Any experience of tradecareer.co.uk

Umutgz

@duppie1980
I had the same guy come in and interview me aswell (Victor) he said i got accepted into the course etc, but as you said it sounds too good to be true. He booked in to visit me on Saturday, but he told me that it will only cost £30 a week but looking on the net it says 6k? I got a dodgy feeling about this should i go for the course and pay the fee or not?

DKLS

Umutgz wrote: »

@duppie1980
I had the same guy come in and interview me aswell (Victor) he said i got accepted into the course etc, but as you said it sounds too good to be true. He booked in to visit me on Saturday, but he told me that it will only cost £30 a week but looking on the net it says 6k? I got a dodgy feeling about this should i go for the course and pay the fee or not?

Please don't part with a penny. 6k for a qualification that the industry nor employers recognise is not good value.

Mutchy88

I applied for a course as well. And after many months I received a call on Monday 9th. The woman on the phone seemed professional and gave me the details and set up a meeting for yesterday at 8pm due to my work.

Steve was the guys name, a man in his mid thirties, he arrived early which caught me off guard. I didn't even see any identification and once he came in an introduced himself I had to ask him what the company was called as I had forgotten. The meeting was very straight forward and seemed legit as he had a thick folder of documents. After about an hour I filled in a short test and that was it. He said he'd set up a meeting for Friday at 8pm but call me today at 10am to discuss it further.

I was already sceptical after he left as he left no information, documentation or proof of any kind. The website itself is far too simplistic and offers far too little information. There is no way a legitimate company of that size would have a website like that with no contact information.

I'm not going to take this any further and would advise everyone else to do the same.

Lozzer2015

If you hover the mouse over the hyperlinks e.g. the words Plumber or Green Energy, do a right click and choose 'copy link address' - you get the following - (What's all that about!)

lustnlove.org/CLICK/click_m.php?u=aHR0cDovL2JydXNoZmV3LmNvbS8/YT01MyZjPTEyMDc0JnMxPUhNLUdLLVRDMTExMiZzMj1ITVhBTmV3JnMzPTU1NzIwMzg3NCZzND03MSZzNT1FZHVjYXRpb24mczY9WkE=[/url]

wishus

My husband is looking to change career from a horrid job and his brother suggested he could retrain as a plumber - so he looked up a course online.

He found http://tradecareeruk.co.uk/ (do not click - read on!) - and called up. He was told he would be interviewed for the course at home. What he didn't say at the time was that they'd asked me to be there. Well, I work, I'm not going to take time out for a grown man's interview, so he said I wasn't available.

However, it happened I was home after all, very poorly with cold. Trying not to hack up a lung or keel over during the interview probably made me look quite stony. However, my wits weren't as sharp as usual, and this story might well have had another outcome.

The lady who came to chat to us was nice and pleasant, and everything she said about the course and the college was plausible and convincing. My husband is now pretty long in the tooth, so an apprenticeship or full-time course would not be a good fit for him, plus we have financial commitments that a young student wouldn't have. So the thought that he could pay for specialist retraining in his own time was very attractive.

As I work in vocational training myself for a commercial company, I have certain expectations of my students: they need to be self-motivated, and we trust them to be grown-ups. They will either achieve the benchmarks we have set with ease or a little support, but if they don't pass, they don't pass. At the end of the day, we're a business, and we don't have the obligations of non-commercial establishments to trainees, only to the business. Therefore, when I realised this company was specifically targeting older potential students and those who wanted to switch careers, I was surprised a home visit was deemed necessary. Why should a college care if home life is stable, or there's space to work, or the cats are sitting on the keyboard? A grown-up has paid his tuition fees, it's up to him to find space and time to do the work, surely? I mean a hard-sell to the couple is what they might do if they were selling Kirby cleaners, but...

...oh.

I twigged that it smacked of sales technique: always sell to the little lady, even if it's the old fella's cash. (Not in this house, ahem! :rotfl:) But still, I was listening. I want my husband to be as fulfilled and happy as I am.

The course offered was either NVQ2 or up to NVQ3, and the lady said 2 was domestic, 3 was commercial.

My husband was asked about his dyslexia and did a test for his colour-blindness (oh my) which seemed appropriate, and the adviser mentioned that actually dyslexic people could be very intelligent and we tried to do an "oh really" face that showed delight and flattery rather than: "Oh. Really?" But I was also asked about my qualifications, which I thought may have been another flattery ruse (my graduate photos are on the wall) as everyone likes talking about how clever they are (at least, I do! :A). So I was a little surprised when the lady left behind a maths test and said she would call for the answers in the morning. A bit open for cheating that, surely?

And then she showed us a video of Tommy Walsh, who seemed to be advocating the course, and the testimony of some trainees. All very lovely, but there was a fleeting mention of the company name, 4 letters, not TCUK. :think:

She also mentioned we weren't guaranteed to get on the course, as she could only offer a place to 5 candidates she felt were most suited and before she went got directions to a house a few streets away.

When the lady had gone, we were looking at budgets and almost convinced to go for it. But later the doubts started trickling, and we started googling. We have both done work-based training looking for fraud, and there were some things that didn't gel:

• The company website: so basic, no contact number.
• They contacted us on a mobile number.
• A different company name on the celebrity video.
• A different company name again when they called the next day.
• An accredited FE college such as Bedford says both NVQ 2 and 3 are for domestic heating - not that NVQ 3 is commercial.

Even though they followed up the visit as promised, they seemed to drop us very quickly once my husband challenged them about the company name. I had a suspicion, too, that they had marked us as 'lemons' already.


Not a huge amount on the web about this company, but if you're a bit of a Sherlock and not so flued up, the mind palace can lead you some interesting places:


* Suspiciously, there is no 'about' page on tradecareeruk.co.uk, but there is a privacy policy hyperlink which leads you to a load of stuff about 3rd parties contacting you and contact info for Quantance Media.
* A search on Quantance leads you to a blank website for this company, and lots of company registration searches. This company has piqued an interest. No financial entries, but links to other media companies through the Halco group. I would not be surprised now if we get a lot of spam and cold calls related to accidents and insurance, as this seems to be the area Halco operate in, and the course website is a cookie gathering site for your personal info.
*What does Tommy Walsh have to do with this? Well, he has certainly helped to endorse a training scheme. See Express and Star here. this is a company called Engineering Real Results run by {Edited by Forum Team}. An entrepreneur with MPs' endorsements quoted on his website, and who is involved with many training companies including Skillstrain - an IT training company that has been investigated by Watchdog. This guy has done a lot of research. So many complaints about ERR online too.
*Look at this quote on the E&S article for journalistic naivety: “This new scheme, New Vocational Quickstart, involves renovating properties across the country which are either derelict or fallen into disrepair, enables them to get there (sic) NVQ in just weeks, instead of years.” ... So, when they talk about getting NVQs, do they mean these made-up qualifications rather than National Vocational Qualifications?


So, it would seem if you have a course where {Edited by Forum Team} name appears somewhere it's dodgy. About tradecareeruk? Well, it's suspicious because the site is based in US. They appear to have borrowed Tommy Walsh from one of {Edited by Forum Team} advertorials. Borrowing the cowboy's black hat, perchance?


There is literally nothing on the company reg sites about this company. What I think they've done is had a look at what {Edited by Forum Team} has been up to and tried to see if they can emulate it. but unlike a {Edited by Forum Team} course, there's no glossy brochure, no crap course materials. Just a scam... and we are lucky lemons. :T
Just be careful folks.

fubar8983

Just been visited by two salesmen sent by Trade Careers today 27/01/16, having read the previous reviews I decided to ring the mobile number to cancel them, as previous posts state they only had a mobile number which was not answered, same for me, no answer. But I sent them on their way. I still have no idea who they work for but I did write down their car registration numbers. One had a Mercedes {Edited by Forum Team} the other was a ford in {Edited by Forum Team}. So if anyone feels they have been deceived they can report it to the Police and give the registration numbers as a point of contact, deception to obtain money is a criminal offence.

Dontero

I answered a few questions about myself and gave contact details requesting more information about a welding course. I'm not 100% sure if it was tradecareer.co.uk, but the similarities in the web page makes me believe it was; they had a purple/blueish design before)

A few days ago I got a call saying one of their people were in my postcode for the next few days if I wanted a meeting, all very similar stuff to what you lovely people have posted; e.g. Tommy Walsh DVD, remote learning, a select few being chosen for second meeting, costing £7,000 in £40 a week instalments etc. etc.
So firstly, thank you all for your contributions here.
Secondly; the fella who came to tell me about the course and decide if I was one of the chosen ones has given the website brightsparkswelding.co.uk/ as the company he works for.

I'm convinced this is just another part of the same scam as it is far too similar; is anyone able to confirm this for me?

Sazziejane

My ova half applied for this had the family thing for motivation, 2 hour meeting (guy was late) with the 10 min dvd that everyone says about so we went for it

He got given two work books, log in details to there college and a disk to do practical on laptop, dvd is meant to download 3D software if you don't have it which it didn't I even went as far as to download some and still didn't work.

I didn't start googling and looking into it further until today due to I was meant to pay for the course well my partner has had money taken out off his account he didn't give them he's details but they had his card as the guy had to ring up and do a check on him cheaky it's a standing order so need signature for which they didn't get for that but got for the course so this raised my suspicions greatly

My ova half told him it took him so long to do this as applied for the same kind off thing years ago and was a fraud and guy was like no no we're not have are own colleges etc etc luckily we found out now not 3K down the line :mad:

ScorpiondeRooftrouser

Dontero wrote: »

I'm convinced this is just another part of the same scam as it is far too similar; is anyone able to confirm this for me?

It may be the same scam; it may be a different scam. Doesn't really matter. It's a scam.

CautiousUser

My son is looking for a new start, a new career and this seemed a really good way of gaining a recognised qualification whilst working.
Like everyone else, contact was made via a mobile and the first meeting was booked which my son attended on his own. This was promptly followed up by a second visit in which I was asked to attend, now as my son is 21 I assumed it was because of his age and therefore commitment to see the course through. We didn't sign up to anything because his current working pattern wouldn't give him the scope to study for 11 hours per week as well has have 11 weeks on site training over 2 years. So we stalled (thankfully) whilst he checked with work. The sales lady said everything that others have posted and stressed how amazing she thought my son was for wanting to better himself. At this stage I was doubtful especially when I asked where the onsite training centre was based and she said Southampton and Wolverhampton (for the electrics course) she didn't know which would be nearer to us in Bristol (why not?). So we left it there whilst my son spoke to his employer about changing working patterns, unpaid leave etc. During which time she called him again as said she would need a Yes/No by Wednesday (2 days time) I told my son to stall her and be honest and say he was checking with work, and also said as there is no "term times" it doesn't matter when you join, it has to be the right time for you not her as she is probably on commission, at this stage the pushiness was starting to ring alarm bells. In the meantime I thought that I would check out their competitors to see if there is a closer course to us or a cheaper one than the £7145.00 she quoted. Thankfully I googled TradeCareers reviews and found all of your very insightful posts. I have told my son who was very disappointed but also very relieved he wasn't caught up in the scam. What I will do is obtain her number and start to ask more questions around the location of the on site training centre in Southampton stating that I have family in that county and my son could save the £30 per night hotel fee she said it would cost! (which I challenged as even a P. Inn is £45pn and she said its £35 pn and they give £30 pn back ...hmmm why would they do that?) I bet she is she hangs up at that point. I hate feeling deceived so I will make this women feel as uncomfortable as possible for raising my sons hopes and trying to con us. If she does hang up I will post feedback on every type of social media and notify watchdog so nobody else gets scammed, if however she does give me the address and I pop down to have a look and they invite me in to see first hand then I will gladly update this post accordingly.