- Report: #322306
Complaint Review: Sylvan Learning Center - Stanley Learning - Poplar Bluff Missouri
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Sylvan Learning Center - Stanley Learning
Poplar Bluff, Missouri, U.S.A.
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Sylvan Learning Center - Stanley Learning Failure to stand behind their agreement poor communications Poplar Bluff Missouri
On Dec. 1, 2007 we enrolled our 11 year old grandson in a tutoring program at the Sylvan Learning Center in Poplar Bluff, MO. We agreed to pay the fees by the month since we did not want to take out a loan for a long term program. We paid the testing fees & enrollment fee on that day. We were told the hourly rate for tutoring was $45 per hour & we set up his tutoring on a schedule of 4 hours every Saturday.
According to the brochure we were given at the initial enrollment, we were to have a conference with Sylvan manager Christina Thompson once a month to discuss our grandson's progress.
We were never given a progress conference in the three months of tutoring. We asked several times about a conference and were given a print out of our grandson's progress.
After 36 hours of tutoring, our grandson's grades had not come up one level.
We drove into Poplar Bluff, which is 40 miles one way, two times on a promise of a conference, which never happened.
The students earn tokens at each tutoring session, which can be redeemed for small prizes. After we closed out our program, our grandson had 304 tokens to his credit. We made one trip into Poplar Bluff to redeem his tokens, but since the Poplar Bluff facility had virtually shut down and moved locations, there were no prizes at the new location. We were told by Christina Thompson, the manager, that we should call her to arrange for our grandson to redeem his tokens. After several phone calls to their Cape Girardeau office, we were told that Christina Thompson would send some digital pictures by email and we should pick one then she would mail it to us.
The email never arrived !
This company is very unorganised and has very poor customer service relations. We would never recommend that anyone use them as tutors. Online tutors can be found at Ziizoo.com which is a U.S. company and has very much more reasonable rates.
Ivan
Van Buren, Missouri
U.S.A.
According to the brochure we were given at the initial enrollment, we were to have a conference with Sylvan manager Christina Thompson once a month to discuss our grandson's progress.
We were never given a progress conference in the three months of tutoring. We asked several times about a conference and were given a print out of our grandson's progress.
After 36 hours of tutoring, our grandson's grades had not come up one level.
We drove into Poplar Bluff, which is 40 miles one way, two times on a promise of a conference, which never happened.
The students earn tokens at each tutoring session, which can be redeemed for small prizes. After we closed out our program, our grandson had 304 tokens to his credit. We made one trip into Poplar Bluff to redeem his tokens, but since the Poplar Bluff facility had virtually shut down and moved locations, there were no prizes at the new location. We were told by Christina Thompson, the manager, that we should call her to arrange for our grandson to redeem his tokens. After several phone calls to their Cape Girardeau office, we were told that Christina Thompson would send some digital pictures by email and we should pick one then she would mail it to us.
The email never arrived !
This company is very unorganised and has very poor customer service relations. We would never recommend that anyone use them as tutors. Online tutors can be found at Ziizoo.com which is a U.S. company and has very much more reasonable rates.
Ivan
Van Buren, Missouri
U.S.A.
2 Updates & Rebuttals
Ivan
Van Buren,Missouri,
U.S.A.
Answer To Rebuttal
#2Author of original report
Fri, April 04, 2008
Jack did contact us by phone & we discussed our complaint with him. It seems that his lower level management was not acting within the guidelines he had established and there was a lack of communication. The conference he referred to, if it could be called that was not what we had expected. Christina did show us a print out, as I stated before, but the whole so called conference was more of a sales pitch to try to get us to continue the tutoring online than a progress discussion. Jack did in fact send us a $50 gift card to redeem in place of the tokens and to help cover our travel expenses. We do appreciate his concern over our complaint. He offered online tutoring at a reduced rate, but it is still far above the rates available from tutors at Ziizoo.com. We feel that the teachers at Sylvan did an acceptable job of tutoring but the lack of communication and poor organization really offset the merits.
Jack
Columbia,,Missouri,
U.S.A.
Guilty and not
#3REBUTTAL Owner of company
Thu, April 03, 2008
I am one of the owners of the Sylvan Learning in Poplar Bluff Mo. The person named as director is correct. We typically will send a gift certificate to people in this situation regarding the tokens (rewards). I spoke with the family yesterday and placed a gift certificate in the mail yesterday for the token amount and about $30 more to cover the fuel for thier trip in that was not fruitful. I do know there was a conferences scheduled and at least 1 happened in January. I am working on the rest of the data. We were consolidating this center with a near by center in January and it appears our system and protocols were not followed by our staff. We will do the appropriate training to assure this does not happen again. I wish they had contacted our headquarters so we could have resolved this much sooner. Jack
