There are many cowboy instructors out there who are more interested in taking you for a ride than helping you learn. Tales of dragged out lessons, hidden charges and instructors disappearing with your money are common.
Here are some of the scams to watch out for.
Misleading intro offers. Many schools offer 5 lessons for £50, 10 for £99 etc but these seemingly cheap offers can end up costing you a fortune. It's often not the first 5 cheap but the 1st, 5th, 10th, 15th etc so you have to pay for expensive lessons in between and if you leave they keep the deposit you paid. These offers only apply to complete beginners so most pupils won't get them anyway.
The aim is to lure you in with cheap offers then take you for all they can. The prices shoot right up after the offer ends and you end up paying far more than you thought. £10 an hour will soon become £21, £22.... There could also be test fees where you pay £50-£100 per test. They'll always make the money back and you'll always end up paying more.
Why do so many schools do these offers? Because they're flooding the roads with poorly trained, unqualified instructors and they desperately need pupils to give to them all. This is how schools make all their money, they make nothing from pupils. Read more about this in the next point.
I don't use gimmicky offers like these. Have one lesson free with no deposit to pay and if you don't like it then you don't have to book any more or pay anything.
Dragged out lessons. I'd say this is the most common thing pupils of mine that have come to me from other schools complain of. After 6 months of lessons the instructor had only just let them book their theory test and a year later they were still taking lessons with no mention at all of a test.
I let you book a driving test after your FIRST lesson, you can move it 3 times or get a refund if you aren't ready and you can book it weeks away if needed. Most of my pupils pass within 2 months.
Driving schools don't exist. Many people falsely think that if they go to a big name then they'll be safe because they can complain and the school has a good reputation. Wrong! EVERY instructor is self employed, there is no such thing as an employed instructor who works for a driving school. There isn't such a thing as a driving school, they are just companies that rent out cars with logos on for self employed instructors to use.
Schools care far more about the instructors than pupils because that's how they make their money. They take on ANY instructor who pays the car hire fee. There are no interviews, no standards. If i rang up a big school today i'd have a car here within days. Would that suddenly make me better? No but people seem happy to pay £25 an hour for a name and a logo.
As if that wasn't bad enough you might be shocked to know that most instructors at these big schools are not even qualified, they're not even instructors! So now you're learning with someone who isn't an instructor at a school that doesn't exist! Read the next point to learn more.
1stDrive is my school and i don't rent out cars, i don't have other instructors. 1stDrive is me.
Trainee instructors. How would you feel if you found out that the person who had been teaching you wasn't even an instructor and you'd wasted all your money? Many driving schools have "instructors" that aren't qualified at all, they're no better than your parents or friends at teaching you to drive. Anyone can just have a go at this job for 6 months without being qualified and this is how schools make all their money, by charging trainees weekly fees for a car and work.
Nearly all schools use trainees, from the biggest in the UK to smaller local schools. They don't care how bad the trainee is at teaching so long as they keep paying their car hire fee. As mentioned above, this is why they need to offer cut price lessons to get enough pupils in to feed all the trainees. Even schools that say all their instructors are fully qualified use trainees, they simply lie and I've even known schools give out fake badges for their instructors to show.
I have nothing against trainees themselves, i just think all this should be out in the open and not hushed up. I started out as a trainee at a national school but i told every pupil i met and offered them a big discount for my lack of experience. When the manager of the branch found this out he went mad and told me to just say i was fully qualified and that i'd lost my badge or it was delayed in the post. I refused to do it and left.
Always ask to see an instructors badge on the first lesson. If it's not green then they're not a fully qualified driving instructor. If they refuse to show it you for any reason then get out the car quick, something is wrong. All instructors MUST carry it with them at all times when giving tuition. It's like getting into a taxi without a taxi badge on. Check their photo matches, the expiry date and if it looks dodgy report it to the DSA. You can also tell dodgy instructors because they won't care about seeing your provisional licence and will miss out checks such as the eyesight test.
The DSA (who conduct all the driving tests and monitor instructor standards) are holding a consultation in 2012 to stop all trainees from teaching unless they have a fully qualified instructor present in the back of the car to correct the mistakes they make. Cowboy schools are furious but it's great news for the majority of us!
1stDrive doesn't use trainee instructors. There's just me, Paul, a fully qualified and highly experienced instructor with years of teaching experience.
Fake driving instructor gets caught
Short lessons. Some schools charge by the lesson and not by the hour. For example they could charge £15 a lesson but the lesson is only 45 minutes long. That's the same as £20 per hour, it just looks cheaper. Another trick used is finishing every lesson 10 minutes early and hoping pupils won't notice. 10 minutes out of 20 lessons is over 3 hours you've lost! My lessons are a full 1 or 2 hours.
Fake reviews and testimonials. Lots of schools have pages of fake reviews written by themselves saying how great they are. One instructor is so stupid he has written a fake review using the name of his school as the name of the reviewer - doh! I use a review system that confirms peoples identity, IP address and details before they are posted. My reviews are genuine and really written by people i have taught.
Misleading wording. Schools use phrases to trick you. "DSA approved/registered instructors" means they use trainees. They are DSA approved - to train! If they say "Fully qualified instructors" that doesn't mean they're all fully qualified. "Years of experience". Experience of what? Not teaching. I know of one instructor who's only been teaching for 1 year and yet he claims "years of experience". The 1stDrive website is clear and easy to read.
Free phone numbers. If you call from a mobile as 99% of us do then it can cost you upwards of £1 a minute to call an 0800 number! The school splits this with the phone company, it's just a way of them making more money from you. They totally miss the point that calling a mobile is free anyway in your included minutes. I use email and mobile numbers to keep costs down
High pass rates. All schools claim the highest pass rate, they can't all have the highest. They only count pupils that eventually pass, if they fail 3 tests then pass they still call that a 100% pass rate. If a pupil fails 3 times then leaves they don't count that. Heads i win, tails you lose! Try asking schools for proof of these pass rates and see what excuses they come up with. See our myths of the driving test page for more details. I make no false claims, pass rates mean nothing.
Free second tests. The second test isn't free if you fail the first because you must pay for another 10 hours before they'll book it. That's £200+ to get a "free" test worth £62. If you needed 10 more hours of lessons then why did they take you for the first test anyway? Another trick is that you need to take a minimum number of hours, usually 50 or more, before your 1st test to qualify. I don't make bogus offers.
Hidden charges in the small print. Some schools have lots of charges hidden away in tiny print such as the test fee (where you need to pay up to £100 on the day of your test) , paying for damage to the car (when there is none), a fee for leaving the school, a charge of £10 for moving a lesson or £1 for booking a lesson. There are no hidden charges with me. What you see is what you get
Sales targets. I used to work at a national school and when i booked in three tests in the same week and they went mad at me. "Never do more than one test per month or you'll use up pupils too quickly and we won't meet our targets!!" they said. Top selling staff at schools get bonuses such as free European holidays but your test will be delayed for months to pay for them. I have no sales targets.
Fastest growing schools. Every school claims to be the fastest growing in the area. All this means is they're flooding the roads with unskilled trainees as we mentioned above. If they're charging £30 per hour to train instructors and £15 for learners, who do you think they're more intertested in? I make no false claims and this school is run by just one fully qualified instructor.
Constant price rises. Fuel goes up all the time but some schools use this as an excuse to add £1 an hour on your lessons every few weeks. It's a myth that it costs a lot to insure a learner car, it costs £430 a year to insure a brand new Fiesta to teach in. They just want you to think it's a lot to give them an excuse to keep putting prices up. My prices are fixed for as long as you're with me.
Pass in a week scams. Cowboys love crash courses because they can take large amounts of money off people with the promise of a quick, easy licence. Pupils I've taught who have been on these courses had 30 low quality hours rushed into a week with vital topics such as crossroads completely missed out to save time. The tests can be booked miles away, hardly anyone gets to do the test and those that do rarely pass. I make no false promises of fast passes.
Guaranteed passes. No school can guarantee a pass, what they mean is they'll charge around £2000 up front and keep booking tests until you eventually fluke it. I've met people who have taken 8 tests on these schemes and then been refused anymore or a refund. Why not just teach properly in the first place? Because they can't teach. I never guarantee a pass, it's impossible.
Extra charges for evenings/weekends. Why should you have to pay more for evenings and weekends? Do the tyres wear down faster on a Saturday? Does the car burn fuel twice as fast on an evening? No, it's just another way of exploiting people who aren't free in the daytime. I don't charge extra for evenings or weekends.
Extra charges for booking tests Only ever book your theory/practical tests via the offical DSA website. There are several sites and schools now offering to book tests for you but all they do is charge you more for the same thing. For example, the theory test costs £31 but they will charge £50. Many people have paid £100 for a practical test that should only cost £62.Only book through the official site
Free theory training. The free training is designed to take weeks to finish and delay you taking your theory test, which then delays the practical test and means you spend more on lessons. All instructors do free theory training anyway, if you ask us what a road sign means we aren't going to charge you extra! I provide links on this site to resources to help with the theory test.
Crash for cash. This isn't a driving school scam but it's well worth mentioning. People are now staging car accidents to make false injury and insurance claims. Have a look at the video below for more information and then check out our special crash for cash page.
Even if you choose not to learn with me, please watch out for the points we mentioned above. I'm not saying i'm the best instructor ever, i just teach in an honest way and don't set out to scam people.
Misleading intro offers.
