Anyone used The Knowledge Academy?

I did. And I regret it to date.
They still owe me £1700.

I booked an ITIL weekend course which they were unable to fulfill. When I asked for a refund they said 'yes', but to date, 3 months down, I have not yet received my refund. This is after repeatedly emailing them.

Avoid.

Horrible! Avoid at all costs, unless you enjoy getting frustrated every time you want to find out a piece of information relevant to your course and/or exam. The exam provider changed starting with January 2018 and so did the exam process, but did they bother to update the "Exam Tips" document on their website? Of course they didn't. Did they bother to send a notification e-mail to their customers to inform them of change? Of course they didn't. Were they helpful when I sent them several e-mails in order to try to understand the new exam booking process? You guessed it, they weren't. If you don’t have the time and patience to go through the long feedback below, the one thing you should keep in mind is that their exam booking customer service is awful. From reading the other reviews here, the actual customer service is not much better, as it is obvious from the very first interactions that customer respect and satisfaction is not really a priority for them, nor do they have the decency and common courtesy to reply to all of their clients’ e-mails. It’s also obvious how much they "care" about their customers’ different problems and concerns by looking at the impersonal e-mail template they have used on this forum to reply to most of the 1 star reviews.

The detailed story goes like this: In January I sent an e-mail to schedule my exam and stated that I want to take it on the 5th of March. They told me the request needs to be processed by PeopleCert and that I will receive a voucher for the exam. But the voucher is only valid for 30 days, so it will be mailed to me closer to the requested exam date.

Two weeks before the exam, the voucher had still not arrived in my inbox. When I asked them about it, they told me that the voucher will be sent out 48 hours prior to my booking date, and if it's not used within the stated time frame, then I will have to pay the exam again. So they confirm your exam booking only two days in advance, although in their "Exam Tips" document they require 10 days’ notice from the candidate to book the exam. They also told me that if I needed to reschedule the exam, I would only have 48 hours before the exam to do so without any additional cost. Just to put this into context, in their "Exam tips" document they mention that the date of the exam is subject to Proctor U slot availability (no longer the case, as they were now using a new provider, but as far as I knew, there was a possibility that the new provider had the same policy), so I had no way of actually knowing whether there would be an empty slot for me to take the exam on the 5th of March, hence no way of knowing the actual day I would have to take the exam in order to make the necessary arrangements - make sure I take time off work if necessary, that I have no special events that day, all the things you take into consideration when planning the events in your life. Call me boring, but I actually want to know the EXACT date when I have an exam, more than 48 hours in advance. What I basically understood from them is that I will receive a voucher on a random Monday telling me that my exam is on Wednesday (48 hours, right?) and I had to watch my e-mail like a hawk in order to catch that e-mail the second it arrived in order to have a chance to reschedule the exam, or else...I would need to pay them more money.

Their Exam Tips document also states that if you are not a native English speaker you can apply for extra time for your exam 3-5 days in advance. That was hilarious, considering the fact that I would only know the date of the exam 48 hours in advance, but when I asked them about this they told me I can apply for extra time with PeopleCert without having the voucher yet. And that's it.. no contact details for PeopleCert, no e-mail address, no nothing. I had to go back again and ask them how do I apply? At least give me an e-mail address. It was unbelievable. Finally, I contacted PeopleCert about the extra time. Guess what PeopleCert said? Of course you can't apply for extra time before you have your voucher! You need to have the voucher, with which you can book your exam, and then mention on your profile that you are not a native English speaker. Wonderful!

And all throughout my numerous e-mails I had written to Knowledge Academy in my desperate attempt to understand what the new exam process is, I kept mentioning their "Exam Tips" document which was clearly no longer valid an up to date, but they never once addressed the issue until I actually asked them what was their explanation in regards to that document being outdated. The customer service agent told me "I will pass on your feedback about the Exam Tips document to the team that deals with these documents". As of today, the 20th of March, that document is still on their website and it contains the same incorrect and useless information, just under a different name (Prince2 Examination Guide).

Ok, so I finally receive the voucher code for the foundation exam, I go into PeopleCert, I create my profile, and I realise I had been stressing for nothing, because I had my pick of exam dates and hours, and I could even select a different date than March 5th. Which I did, because life happens and plans change and it was no longer possible for me to take the exam on the initial date I had in mind. But the very unprofessional people at Knowledge Academy did not bother to explain all the details of the new process... they simply don't give a damn. All their answers contained the bare minimum, just so they are covered in terms of actually replying to customer e-mails. But in no way had they been understanding and sympathetic to my situation. Moreover, they said that if I cannot take the exam on the date I have requested, I should postpone booking the exam. Yeah.. and start again with this whole “guess when you will be taking a 600 pounds exam” thing… No, thank you, I think I’ll just study as best as I can so I can be prepared to take the exam whenever you spring it on me.

Anyway, 2 days after I received the Foundation exam voucher, I received the Practitioner one as well, and I booked that exam as well.
I then took the Foundation exam, passed it, and was told that it will take 2 days for the official results to be sent to me. They weren't. On my PeopleCert profile they appear to be "withheld". When asking PeopleCert about this, they sent me back to the Knowledge Academy. Mind you, you need to first add your Prince2 Foundation Certification in your PeopleCert profile before they can release the Prince2 Practitioner results. But I am getting ahead of myself, because 10 days AFTER I booked my Practitioner exam I received an e-mail stating that the voucher for it was cancelled. And sure enough, the Practitioner exam that appeared to be scheduled in my PeopleCert profile had disappeared. When asking PeopleCert about this, they again sent me the Knowledge Academy for answers. So I went back to Knowledge Academy by e-mail. Two days later, still no reply. I pick up the phone and call them, I explain the situation, they put me on hold, then they tell me to send an e-mail. I explain a second time that I had already sent an e-mail two days before, I did not receive any reply, so that’s why I’m calling. They put me on hold again and then tell me that no e-mail was received. At this point I am ashamed to admit that I lost it… I had the e-mail in front of me, and I barked the date, subject, recipient e-mail address, and every single detail they could use to find that e-mail to the customer representative.… Finally, they found it and they told me I will receive a reply asap.

After that it took the customer service (exam booking) at Knowledge Academy another half a day to actually reply to my e-mail. And do you think that they bothered to assume responsibility, explain what happened or apologize? Of course they didn’t! No apology, no explanation, nothing.. just that they will send me a new voucher “as soon as possible”. They did not reply when I asked them to confirm an exact date. At least they sorted out the Foundation exam results and certificate.

It took them another day to send me the new voucher code which I got on the afternoon of the original day I was supposed to take the exam. Moreover, I could no longer find any available slots that would fit my work/personal schedule, so I will have to take half a day off from work in order to take the exam.

All in all, this was the worst experience I have ever had in my life with this kind of business.

JReacher1 said:

I think there is no issue going from classroom to virtual. In the next few years this will be the norm for all training. 

As long as you get the same course content and obtain the qualification I don’t see what the problem is. 

As a application trainer I cannot agree with that statement. There are pros and cons of virtual delivery but it is not equivalent to the classroom session. 

As for the Knowledge Academy - I warn everyone about booking classroom session with them now! I have the same experience as Arondite: booked the classroom PRINCE2 3 weeks ago. Had an offer for online instructor led for a half price but decided to go with the more expensive classroom session. 2 weeks later they email me that my training is moved to online delivery apparently due to the "current Government Regulations around Social Distancing" which didn't change a bit for my location since the time of my booking! Their customer service is almost non existent. Approached about the price difference between classroom and online delivery I got 3 emails back from them looking like generated by the system - one sentence, no name signature, not answering any of my questions. When I finally managed to get trough and talk with the actual human being I was told I won't receive any refund for the difference even though the half price option for online course was still present on their website. It seems to me that The Knowledge Academy is taking advantage of current pandemic to make more money. They book people to classroom trainings, probably knowing from the begging, they won’t be able to deliver them. The virtual session is obviously less expensive for them, as they don’t have to pay for the venue (renting space, providing lunch etc.), so the whole price difference goes into their pockets.