Most of what we have changed over the last few months does not happen in the water. It happens in the way we tell you things, the way lessons are booked and billed, and the way a new teacher is brought into the team. None of it is glamorous, but almost all of it came from something a parent told us was harder than it needed to be.

Here is what has changed, and what is coming next.

Telling You Sooner, and More Than Once

Announcement reminders: A single email is easy to miss. Announcements now come with a follow up reminder closer to the date, so a change to your lesson is not resting on whether one email landed in your inbox on a busy Tuesday.

Closure emails and text messages: When a pool closes or a session moves, you now get a text message as well as an email. Closures are the one thing where being told late genuinely wastes your evening, so we would rather tell you twice than not enough.

The website scroller: There is now a thin announcement bar running across the top of every page on the website. It reads live from our booking system, so whatever is currently affecting lessons is on screen wherever you land. When there is nothing to say, it stays hidden. You can dismiss it once you have read it.

Renewal Emails That Actually Tell You Something

Our renewal emails used to do one job: renew. They now carry the things you would otherwise have to go looking for.

• Closures coming up, so you can see what is affected before the month starts rather than after.
• What has changed since your last renewal, in short.
• How your lessons are billed, explained properly.

That last one deserves its own paragraph, because it is far and away our most common question.

Your subscription is collected on the 1st of each month. Months do not all contain the same number of lesson weeks, so occasionally the amount collected on the 1st does not match the lessons that month. Where that leaves you undercharged, you will receive a separate shortfall invoice for the difference only, payable within 7 days using the Pay Now link. It goes straight to your SafelySwim account and uses your saved card. If no invoice arrives, you were billed correctly and there is nothing to do. You can read the full detail on our FAQ page.

appDot: We Have Been Listening

You have been telling us what is awkward about appDot, and you have been right about most of it. We have been collecting that feedback rather than defending the app, and work is underway on the parts that came up most often. Some of it is arriving as small fixes over the coming weeks. The larger pieces are part of the rebuild described further down.

If something about appDot slows you down, tell us. Every improvement on this list started as somebody taking two minutes to say so.

A Clearer Policy for One Off Private Lessons

One off private lessons had grown into something nobody could explain in a sentence. There are now two clear routes, and one clear order in which slots are released.

One off via appDot: Buy a block of 4 lessons upfront and book slots on appDot as they come up. We email you every Monday with what is available that week. For swimmers already in our Learn to Swim group lessons, aged 3 to 15. Not available for adult or competitive lessons.

One off via the booking site: Single lessons released on our booking page, usually a day or two ahead. Book and pay in one go, with no subscription and no credit needed. Open to everyone, ages 3 to 15, and adult or competitive from 16.

Monthly subscription slots are confirmed first, at the start of each month. Cancelled and extra slots then go to swimmers holding lesson credits on appDot. Whatever is left is released on the booking site for anyone.

Knowing that order is the difference between refreshing a booking page in hope and knowing exactly when a slot will reach you. Full detail is on our private lessons page.

New Teachers, Set Up Properly

We have rebuilt our internal training and onboarding into a much simpler setup for anyone joining the team. A new teacher now has one clear path through their accounts, their training and their first weeks on poolside, instead of picking it up in pieces from whoever happened to be free that day.

That matters to you more than it sounds like it should. Our team is small enough that your swimmer knows everyone on poolside. Teachers do swap from time to time, and because they all teach to the same criteria, a different teacher never means starting again. A better onboarding is how we keep that true as the team grows.

What Is Coming Next

A redesigned website: The marketing site is being rebuilt. Clearer routes into the right lesson type, faster pages, and far less hunting for the thing you actually came for.

An appDot rebuild: Not a patch on the current app, a rebuild. It is the honest answer to most of the feedback we have had, and it is where the bigger requests are being taken.

One login for appDot and the booking site: Today these are two separate accounts, and we know how irritating that is. They are being brought together so one set of details gets you into both.

We will announce each of these as they land, through the same channels described at the top of this post. Thank you to everyone who has told us when something was harder than it should be. Almost every item on this page exists because somebody did.