Next Step Beauty Academy Complaints Thread

hollydays

Kayte94 wrote: »

I booked in November 2 courses a nail one which I’ve completed and the other beauty one which they’ve cancelled every month and I’m fed up of it now, I don’t want to do the online course, they’ve been ignoring all my emails and I really can’t afford to loose £200+ Is there anyone who had been successful I getting a refund? what’s the best way way to go about this? x

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Wizardina

If you have paid by credit card, the quickest way to get your money back may be by completing a section 75 claim form. I did that successfully. The Money Saving Expert site online has information and a claim form template.

Wizardina

If you have paid using a credit card, try a section 75 claim. A free template of the claim form can be found online e.g. on the Money Expert Site. I successfully claimed this way.

Holly03

Holly03 wrote: »

I have had several phone conversations over the last few days with a Rotherham trading standards officer who is my local authority area and the guy there as been forwarding all the evidence I supplied him to Norwich trading standards who is the local authority dealing with next step beauty.
I forwarded all the emails from next step Beauty to the Rotherham TSO I also provided dozens of screen shots of the spelling mistakes and poor grammar for the online material. Next step beauty also decrypt your login password and show it to you in a email when you sign up I forwarded that email onto trading standards who as used my login details to check the entire course material for himself. I noticed the course material online has all been corrected although not entirely as spelling mistakes are still there in some of it.
The officer in Rotherham as assured me the officer in Norwich is very interested in this company and he’s thanked me for all the evidence I supplied him with. I’ve also been assured I will get a refund and that he will be back in touch with me after the Easter holidays.
If this doesn’t happen my MP will be dealing with it.
Anybody on this thread should contact consumer services via the citizens advice website and you should get a phone call from your local trading standards department who will provide you with an email address for you to attach and send all evidence to which he will forward onto the Norwich office. If you don’t hear from them then contact your local council asking to speak to trading standards yourself.

Hi sorry for not returning to update sooner. I never did hear back from the trading standards officer to no surprise.
So I contacted my bank about doing a debit card chargeback and I was informed it takes up to 8 weeks.
I had already lost the paypal claim which I explained to my bank the full situation on exactly how this company operate.
I also rang my bank up every other week to request an update on the chargeback only to be told to call back on certain dates and effectively I was getting nowhere.
Then during the 6th telephone call to my bank for an update and on the 8th week I was informed by the representative that a mistake had been made during the chargeback and the chargeback request would have to be made again. In other words they were telling me I would have to wait upto another 8 weeks for the outcome.
By this time I’d had enough and I told the person at the bank to put her manager on the phone.
She transferred my call to the complaints department at my bank and I then had to explain everything again and how I’d rang up numerous times for an update on the chargeback only to be told on the 8th week the chargeback request wasn’t logged properly.
I told the woman at the complaints department about next step beauty and how they conduct their business and how they have been getting away with it for so long. I also told her about how paypal never looked into my claim correctly or at the evidence so I lost the claim. I also told her after all the stress of now dealing with the chargeback with my bank I had completely lost faith and hope of getting my money back and that I intended to change banks because they hadn’t been helpful.
I was on phone to her approx 1 hour 30 mins with her putting me on hold numerous times while checking things.
The woman I spoke to was lovely and she was shocked about the issues I’d had trying to recover my payment.
She then told me she was going to compensate me for having to file another chargeback and she put £100 in my account!
She also told me she would send me a reference number to my online banking account and to check and write it down when Id finished the call. When I checked in online banking afterwards I couldn’t believe it my bank had not only compensated me £100 but they had given me the refund back too. :j
At first I thought she had managed to process the chargeback and take the money back from next step beauty but then I received a letter in post a week later from my bank saying next step had denied my chargeback and so now it would be dealt with by visa and they would contact me at a later date if they needed anymore info or evidence from me. It also said the information I’d provided them with had been passed to my banks fraud team department for further investigations.
I’ve not heard anything from visa yet and it’s been a few weeks since I received the letter from my bank.
Next step have also replied to my civil court claim online denying the claim and saying I was refunded the payment in March?!
So the claim is still ongoing online and It now requests I provide further documentation and evidence.
I don’t know whether to continue with the online court claim or not because my bank have gave me my money back but I don’t know if visa will be in touch and whether I could have the money taken back from my bank account.
Next step beauty now actually owe my bank the money but I have no idea what will happen with that and still no money as yet been recovered from next step.
I will let you know if I hear back from visa.

Holly03

Hi,
I’m Just providing an update to what happened with the money claims online.
NSB requested a 3 week extension of time to respond to the money claim, clearly to drag it on that little bit longer.
There is no information or details on money claims website warning you prior to making the claim that the company can request an extension of time to respond. Had I been aware of this prior to applying and paying out a further £25 I honestly wouldn’t have wasted my time.
I checked my email account frequently for a response and when the deadline date passed and I never heard anything I sent an email to the money claims website asking where things go from here?
They told me a response from NSB was available to read by logging into the online account created when applying.
I received no notification of this response to my email and as a result I missed the deadline to respond to it and fill out a directions questionnaire.
So I emailed the money claims online service again and asked them why I’d not been notified of a response and would this mean I’d now lost the claim and could they please let me know.
I received a email 3 days later which said “I had one more chance to file the directions questionnaire and I would be notified shortly”
I checked my email over the next few weeks and received nothing back from them.
So I emailed them again asking what was happening with this claim and could they please let me know if the claim is now done with as I never did hear back from them with the last chance to fill out the directions questionnaire.
They didn’t bother to reply to that email but instead 7 days later I received a letter in the post from money claims dated 19.7.2019 but not received until 25.7.2019 instructing me to fill out the directions questionnaire and file it to money claims by 4pm on 25.7.2019 or my claim will be closed?! I didn’t get home until 5pm on 25.7.2019 and so I didn’t open my mail until later in the day.
So I was 1 hour out of time for the deadline due to not receiving the letter until the deadline date.
What a complete headache from start to finish.
This whole experience has been a real eye opener to online fraud and scams.
I was always certain that a scam like this wouldn’t happen to me but it did, and the lack of action with consumer laws not been enforced by the relevant organisations designed to protect consumers has been a real eye opener.
People are under informed of the lack of intervention by law enforcement agencies such as trading standards.
Even the people at my bank seem to think trading standards will intervene and take action against a company based on a single report.
They don’t.
The officer at my local trading standards department explained the way they work and he even admitted that they don’t always intervene after hundreds of complaints received against a company.
I asked him why that was and why Can a blatant scam continue without any action from them.
He told me he was the manager in Trading standards in my area and he said in his office there’s just himself and two other trading standards officers working there. He said so there’s just 3 of us to deal with complaints referred to the local authority.
He said he receives hundreds of complaints every month and they prioritise the most serious cases that have sufficient evidence to bring a prosecution to the court.
He said it was frustrating as he often received tons of complaints about online shopping sites and online scams but the problem with the internet is proving to the courts that the company is a scam.
He said some websites will disappear from the web and then reappear again once they think the heat is off them.
Where as businesses operating from a location and directly sold physical goods from that location it was much easier to prove as they could confiscate the physical goods if proven faulty or fraudulent but with digital content that was much harder to prove.

There’s just not enough trading standards officers or persons in consumer law to conduct inquiries and investigations into the amount of scams/fraud taking place online.

It’s taught me some valuable lessons and personally I don’t recommend going down the money claims route as I feel like I’ve been scammed all over again by them charging me £25 to basically do nothing whatsoever to get my money back.

My advice is to pursue the chargeback via your bank. As long as you keep hold of all evidence if the bank needs it then your bank should refund the money back to you.
I think you have something like 80 days from making the payment to file a chargeback.
You can do a chargeback whether you paid by debit or credit card and even if you paid by paypal and they didn’t get your money back.
This is the only solution to get your money back and I’m sure the bank will have a system that will eventually do there own investigations if they receive enough chargebacks against the same company as this is a loss to the bank.

DionBella

Hi,

I am currently going through this with them. Just spoke with a guy from the Sales team who basically said that I cannot get a refund. He mentioned the t&cs and that I had accepted them and accessed their online study materials. When I said that their t&cs were not fair, he said that I’m going back on my words as I did agree to them and it was my fault for not fully reading the t&cs before making payment.
At this point, he’d just got on my last nerve and I didn’t want to speak with him anymore so I asked to speak with a manager but he said he was the manager. I asked to speak with anyone except him but he said I couldn’t speak with anyone else. Then I asked to speak with the Complaints manager and he said he was the Complaints manager. They don’t care and won’t listen. I was meant to have done the training in August but it has since been rescheduled thrice and there’s no guarantee that it’ll be held anytime soon. Next Step Beauty uses their t&cs as a way to scam people by withholding people’s money. If you cannot provide the training then refund the money, period.

How did you go about lodging a complaint with Trading Standards?

xDB

Wizardina

If you have paid by credit card, use a section 75 claim form which is freely available on the money Expert site. The issuer of the credit card will be liable under section 75 (not VISA or Mastercard etc but the bank or building society that issued the card) send the form to them. It's a process and it took me 2-3 months but I got my money back. It takes that amount of time because the supplier is given time to respond to the bank. The bank may send the supplier's response to you and may ask for any further evidence for your claim and it gives you time to respond. It's worth pursuing as it's a free process and not difficult.

lake1986

Booked a classroom based course with next step beauty, as soon as they have your money  they cancel the course and try to hide behind the terms and conditions. Both Scott Mardon and Jessica-Leigh Mardon are both being investigated for fraud. Please do not use this company, they will be closed down within a year and you will lose your money. 

CCJ has been issued against them both