You respond to a paper add claiming you can earn £20,000 a year as a Pc technician,
A salesman comes to your house a pretends that you might not be good enough to get into their college as they are fairly selective, making you want to join to avoid rejection.
He lies and tells you that you will become Comptia A+ certified if you do the course.
He tells you it involves having your own instructor, getting lots of multi media training and in depth technical information, attending practical training days and becoming a fully training PC technician.
The reality is you sign up for a finance agreement which says you will pay £62 a month for the next two years or so until you have paid then about £1500.
The course work you get to complete is out of date; full of errors looks really cheap and nasty and is far too basic. It come in some nasty red folders and if you bought a decent Pc hardware book or A+ study guide
you would get at least 10 times the information and much more in-depth as well as actually being current.
If you think about it compare Scheidegger course = £1500 Decent A+ book = £40
It's not a hard value for money decision.
At the end of the course modules you send an assessment via email to your so called instructor who I'll mention in a moment.
She then sends them back marked with advice on any corrections.
This part runs fairly smoothly.
The only problem is if you have any question for the instructor she can only manage to quote from the same information you have yourself is unable to expand on any thing at all. In short they don't seem to have any knowledge of I.T at all and can only quote from the course works itself.
For instance my tutor didn't even the know the difference between token ring and Ethernet and didn't really understand whet they were at all, which considering they are the tutors I found a little embarrassing for them.
In short after a few phone calls to them you don't bother as they can't really help you.
The practical training offered is given near to the end of the course .I live in Newcastle and was told I would need to travel to West Brom or London and I would have to pay for it myself.(I was told by the salesman that the courses were local.)
The multimedia training you get on CD-ROM is comical it is a computer based version of a paper PC you are sent through the post which you have to stick together using Velcro …amazing.
At the end of the course you are kindly informed that you will have to pay for you A+ exams yourself.
Interesting since you have finished the course and you are still not A+ qualified which is what the course is to be.
I phoned scheidegger to raise this issue with them and was actually shouted down at down the phone to the effect of
"Well have you got that in writing, no so tough make a complaint"
So in effect the scheidegger course does not only not provide you with the knowledge to become A+ qualified but it doesn't even provide you with the exam to verify the knowledge you most certainly haven't got from having completed this terrible course.
The best thing about this course is that you feel like you are being ripped off so much that you should at least finish the course to try getting something from it but unfortunately the Pc master scheidegger cert you get from it is not worth anything to anyone and certainly wont get you a job.
Another thing I forgot to mention is that the salesman tells you there is a scheidegger website with a student forum with downloads and advice this did not exist and just redirects you too the page that tries to sell you another course.
Conclusion Go to college or buy a decent A+ book this course is absolute waste of money a total hard sell by a sales man. who glorifies the course and the organisation of scheidegger into the complete opposite to what they are.
Be Warned Stay away ,,,or you will regret.
I'll try and post some photographs of the course work so you can see what I mean by the word cheap and nasty.
*****UPDATE****** here is a link to the so called scheidegger web site which is supposed to offer students so much go have a look but try not to laugh and notice the links only take you to registration ,,go on click on the flames LMAO http://www.mrss.demon.co.uk/scheidegger2/scheweb.htm
****UPDATE FROM THE BBC***
Scheidegger
IT training is big business.
Words like "multi skilling" and "upskilling" are part of every day language, so it's no surprise IT course providers are raking in millions from hopefuls looking to get ahead.
Metropolitan International Schools Ltd trade as Skillstrain and Scheidegger.
They claim to be Europe's number one for computer training, having been in business since 1947.
And their most recent accounts show a turnover in excess of £18 million.
Impressive numbers, but not so impressive are the numerous complaints received by the BBC about the Skillstrain "course advisors" responsible for student enrolment.
Posing as a would-be web designer Inside Out reporter Nick Lawrence contacted Skillstrain.
A couple of days later "course advisor" Dave turned up.
Dave not only promised a job inweb design at the end of the course, he also told Nick the course certification he was selling for £2,500 was required by a lot of companies.
He also claimed Skillstrain worked in association with Manpower and they were advised by Elan IT on the content of their courses.
No relationship
Manpower told us whilst there used to be a relationship between the two organisations.
As far as they were concerned, their association was at an end and they had been in contact with SKillstrain over the past 18 months requesting them to stop using the Manpower name.
Elan IT told us they have never advised Skillstrain on the content of their courses, and the certification Nick was being offered was certainly not a requirement in the UK and was, in fact, largely unheard of.
Nick handed over footage of his meeting with "Dave" to Colin Steed, Chief Executive of the Institute of IT Training who give accreditation to SKillstrain.
Colin told us the "course advisor's" behaviour was unacceptable and has said that he would investigate.
Skillstrain told us they were not at fault because they had contracted out their student enrolment to a company called Multimedia Computer Training, and also said:
"Since 1947 (59 years) Scheidegger has trained, under its various brands, over 5 million people in 12 European countries.
"We invite feedback from students and take any complaints we receive very seriously…
"It is not our policy to guarantee jobs at the end of our courses... If it turns out Multimedia Computer Training Ltd and or its advisor have broken this policy, we will take this very seriously and take further action against them... As far as we are concerned, we have a current agreement with Manpower."
Multimedia Computer Training Ltd say that they don't believe such false representations were made - if they were, then disciplinary procedures will be taken against the salesperson.
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
An excellent review and warning.
It seems these people are just plain evil - apparently there is a rigid time limit to their courses, which was never mentioned to me, after which you have to pay extra to continue the course despite paying for the coures in full in an agreement (several thousands of pounds in my case)
I enrolled on the CCNA course and found it to be absolute rubbish - no tuition at all, very poor quality course material, no live internet training (unless you book many weeks in advance - which you cant do because you need to have done the work before you can register for a live session and by the time you have done the work it is too late to register)
I am currently in dispute with Skill Train(Scheidegger) over their breach of contract in not supplying the full course that I paid(am still paying for)
Unfortunately due to the underhand way they arrange the career development loan , you are obliged to pay regardless of what Skills Train do or don't do (they say they are nothing to do with the loan company - who just happened to occupy the same building and have the same directors up until recently - Skills Train have now moved office to just down the street so that people can't make thelink)
If they do not provide the rest of the course I paid for I will be taking legal action and witholding the remaining payments - quite happy to meet them in court and see them fail.
Also, the time limits on courses make them virtually impossible to complete in time - a course usually consists of 64 TMAs plus 4 or more revision supplements and you seem to get a maximum of 14 months to complete i.e. more than one TMA per week.
While this might just be possible if everything goes without a hitch, there are always delays which cause slow down in work - not least of these is the: 'you now need to restart your course work from scratch due to new course materials which are now available'
SCORPIAN_KING80 05.11.2006 00:19
http://forums.digitaltrends.com/showthread.php?t=9837&page=4&pp=10
A group of unsatisfied SKILLS TRAIN students are working together to get refund, please visit our thread on the link above.
I have info of the Principal Trading Standards Officers' contact info, he wants to close Skills Train down, and has recieved many complaints, he will send a questionaire to you, he need more complaints to take Skills Train to court. please email me, i have alot of useful information:
pure_punjabi786@hotmail.com
misterG100 03.05.2006 16:33
hi there if anyone could please help!
Please could you forward me any information that i could use to cancel my course with Shiedegger. i hear that certain people have ended up n the same situation as me and managed to get out of the contract. needless to say i was conned into the course and have already paid over £1000 for a course i did not recieve. please mail me on gareth.ellis@chrisbritton.co.uk cheers appreciate it! day light robbery i tell you!
Jun 7th, 2004
(Jan 28th, 2007)
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