What is a 'Training Provider' and how are they different from each other?

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The classification of a training provider has been covered already and also their differentiators/or in cases, lack of. One thing I would always ask to see is their delegate charter if you go with a TP. This will give you an insight of their complaints procedure, exam resits, job guarantees if offered and where their T's & C's are. This gives you every chance to succeed.

In the event of instructor led training, if you have time, ask to be an observer for a few hours so you can see how the course is delivered and run. This way you can see it before you purchase the course.

At the end of it all, get everything in writing, emails are the best.

on a personal note I do struggle to fathom how you can guarantee a job at a certain pay. How do they know what the market conditions will be at the time of your completion and the number of other people looking for work vs jobs.

Thanks

Adam

 

thank god finally got that beast off my back. salesmen telling you can go down mcse path within three years and pass and this including a plus. had no prior i.t experience before and fell for the patter. books given to you that you can get for a fraction of the price at amazon. mock exams that need 90% pass and yet words in exam in their not even covered in supplied material. i think the guy called training provider is right in that they want you to fail the mocks so that you have to extend your study period and pay extra for extended study. i have learnt the hard way ie. over £4000 spent and i hope others read this who are thinking of going through a training provider.thank god for certforums . self study from now on !!!

 

Right on David...

I went through the unfortunate process of being signed up for courses with TWO training providers at what I later find out to be extortionate rates in comparison to self study (which isn’t a million miles away from what they offer anyway) and the whole process really left me feeling sour.

Skillstrain – guy comes over on 17th August, pushes me into signing up for a CCNA will ‘give me the best route in’ and is ‘what companies are looking for’ while presenting it as if it was some kind of interview and trying to make me feel special. Places are limited he says, I have to decide if you will make the grade. I get an arbitrary, borderline insulting test which I get full marks for and he says ‘from this I can see you would have no problem passing the course’. After he’s got me signed up (foolish I know) I call my mate excited about the course and then do further research. Turns out CCNA is far from what I require right now, and even if it were, at £2,750 I’ve been sold something over priced and unsuitable for my needs so I decide to call up and change it. I call up the centre the day after this and I’m told I have to write to them if I want to make any changes at all. I can’t even get in touch with the salesman I dealt with. You can imagine how frustrating that is when you know the paperwork probably hasn’t even gone through. So I do write, recorded delivery, and ten days later I’m sat still unaware what’s going on having been fobbed off every time I call up with ‘your details haven’t appeared on our system’ and ‘we process cancellation paperwork on Thursdays’ etc. I pester and I pester as you do when nearly £3k of your money is on the line and finally today (7th September) I call and find out that the course has been cancelled and a letter is on its way with details on how to return the materials I was left with so I can get my £50 deposit back. Obviously I don’t have that but at least I know I’m nearly through with them. A really poor experience all round.

Home Learning College – next up I have a guy from here come over and correctly sell me the MCDST course which is what I wanted to do as an eventual route towards the MCSE, but for £1500. I sign up thinking that’s a good improvement on what Skillstrain did for me and I’m left feeling pretty good. Then I find this forum, Cert Forums, and I read about ‘self study’. Sounds remarkably like what these companies are offering, except I can take a decimal point at least from the cost! I research it as much as possible and decide that really all I am getting additionally from the provider is ‘email support’ (even the supplied ‘assigments’ are poor in comparison to the material you can get online to test yourself) so I finally decide to cancel. Home Learning College were significantly better with their cancellation process I have to say and I was simply required to call up, email them so they had it in writing and the process was on the way. Citylink are coming tomorrow to collect the materials so there is no harm done there and my deposit will be returned once they have them back.

So what I’ve learned from all this is that training providers are not for me. It is my belief that the courses they sell (certainly the IT ones) can be done yourself with a wealth of support available online at forums such as this and you can save a lot of money buying your own material, arranging the exams etc. which isn’t really that hard. What they do offer, providing you are sold the right course, is a bit of a helping hand towards your ultimate goal – but the way I see it, if you are able to complete a distance learning course with the slight help from a training provider, why not just do that extra little bit of legwork and do it all yourself? Your hard earned money stretches further and you will come out with the same rewards at the end of it with a little dedication.