Complaint Review: The Notter School of Pastry Arts - Orlando Florida

 Before accepting a job or enrolling in the Notter School please this in its entirety 

It all began in October of this year, scanning through the want ads on indeedjobs.com I discovered an advertisement for a school call the Notter School. I had never heard of it, but not being in the school business I wouldn't have.

The position posted was for Executive director of Sales, income to $275,000.00. I sent me resume since I did qualify, but didnt expect to hear anything.

A few days later I received a call from a lady saying she was the registrar for the Notter School and was calling to make an appointment with me. I almost said no, because something didnt sound quite right, but I accepted the invitation.

During my initial encounter with this school I was interviewed by a man by name of Kiethen, he was extremely articulate and quite impressive.  The office he interviewed me in the other hand was rather dismal and disheveled.  

 Once the interview was completed he walked me back to the original office where we met and said goodbye. I was left standing there so I left

A few days later I received a call saying my appointment time needs to changed, I explained to the lady that I did not have an appointment but agreed once again to respond. 

This time I met with a lady who introduced herself as the president and CEO of the company her name was Beverly Karshner.  I have to admit I took the bait hook line and sinker

She told me that the Notter School was the number Pastry School in the world. She stated that the school was training 200 students per year and she was expanding to 400 and was looking for a sales leader to make it happen.  Someone to bring their knowledge of sales and experience in closings etc to take the reins. 

I went home and ran Notter School through Google and found a scathing complaint from a young man regarding Beverly Karshner and her accountant, but waived it off as a disgruntled ex-employee

She made me an offer and I accepted it, the compensation was based heavily upon the number of students that would start each cycle. Based on what she had told me I didnt see where the numbers would be a problem

I was immediately exposed to a rude awakening and this is what I soon discovered about the lady who convinced me to work for her school.

1.       She was very indecisive and required my presence in her office 6 out of 8 hours each day

2.      All she wanted to was yes your right, thats right, okay we can do that, anything else wasnt tolerated

3.      She was rambling about herself, the school, the marketing consultants that she spent thousands of dollars on, the $20,000 she spent on leads the previous month, $30,000 she spent on the leads the previous
month

4.      The horrible job the advisors were doing at closing sales and their inability to convert the leads to tours over the phone

5.      She advised me that she had 4000 leads in the system and they were not being handled right and she just spent $40,000 on those leads seeking confirmation from her accountant who would agree that she spent that much money

6.      The only printed materials that she had for the school admissions advisors was faded photo copies

7.      No published catalog for students

8.      No training manual or any training material for the advisers to follow

9.      The advisors were never trained

10.  There was no clear format for the advisers to follow when making out bound calls

11.  The application and enrollment agreement forms were also faded photo copies

12.  She would give me a directive in the morning only to change it completely in the afternoon telling me that she could hire an$8.00 an hour employee to do that, then ask me why it wasnt done the next day

13.  It was decided that that the two advisors should go since they were not enrolling anyone

 

My discovery:

The 4000 leads in the system were old and exhausted over half were DO NOT CALL and many others were BAD LEADS and leads that had been called some as many as 40 times

WE hired a group of telemarketing employees that were to be paid by the hour plus commission based upon how many prospects they invited, I  was told this was a violation of the
Department of Educations rules, but she would just  create a new company and that would keep it
out DOEs reach.

All those bad and exhausted leads in the system, well she did fix that, she told her assistant to go into the system and export the leads into excel and remove all of the negative comments and then put them back  into the system as fresh leads The concierges as they were dubbed were being cursed at and threatened hourly for harassing these people and when I expressed this to
Beverly she said the concierges were not doing it right.

By the way the Executive Director of Sales Position, well it turned out to be a small telemarketing room supervisor position, she wanted me sitting with the telemarketing people the entire time I was at work if I was not in her office listening to her ramble

I explained that I was not a phone room manager and I was not hired for that, there was a discrepancy  with the payroll for the concierges and she and she began ducking around corners and investigating the possibility of deception and impropriety on my  part.

Beverly wanted 40 students for the November start but with the same exhausted leads that became more of impossibility than anything else  
Deceptive practices continued

1.      We were telling the prospective students that 98% of Notter graduates were placed after graduation, the truth that I  discovered was a great deal less

2.      The 200 enrollments per year from what I also discovered for 2011 up to October was more like 37

3.      The website for the school does not have any of the disclosures or calculators for prospects to look regarding enrollment to graduate ratios, the number of placements, the income to school cost ratios

4.      The school is not ADA compliant, when a handicapped student appeared on the radar the president of the school Ian Gill and Beverly Karshner said we need to do everything we can to persuade the student not to enroll, because to accommodate him would be more than the school would make on the enrollment.

5.      Telling international students to file for a tourist visa. Why?  We were told to tell the students to apply for a student visa after they arrive

6.      No one was aware of the schools financial problems, a lawyer went onto the website and put down he was interested in the school because he said it was the only way to get someone to answer his calls, he had filed a law suit against Karshner and she ignores his calls and letters

7.      The lead distribution program was shut off for several days due to a delinquent payment, but was passed off as a discrepancy with a fraudulent card. An email from Leads360 said otherwise. We were chastised for not having any outbound calls during that time period

8.      The lights were disconnected a couple of times in one of the offices, once for the entire day, this stopped everything

9.      Instead of paying for labor for events she would have students doing them for  free

10.  The check cashing store next door to the school I am told would not cash checks issued by
the school

11.  The school has an F rating with the Better Business Bureau

12.  Routinely checks issued to employees I am told  bounced

13.  I witnessed the boss humiliate employees in the presence of others embarrassing me 

14.  She hired a school director and directed him to humiliate the very registrar that invited me for an interview. He refused and was gone within the week as was the registrar

After not hitting the 40 enrollments that Beverly had projected she became very upset and bitter, avoided eye contact with me and demanded that if I needed to communicate with her I needed to see send her an email.  Regardless of the urgency she said I cost her $700,000.

She held me responsible for a start of 11 or so instead of the 40, yet the concierges were calling the same people repeatedly and to think the results would be different is I believe the definition of insanity. None of us had been there more than a month

She finally called me into her office with Ian Gill the president and said that she was felt that I was a complete failure in the schools admissions effort, but she wanted to change me to a position as the outside marketing director

She wanted me to generate leads by going to events and doing in-store demos and anything I could do to generate leads.  She cut my base pay by 40% and hung a huge a carrot in front of me offering to pay me $20.00 per every lead generated for the school with a huge income

She handed me an offer that projected my income in the mid 200,000 range. She stated that she would accept leads for

1.      People interested in baking and pastry as a career

2.      People looking for a career assessment

3.      People interested in community classes (because we converted some of those from the Womens Show she said)

4.      The leads had to 18, HS grads and willing to relocate to Orlando

She told me that Publix, Williams-Sonoma, BJs, they all loved her and the Notter School and she said she knew lots of people to contact that would aid me in making contacts for in-store demos and events

When asked for these names she did not have even ONE for me, ended up she knew no one

I contacted the Florida Mall and discovered we could do weekend leases for lead generation for 1000.00 per weekend, when I told her this she said she was unaware this could be done and said we could do that every weekend

We generated almost 150 leads that weekend and she decided that she was going to run them through telemarketing before she  was going to pay me for them.

She changed her mind again and said only leads that would quality were people interested in attending the European Baking and Pastry program.  She decided not to pay me for the leads.  She still has them in the system and will be calling them but refusing to pay me the $3000 that is due me

On top of everything else I was furnished poorly crafted post cards for my marketing handouts printed at FedEx. The photos were poor and fonts were blurry. With this I was told to brand the school in the local market

Regarding the Notter School, do your homework, it appears to be suffering from financial issues, the CEO changes her mind daily, and she paints very deceptive pictures to hire staff and immediately changes once they are hired. She refuses to accept responsibility for her own actions
and her own failures

In all of my years I have never met, worked with or for anyone like this woman, I felt so bad that I had to apologize to the staff that I hired based upon the misrepresentations of the CEO.

If you are one of the 1000s being violated by the schools disregard for your privacy file a complaint with Florida Attorneys General, The Florida Department of Education, or the State Attorney.

If you are a former employee that was not paid as agreed file a complaint with the Florida Dept of Labor or consider filing a law suit in small claims court.

If you are a former student promised placement based upon the 98% claim file a complaint with the Dept of Education, enough of these complaints and the school will be stripped of its accreditation

Now, everyone that writes something negative about the school always praises Chef Ewald Notter, I too was overwhelmed by this mans integrity and found him to be genuine. It is unfortunate that all of his years of doing whats right may crumble soon because of some else  doing whats wrong.


My recommendations to Ewald based a simple solution would be to ask the CEO to step down and he needs find someone that can take his good name and run it back up the pole.

My apologies go out to Benny, Melendi, Kenny, Jason, Sandra, Victor, Kiethen, Ms. Conde, and Ciera; you were all affected by decisions made by my due to misrepresentation from my boss

 I spent many years as a policemen and detective. I have watched defendants on the stand swear that person in the video wasn't them, but the truth is to refute of this would have no more merit  than that defendant on the stand looking at himself selling cocaine and telling the jury it wasn't him