ComplaintsforSchool of Coaching Mastery

• Initial Complaint

  11/24/2021

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  As an educator with 20+ year of experience I raised some of my concerns to Ms. ***** *******. I attended Course 1 from June 13 to July and started Course 2 on July 13 (all in 2021) and paid $4,900.00. The courses within her school were not standard and the information and materials presented were broad and appeared to be hodgepodge. I was concerned that the program lacked quality and substance and was not based on best practices as the information was not goal-based, process-based, nor outcome-based. These are bedrock principles for any professionally presented information. I found that the measurable objectives were not clear and most often absent which made evaluation measures inconsistent and questionable. When I could not get a satisfactory answer through emails, I asked for a phone appointment. During this call Ms. ******* did not attempt to resolve or assuage my concerns and became offensive, therefore I asked about the refund policy. She would not answer my question but said that it is in the website’s frequently asked questions (FAQs). A search of the website revealed no FAQ link or tab. After an extensive search, in different areas, I located 3 hodgepodge answers. The first two were only discovered two days ago and possibly just added as they were not discovered when we searched in August. The first states that a 100% refund within the first 24 hours of registration, 50% up to and including the first day of class, and 0 refund after the first day of class. The second states tuition is fully refundable up to one week after registration. The third, which was the only one discovered in August states: “And if at any time, you feel we’ve let you down in the quality and value of this program, let me know and I’ll refund your most recent payment. That’s our money-back guarantee.” Finally, I was told not to worry about comprehending the material because everyone will graduate anyway. This was alarming because the school’s name and standards mean nothing.

  Business response

  12/01/2021

  Thank you for helping to resolve this matter.

  
  This is our first ever complaint via the BBB. The same person initiated our first dispute claim via our payment processor’s binding arbitration service on August 29, 2021. We’ve been with this payment processor for nearly 20 years. Her dispute claim was closed in our favor on November 22nd and no refund was issued.

  
  I have documentation for the following facts:
  

  1. This person registered for the Certified Positive Psychology Coach Program on May 27, 2021. This is a training program for professional coaches that is delivered entirely on the internet via videos, PDF documents, and live webinars.
  2. On that same day, she requested that we register her for her first two courses, which we did. These two courses are included in the program and contain all the written and recorded intellectual property for each course, including videos of each class. She had everything she needed to assess whether the classes were acceptable, and she was instructed to review those materials. She had one week to tell us if she wanted a refund. She never did.
  3. I taught the live classes that she took. She never complained about anything until she failed a test on August 3rd. By then, she had registered herself for eight additional courses and took possession of all the intellectual property included.
  4. After she failed her test, we exchanged a few emails regarding the test and agreed to meet by telephone.
  5. She called me at 11:15 AM on August 9th. According to my notes written just after the call, she spent the first 15 minutes berating me. I listened to her complaints, addressed them, and reminded her of our refund policy and its location on our website. I suggested we both apologize and move on. She refused but I apologized anyway, and she started to calm down. By the end of the call, we both agreed that she would start the program again with a different teacher in September. She seemed satisfied. The call ended at 11:40. I thought the matter was settled.
  6. According to our cookie tracking software, she accessed the page that shows our refund policy at 12:18, 38 minutes after finishing her call with me. It is located, as required by our accreditation, on the FAQ page for her program. I can produce proof that this refund policy has been on our site at that location for several years. (She agreed to cookie tracking when she visited our website on May 18th, 2021.)
  7. I did not hear from her again and did not know that she was planning to drop the program until I received a notice from our payment processor on August 29th that she had filed for a full refund. She lost that dispute on November 22nd as noted above.
  8. On October 20th, she emailed me directly and threatened to ruin my reputation if I did not give her a full refund. I reminded her that she had chosen binding arbitration and that we would both be bound to that decision.
  9. Because she made no complaints about the program during 9 weeks of active participation in the program, I do not believe she quit because of any issues with quality.
  10. She claims that I could not articulate our refund policy during our call and that she could not find our refund policy on our site, but our software shows that she visited that page right after talking to me.
  11. She says we have multiple refund policies. We do sell multiple programs and courses. Refund policies vary between programs and courses and are clearly marked for each.
  13. She says she found a money-back guarantee on our website. We do not have a money-back guarantee. However, our site is 14 years old, so to be sure there wasn’t anything on it that we were unaware of, we scanned every page she visited and found no such guarantee. We did find an old blog post she visited that explains why we don’t have a money-back guarantee.
  14. This person claims she has been an educator for 20 years, but she is a novice when it comes to coach training. For the record, I have been an educator for over 40 years. I was a college professor from 1985 – 2001. I was invited to teach at the largest coach training school in the world in 2003 and went on to start this school in 2007. Our students are well-educated professionals, not college students. 40-50% are professors and researchers from major universities. They recommend their colleagues to us for coach training.
  14. We treated this person well and provided a quality program as promised. When she ran into a problem, we tried to find a solution that would help her succeed and it appeared to satisfy her.
  15. She claims we have no standards and that I told her everyone passes. That’s false. The program is goal oriented and progresses to more difficult courses. There are tests in every course and certificates of completion are awarded to everyone who successfully passes each course. Some of her classmates are in the process of qualifying for their final certifications right now. But it is not unusual for students to fail a test or to need to retake a course. Those who persevere usually succeed but not if they quit after one setback. This is how coach training is done.
  16. She did not qualify for a refund because she did not ask for one until several weeks after the refund period expired. Her attempt to get one through our payment processor also failed. However, if she can produce a page from our website, ***************************, that promises a money-back guarantee, I will approve a refund for her. Otherwise, she has already consumed the program and we do not owe her any money.
  

  Thanks again for your assistance.
  

  Customer response

  12/03/2021

  Complaint: ********
  
  I am rejecting this response because:
  I am both accepting and rejecting this response because:
  I will not focus on irrelevant distracting information presented by Ms. *******; however, I accept her offer to approve a refund if I provide a copy of her pages promising a money-back guarantee.
  In a search of FAQs answers that I discovered I accept her offer (per statement#15 of her response) to approve a money-back guarantee if I provided a copy. Please see attachment.
  

   

  When I reached out to Ms. ******* about understanding some of the materials, she did nothing to alleviate my concerns and serious anxieties arose during this conversation. She stated that she believed that the matter was settled at the end of our conversation is obviously not true since she also stated that her tracking software showed that I was searching for her refund policy 38 minutes after our call.
  Ms. ******* does not have a posted refund policy. Instead, refunds are only addressed in the “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQs) three conflicting times. Ethically, company refund policies are posted, clear, and easily located under such heading instead of being a part of an answer hidden in the FAQs. Further, ethical companies do not collect 100% of the tuition in advance of courses that do not start for months ahead of a program and one that lasts for more than a year without a more reasonable refund policy. And, to clarify, access to all program materials is not granted as stated above per Ms. *******’s website: “you will get access to more and more of our curriculum the longer you stay with us”.
  Ms. *******’s claim is that I had a week to request a refund. Ironically and again, she is choosing only one of the three conflicting FAQs (all of which I previously presented) which is not practical. Specifically, Ms. *******’s reference to the “request a refund within one week of registration” policy is based on having access to program materials. If this were true, materials and instruction together both provide enough information to make an accurate assessment about a program. As such, it is unethical and unreasonable for any paid-in-full-student enrolled in only 1.5 of 11 courses and less than two months of a 13-month program to forfeit 100% of their tuition. Meanwhile, other students who are paying as they go on the payment plan get to stop payment if/when they discontinue enrollment.
  Further, she removed me 18% into a program and wants to keep 100% of my tuition.
  
  
  Sincerely,
  ******* ****** ***
  
  

  Business response

  12/07/2021

  Thanks again to the BBB for refereeing this.

  This person has found a page on our site for a program that no longer exists. It has a different name; the courses are different, and the fees are different.

  But some people could read this and not understand.

  For this reason, we have initiated a payment of $4900 to this person on the condition that she never contact us again.

  All the other pages of this program were removed several years ago. We missed this one. Our mistake. The page has now been deleted.

  
  

  
  

   

   

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