I am so glad I did some research on my future decision for going for a coarse. I recently made enquiries into 2 companies for a coarse one of which was Skills Train. If they are formerly , Scheidegger I won't be going ahead with them now.
I had a bad experience with Scheidegger about a year and half ago. I enrolled on a Web Design Managers coarse, the "Advisor" gave a sales pitch stating that you get a personal tutor with a team of 5 back up tutors, this was not the case, it took a few times to actually get through on the phone and it came across as a call center as opposed to a teaching section. I HAD to ring them to get to get my USER ID and PW for the website, I was NOT introduced to my personal tutor or any of her associates.
When it came to the coarse work I must admit I did learn a few things which did promt to to buy books on those subjects, i.e. IP addresses, TCP/IP. But as the coarse went on I started to find errors in the fundamental coarse material, the HTML side to be precise. And as stated in other reviews the material is out dated. And having to send your assignments to them via floppy disk, well I haven't used floppies for personal use since disk burners came zip drives came out and I don't even use that anymore. One of the assignments I sent in to be marked came back with 75%, which I knew should have been 100% or there abouts, I researched the questions and my answers and made sure I was in the right, I then sent a letter of complaint with the questions, my answers, the supposed right answers and tutors comments, and pointed out the error of their ways and I received my paper back indeed with 100%.
I started to question the accuracy of the material I was being given and found errors popping up, I rang up and questioned these and was fobbed off with a "We'll look into it" answer. Well the errors stil kept coming so I rang yet again staing that I wanted to with draw from the coarse. They replied stating that they couldn't get it acurate ALL the time. I said "Er, you can if I am paying £2500 for the coarse. They also stated that it was my choice not to finish the coarse but I would not get a refund as the enrolement period was over, even though it was over before I had received any coarse material.
Well, as you can imagne I was not going to settle for this so I saught legal council. Luckily, I chose to finance my coarse through a credit agreement, and according to council even though I have entered into an agreement I am entitled to break from the agreement if the service I am getting is not upto the standard of what I was expecting.
I brought this to the attention of Scheidegger, as soon as the chap I spoke to heard who my legal council was he immediately agreed to refund what I had paid so far. Although they did keep the initial £50 deposit I payed, sending a ltter staing it was for administration fees, and that I must send the coarse material back, so I promptly sent a reply letter stating that I would be keeping the coarse material for my administration fees and compensation. I never heard from them again. My advice to you is never use Scheidegger or Skills Train if that is what they are now known as (more reserch on that one I think). Also if you do a coarse through these training companies, finance it through a credit agreement, that way you can break from it at any time if the service is not upto scratch, with a minimum loss.
Regards
Mick
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
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
CHAT2ME 19.10.2006 10:34
I’ve been doing a Skillstrain course for a while now. I find Student World really useful, it has tons of stuff on it to help me with my course and I can contact my tutors through it. I’m doing the complimentary training as well from Student World, which is IT Skills course, and I get that for nothing with the course I enrolled on. I know all my tutors and they have helped me a lot. I’m loving it.
ldvda 18.10.2006 18:42
I do not know how this company is still going all I have heard is bad things about this company. V x x
Oct 11th, 2006
very helpful by (35%):
helpful by (59%):
not helpful by (6%):
