Complaint Review: Orange Coast Driving School - Huntington Beach California

First off, you are the daughter of Armando Corona so of course you are going to side with him. Second, I asked you about another instructor on our first phone call saying that my daughter had a hard time with his accent. You informed me that he was the only instructor and that you would tell him about it and/or I could also ride along for the next lesson. I declined to ride along because it would make my daughter nervous if she had to worry about both of us judging her driving. I went ahead and made the lesson anyways and right afterwards, I told my daughter what you said.

She got very upset and said "NO, she would not go out with him. That he made her very uncomfortable and then told us that when they were driving, he put his hand on her thigh!" That was when I called you back. This has nothing to do with the money. If it did, I would have just scheduled the lesson and the third one right after that and been done with it. It has to do with the fact that he is not allowed to touch my daughter or anyone else anywhere on their body (read your license where it says instructors are not allowed to touch a student ANYWHERE on their body).

We did file a report with the Huntington Beach Police Department and we have also filed a report with the California Department of Motor Vehicles. We received your check to us for $155 but please know that we have no intention of cashing it. As of right now, my daughter is hesitant to take another driving lesson with ANY instructor, so thanks alot for that! I also just received a phone call from Armando which I didn't answer. He left me a voice mail about my filing this on RipoffReport.com and informed me he was going to sue me for defamation of character and that if I didn't fix this by January, it was going to cost me a lot of money.

Really? I have the voicemail saved so tell him I don't appreciate being threatened by him. I trust what my daughter told me. She is an honor student with a 4.3 GPA and would never lie about something like this, especially if it could hurt the reputation of someone else. The reason she wrote that review in a positive manner was because Armando made her fill it out in the car at the end of the lesson. She was intimidated by him and was afraid to write anything negative because he would see it right away.

From the first of the 4 calls I got from the student's mom on 12/11/13 , I knew that they had something up their sleeve.  She first told me she had heard that they had 6 months to complete the course and wanted to know if it was true, I confirmed that that was the case and that we could extend her daughter's deadline to 12/30/13 (12 additional days), so she proceeded to make an apponitment for the 2nd of 3 behind the wheel sessions for the following Saturday 12/14/13 @ 11 am and would schedule the third after that appointment.  Five minutes later the second call comes in and the mom asks if there is another instructor because Armando's accent is hard to understand at times, I notify her that Armando is the only instructor at this time but that I would make sure to have Armando take his time making sure she understands his commands and I even told the mom that she could also go ahead and ride along with them,  she said it was fine that her daughter would try and let Armando know if anything needed  to be explained better.  8 minutes later the mom calls again to cancel the appointment because her daughter said that Armando had touched her leg.  I explained to her that sometimes to get the students to brake or accelerate he would either tap their knee or hand, and told her that the comments that her daughter had made did not even hint of her being uncomfortable.  (see partial print-out, attached) Her daughter's comments where "I liked the class, I'm glad that he could somewhat control my stress, overall a great teacher"  Still I offered her a refund for the unused 4 hours which would be $155 refunded to the credit card that was used for payment, the mom agreed and right away the father got on the phone and said he wanted a full refund and he would be coming in at that moment to pick it up.  I told him that Armando which is the owner was the only one who could authorize full refunds, and that it would be to the credit card used, he got upset and his wife got back on the line and asked me to get Armando to contact them.  A few minutes later the mom called back to get Armando's last name and that was the last I heard of them. 

Armando made contact with the father and the father asked for a full refund and an apology to which Armando replied that he taught his daughter how to drive, validated her driving permit and did nothing wrong.  That if he needed to he could contact our bond agency to make a claim, but he had not touched his daughter inappropriately, and would not be intimidated by the father. 

Armando has been a driving instructor for over 30 years and is a father, grand-father and great-grand-father, that would not jeopardize his business or reputation by false allegations.  It is very easy to lie and make up stories 5 months after the fact, specially when you do not want to pay $ 75.00 fee for going beyond your 6 months period to complete the course.

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