A+/N+/MCSE - Skillstrain - NEED to make a decision ASAP.

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Ok, I've had a meeting today with someone from skillstrain and basically they are offering me the following:
A+/N+/MCSE

For £3700 at £100/pcm interest free.
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Is this a good price? Is this course worth doing? Is it worth doing with skillstrain? Would it guarantee me a job at the end?

I thought it seemed quite appealing and basically said I was up for it but I'd have to discuss the funding of it and get back to them.

The way they have left it, is I've signed all the paper work and have the option to cancel if I change my mind. I got the impression I have 1 month to cancel.

I went round to my parents to talk about it and see if they will support me if I run into difficulty funding it.

Then my mum later emailed the review at the bottom of this post.:eek:

Basically my questions to everyone is.... Has anyone ever been with skillstrain and come away with a career???

I need to get a career sorted and I saw this as a good way to start until I read this:

bad review said:
check this out. It may be the same people. Worth doing some research whilst you can get still out of it.

Scheidegger/Skills Train Review/Expirience
A review by pure_punjabi786 on Scheidegger
June 19th, 2006


Author's product rating: 1/5


Advantages: None that i can think of
Disadvantages: Most of it

Recommend to potential buyers: yes

Full review
I have had the same problems with scheidegger as well, and have had the same lies and deception told to me by the salesman. I enrolled in the A+ PC engineer, N+ Network Engineer, and MCSE course bundle for £3500, in August 2005. It is now June 2006 and i'am not satisfied and very unhappy about the course. I enrolled when i was 16 years of age and my mother signed the contract.

It all started when i filled in a form that came from my letterbox regarding interests in Computing. A salesman arrived a week later in his mid-40's with a flash BMW M3 convertible. I was told prior to the visit of the salesman {by phone} that he was in the area and they moved the date and time up, and said that is is one of the few times that he will be in my area, so i accepted for him to come.

The salesman told me that i will have 'hands-on' training throughout the course each month and visit local 5 star hotels to assemble computer, fix printers, and monitors, non of this happened in reality all that i got for the hands on training was 'cut-outs' of PC components like hard disk, processory, and RAM, and to simply glue then together on a print-out of a motherboard.

Furthurmore, the salesman stated i was guranteed a job after at £20,000 -£30,000 per year. However Skills train are now saying they only gurantee one interview with one company and not the job or salary.

I was told that i would meet other PC engineer Students on the same course and chat to my tutor in person once every month, this did not happen and i feel isolated and simply send of my assignments via a tacky webpage, which takes 5 days to even 2 weeks for the 10 simple questions to be marked and returned, and if you get two questions wrong and get 80% score then you have to re-do the mock test and wait another 2-weeks for then to be marked work and the code comes with the marked assignment to start the next chapter submission. So you cannot continue until the previous mock test was marked.

I was also told that they were 'renowned' all over Europe and have 5 million students, which is a lie.
I was told that Skills Train had a 'state of the Art' website that also had a forum to communicate and send emails to other students on the same course. in reality their is no-forum on the website nor is it state of the art, www.scheidegger-online.com.

They do not send me all six floppy disks and sometimes just send 1 or 2, until i phone them and pester them that they send the other 4 or 5 to make a full six floppy disks required for the mock exams. And when i ask the operator at Skill Train for the missing Floppy disks, they are rude and speak in an impolite mannor, yet do not swear.

There was a 30-day chance to quit the course and started when the contract was signed {i.e: during enrollment}, although the funny thing is that the course does not begin until 30-days after enrollment, so their was no-knowing of what i have let myself into, or testing their services and website. i couldn't go to there website as my password or username was not given at enrollment. At enrollment i recieved a tacky blue briefcase and one folder; the first folder was very out-dated in informated and i would say atleast 5-years behind on technologies; there are also many spelling mistakes in the folder and seems to have been word processed using Microsoft Word.

Moreover, some of the descriptions of technologies are poor, yet i understand it as i do A-level Computer Science at college, however if i did not have this prior knowledge from my A-level Computer Science course then i would be confused and not understand some of the text. Furthurmore, i showed my Computer Science teacher at college and he said that the info in these folders are outdated and that there were missing info that i should know regarding the course, and that some of it was irrelevant to passing the Comptia A+ exam sat publically at specific locations for £105.

Furthurmore, i had A-level exams recently and have not sent any work/assignments for 3months+ yet my tutor does not even care or check up on me, they simply consume £100 out of my account every month regardless.

I cannot even quit this course due to the contract signed

Please i urge all of you in my suitition with Scheidegger/Skills trains to please contact BBC watchdog and state your expirience and how this rouge company treats you, hopefully if enough people contact them then they will make a report on scheidegger and possibly something will be done and the victims helped to cancel there contract and possibly recieve money back from this sub-standard course,

http://www.bbc.co.ukconsumer/tv_and_radio/watchdog/

Furthurmore, i have read on another forum that this company 'scheidegger' changed their name to 'Skills Train' due to the mass of complaints on the internet.

i really wish i had never replied to that ad, and that i can quit this course and get my £1000 back.

Thank you,


P.S: please do not hesitate to contact me via email.

May all of you affected victims be successful in overcoming this rouge company, Scheidegger/Skill Train
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Is it really this bad?

Should I phone the guy up tomorrow and cancel it all? From reading that ir feels like I should!

I really want to get a career sorted in IT and I think I'd be more than capable of this MCSE course if it is worth doing. I feel I could progress a lot quicker than the maximum time of the course.

They gave me the impression I'd be employable within 6 months. Are they full of bs?

I need to make a decision about this asap whilst I can still cancel.

Cheers,

G
 
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hmmmm.... I dunno man, never heard of them and while 1 bad review isn't really anything to worry about i'm not sure it sounds too comforting.

It seems it's not a instructor led course but internet style? Buy some books from various booki websites, sticka vmware machine or 3 up on your home pc and do it that way. Or go the full whack with a fullon bootcamp like trainingcamp.co.uk
 
Ask yourself - will it help you get a foot in the door of your chosen career? Are there any other cheaper or better alternatives?

I'm all for self-study myself, but sometimes there are significant benefits to be had from having the bits of paper (the likes of Prince2 are proof of that) regardless of how useful they may actually be. Take it on it's merits.
 
sr4470 said:
There are companies offering similar packages who won't make you pay till they get you a job. UKIT is one of them.
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It's experience and personality over industry qualification for that will get you a job. Start at the bottom with helpdesk stuff and work up, do some of the courses and exams if you want and get your employer to pay the rest.
 
Vtec9k said:
It's experience and personality over industry qualification for that will get you a job.
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Really? I keep getting turned down through lack of an MCSE or knowledge directly related to it...

Vtec9k said:
Start at the bottom with helpdesk stuff and work up, do some of the courses and exams if you want and get your employer to pay the rest.
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I do agree with that, especially if you're young and just starting out in full time employment.
 
afaik any Microsoft module will cost you £88 to sit regardless of whether you self train or pay thousands.
imo they're holding out the MCSE as a Golden Goose. Work your way through the certs from the bottom up, do the MCDST for example. If you aren't in the trade already you'll find MCSA/MCSE level stuff hard if you don't have day to day experience of it, and if you do pass not many employers will pass your cv through first sift due to lack of experience.
Are you currently working in the industry?
 
I wish I was young and just starting out in full time employment, in reality I need to get something sorted asap, I'd be 30 by the time I'd finished this course and I need a decent career to support my son and my mrs as best I can.

G
 
JayMax said:
afaik any Microsoft module will cost you £88 to sit regardless of whether you self train or pay thousands.
imo they're holding out the MCSE as a Golden Goose. Work your way through the certs from the bottom up, do the MCDST for example. If you aren't in the trade already you'll find MCSA/MCSE level stuff hard if you don't have day to day experience of it, and if you do pass not many employers will pass your cv through first sift due to lack of experience.
Are you currently working in the industry?
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I'm not no, I used to work for a company called EDS in a mainframe support environment, but that was like 5 years ago now and I have no qualifications.

I have the books for an MCDST already from a friend, but I didn't think it would help my get employed because it looks so easy.

G
 
There are a lot of horror stories around about Skillstrain, the fact that they send a salesman around pretty much says it all for me. A good place to look for opinions would be the forums on certforums.co.uk.

A good idea might be to check out any local colleges to see if they run night classes, I know that in Stevenage they do A+, MCDST and MCSA night classes. If you keep at them you could go through MCDST and MCSA in pretty much a year.

The certs are good to have but probably the best thing to do would be to get any sort of position in IT with a decent company. Once you're in it's a lot easier to get training and promotions to the better jobs.

edit - just saw your new post above, doing the MCDST would probably be a good thing as you can count the two exams towards an MCSA, which counts 4(?) exams towards an MCSE 2003. Sort of jumping up the cert ladder getting something to show for it pretty regularly.
 
sr4470 said:
There are companies offering similar packages who won't make you pay till they get you a job. UKIT is one of them.
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I had an interview with UK IT Training in Tolworth Tower and they wanter more like £7000 and they didn't say anything about me not having to pay until after I got a job. They even told me I could probably put it on a credit card after I told them I couldn't afford it.

Is this who you mean?

G
 
Guru said:
I had an interview with UK IT Training in Tolworth Tower and they wanter more like £7000 and they didn't say anything about me not having to pay until after I got a job. They even told me I could probably put it on a credit card after I told them I couldn't afford it.

Is this who you mean?

G
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The firm I spoke to is based in Liverpool Street.
 
EDS are a big company, so you obv have trade experience, Microsoft or otherwise.
The MCDST is very easy, but also counts as a module in the MCSA, just as the MCSA modules count towards the MCSE. You might not even have to study for it. Might be worth doing if you have no offical MS qualifications?
I just think it's a better option employment-wise doing things progressively; you could end up putting a lot of money and effort into getting a 'paper mcse' and end up with a job that an MCDST level qual could have gotten you - and with better prospects.
 
I'd say the MCDST was probably the best way to first-line support jobs.

It may look easy but if you've never been in a test environment it will be a hell of a lot harder than you think (especially if you don't take the studying seriously - I didn't and just though I'd go for it - almost failed the damn thing).



M.
 
i paid once £4k for a 4 weeks IT training in London, the training was good but not worth that much money, http://www.cercotraining.co.uk/index.asp go and see yourself, im not trying to advertise anything in here,

i started working for some **** company the very next week after my training ended, i just wanted to get some IT experience and 6 months later i left, so I was happy with anything they could get me really,

i think this training did help me to get my second job as well (first one was found by the training company), but I also already had 6 months of work experience and during that time I also did MCDST,

at the end my brother did the same training with same company and he also paid £4k, he luckly found himself a job with a nice salary of £20k (LOL i dont even earn that much atm, lucky him),

I still thing that it is not worth spending thousands of pounds on any sort of training, now i think i should have kept my £4k and do some studying from home, but sometimes you try anything just to get into IT as I did as well as my brother,

sorry for my bad english by yes i am from one of these eastern european contries and somehow employers still wanted to employ me, atm my current employer things i am very hard working even though i spend most of my time on here LOL, i cant help that all projects/task i am given i do very fast :),

ohh, i also did get hold of N+ qualification and now studying towards win2003server,

good luck getting into IT,
 
Guru said:
I'm not no, I used to work for a company called EDS in a mainframe support environment, but that was like 5 years ago now and I have no qualifications.

I have the books for an MCDST already from a friend, but I didn't think it would help my get employed because it looks so easy.

G
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MCDST is very very very easy and I dont think its held in high regards by many organisations really

Stelly
 
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