force an expiration so that they know they won't have to carry this financial liability forever--and it's probably no accident it's 3 months, given that public companies report earnings on a quarterly basis... 

 

Someone like Monte obviously doesn't have to worry about this--at least not until Rebellion Golf's IPO 😂

 

(Edit to add: I still think it's a horrible BS policy for golf lessons. I'm just explaining a likely reason they have it.)

This x 10k.    It’s exactly same as why gift cards at most places used to have an expiration. You can never balance the books until it’s used. You can’t explain this to people.  Most don’t even balance a checkbook anymore. ( which is absolute  insanity to me ). My wife just had this argument ( she’s an in house accountant for a large surgery practice) to her office manager who wanted to change their accounting software for a “ better deal “.   She pitched a bloody fit and ended up having to put him to the partners because the system he wanted to go to gave her no option to balance daily.  She said it worked off “ trust me bro “ mentality.  She won because that practice once suffers a $12 mil embezzlement episode …. Because the cash wasn’t being accounted for.  For years.  My wife caught the lady and swapped their system to one where individual tills are counted and certified daily , and then a report run with those inputs to account for the cash etc. all tapes match or we don’t go home type thing.
 

  Anyway. I get exactly what you mean.  It’s a chain business .  They are selling lessons. No different than selling anything else.  The idea is to clear profit.  Can’t do it while building a mountain of liability.  

[Johnny Biarritz]

For bookkeeping, I can understand time limits. My issue with them, as someone who has gotten lessons at GolfTec in the past and probably will again, is the number of lessons in a given time frame. 10 lessons in 3 months, 15 lessons in 6, then 25 or 52 in a year. If a pro or school is trying to something other than fleece people out of money, those numbers are ludicrous. 10-15 lessons is a yearly amount, 52 lessons is 3-4 years worth at least. A lesson every week is wild. Unless someone is practicing a really incredible amount, going every week is just ripping them off because there's no way they've implemented what the teacher told them last week. The number of my only issue, having a time limit isn't bad.