Skillstrain: The WORST company I have EVER dealt with.

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Note: I am in no way attempting to denigrate anything this company has done for other people, they may well have served some well but I feel it is important to share my experience of Skillstrain in the hope that others may have their eyes more open than mine were BEFORE signing up. These thoughts and experiences are personal and do not reflect the views of anybody else besides me. Everything I detail here is factual.

I have mentioned the earlier part of this saga in other threads, but to sum up, August 19th I was conned (high pressure sales situation thinly veiled as a selection interview which I regrettably fell for) into signing up for a near-useless CCNA certification (for my needs at least – I have NO other IT qualifications yet and following genuine advice from here and others I know it would be minimum 5th or 6th on my list not to mention the fact I have NO Cisco equipment to play with) to the sum of £2,700. ONLY upon finding this website and talking to others was I able to learn this was both overpriced and unsuitable, so I quickly decided to cancel. THE DAY AFTER I SIGNED UP no less, so paperwork wouldn’t have even gone through. Should be easy right?

I call them up. I can’t speak to the guy who sold me the course, I’m told. Skillstrain have NO record of my paperwork and I’m advised this will remain the case for A WEEK. I am told the ONLY way to cancel is by writing to them, recorded delivery. So I do this. I call back several days later with notification that I have followed the instructions and a signature confirmation from Royal Mail. The staff I speak to STILL cannot confirm anything and neither can they confirm they received my letter.

More phone calls with unhelpful staff carry on for several days and eventually I get a terse letter telling me to return the materials via a freepost address, do this wrong and I will be liable etc. so I do this and get proof of postage. This was the start of September.

Several days later I have heard nothing so I call again. I’m told they have received the materials back, and the ‘refund is being processed’ so I should receive it soon. Great I’m thinking, finally I’m getting somewhere. A week passes, nothing. I call again, it is ‘still being processed’ I’m told.

Fast forward to now and it’s October 1st. I call today as I’ve got no contact from them whatsoever, despite me asking for and being told I’ll receive confirmation emails that this refund is even happening at all, and I’m told it’s ‘being done today’ and I should ‘call back in a few days’ if it hasn’t happened.

They’ve had my money for over a month now, making interest on it (and possibly others in my situation too) while I am out of pocket and desperate to put this whole thing behind me.

It is so infuriating to deal with companies who treat you this way, I only feel glad I didn’t get past the ‘cooling off period’ (which I was told was 21 days by the sales rep, and I later find out is actually only 7!!!).

I'm only fighting to get my £50 deposit back, I really feel for those who are worse off than me be it with Skillstrain or other training providers.

Thank God for Certforums really or things could be so much worse.

 

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Oh dear.

Still, I wouldn't worry about them earning interest on your money.
Even if they had it sitting in a bank account - what sort of rate of interest do you think they'd be getting?
0.003p per month?

Chances are they've used it to buy a toner cartridge.

They're probobaly hoping you won't make too much of a fuss over such a small amount and will go away.

Anyway, sounds like you were lucky even though it wasn't a pleasant experience.
Glad CF was able to help out.

 

£50 isn't a small amount to a single person, while it may be to a company, and the interest thing is more of a principle thing really - that small amount could be part of a nice earner if my case is a drop in the ocean of instances like this.

Either way, I learned a lot from the experience and will keep fightin till that money is back in my account.

 

It's small compared to £2,700.

 

Congrats on finding out within 7 days. Coulda been worse!

 

Thats probably overstating it at the moment, my local Sports and Social club have got a £50000 development account which in the course of the last month has earnt the grand total of 87p interest.

As BM said it could have been a lot worse, better £50 which will eventually crawl back to you than £2,700 with no hope of a refund.

 

I think we should draw a line under the interest issue which isn't really the main point

lol, indeed

That is one of the main issues, if you're not savvy, or lucky to find the right help in time, you might fall foul of these issues and wind up owing a few grand for something you don't really want thanks to some slick sales techniques.

 

There seems to be a laugh a minute going on over at the digital trends forum.

Looks like a gang of die-hard hard-done-bys keep posting threads about Skillstrain and the admins have started deleting them all. So now there are just threads starting 'where did my last thread go?'