Our experience with Dance Fever began in Santa Barbara, not Boston, but it reflects on the business practices in both places. After we posted an accurate review for the Montecito (Santa Barbara) branch, Emil Ioukhnikov, an owner of the franchise, called and threatened to contact his lawyer if we did not remove it. Sleaze permeates the organization at both ends of the country!
Here is our review of the Montecito branch:
Dance Fever, a franchise of a company in Boston, opened in Santa Barbara in the summer of 2014. It is run by Anastasia Banderovskaia and Vasily Golovin.
Unfortunately, Anastasia and Vasily’s unquestionable ability as dancers and teachers is completely undermined by their desire to make a fast buck and business practices that can hardly be called honest.
In dealing with Dance Fever Santa Barbara, our family has experienced:
1) Sudden, unannounced price increases
2) Announcement of a nearly threefold price increase for children’s participation in a
competition a few hours before the registration closed—at a point where it is very hard to back out without upsetting the children.
3) Encouragement of cash payments (with no receipts given for cash payments).
4) Group children’s lessons with children of multiple experience levels and a wide age range (sometimes contradicting information on Dance Fever’s website or fliers), which make the lessons largely useless and a waste of customers’ money.
5) Anastasia and Vasily ignoring the rules posted on their own site, and then changing the posted rules to bring them into line with their new practices.
6) Anastasia and Vasily expelling our children from private lessons without an explanation in the middle of prepaid package of private lessons.
7) Anastasia and Vasily posting videos of our minor children on the internet without our knowledge or consent.
If you want to try Dance Fever Santa Barbara, be prepared for you and your children to experience deception, stress, and unpleasant situations. After that, Anastasia and Vasily may tell the other parents what terrible people you are.