5 Driving Lessons for £25

Meallalone

hi,

I tried 2 schools offering very cheap introductory lessons and they were complete rubbish so I'm now paying £27 an hour for a brilliant instructor. He never shouts or get's irritated and is worth the expense. I wish I had listened to my friends who learnt with him. As somebody already said, you get what you pay for.
Best of luck.

Linkman

Would you hire a plumber that advertised that he would charge you less than it cost him in fuel and running costs to come out and mend your boiler?

Would you trust someone that knocked on your door offering to tarmac your drive for a knockdown price?

But you would trust someone to train you to drive who will be earning nowhere near the minimum wage, after taking for fuel, car costs, tax etc.

There's no need to pay the highest price for lessons out there, but it is worth asking yourself why a driving school feels it needs to entice people to learn with them by running the first 5 lessons at less than cost. Can they not actually retain learners any other way?

Sam_Spade_2

Here's the reason for the give-away driving lessons.

http://www.surepassinstructortraining.com

They charge £1500 a time to train Instructors and then they take another £180 per week for supplying a car and some work. They supply Instructors with 100 new pupils over the course of a year. These cheap lessons are coming out of the Instructor's pockets not Surepasses.

At an average rate of 2 new pupils per week Driving Instructors are unable to build their new dream businesses and so they quit. So they train another Instructor at £1500 and so on.

Keith_F

During those five lessons you can expect to get less tuition, less driving time etc.
Just think, Instructor A gives you five lessons for £25 then ensures you 'need' another 40 at £20.

Instructor B charges you £20 for every lesson and gets you through your test in 30 lessons.

Which is the cheapest?

You are going to have to work your nuts off to get through a driving test, do not handicap yourself with a bad start.

The best instructors do not need to cut prices like this, they get loads of work because they are effective.

iamcornholio

I can't understand how all you doubters are able to comment on something you know nothing about.

Non of you have had these lessons, or it seems know anyone who has, and its all just doom and gloom.

I've known learners who have paid top money for crap lessons and paid for 1 hour driving and got 40 minutes sitting in the car parked up. I've heard learners tell me what their "fully trained, experienced and qualified" instructor has told them and thought ...!!!!!!!

There is absolutely no connection between price and quality in driving instruction. It's as much as a lottery as any other choice of service or supplier.

At £25, even if these turned out to be 1/2 hour driving, thats still better than a single lesson from a more expensive school. And even if you sit in the car parked up for some time, that is still better than sitting in the car parked up and paying £35 for the privilage.

This offer is an excellent way for a new or inexperienced driver to get the initial lessons cheap - remember that learners don't do much in the first few lessons anyway.

FallingDownMan

iamcornholio wrote: »

There is absolutely no connection between price and quality in driving instruction. It's as much as a lottery as any other choice of service or supplier.

Well, I can't understand how you can say something like this without knowing what you're talking about :rolleyes:

Anyone earning £5 an hour is hardly going to want to do as much driving as someone earning £20 per hour. So that means a lot of time parked up talking. So there absolutely is a connection between lesson price and quality.

Some of the more recent posts are from driving instructors - and they certainly know a lot more about this than you do. A hell of a lot more judging by that statement above.

Companies who make these offers are doing it because they are desperate for pupils for their instructors. A lot of desperate independent instructors do it as well - and those areas the offer is now restricted to are saturated with instructors already. That's why they are making this offer. It's why anyone makes similar offers. It's to try and capture more of the market.

Since all instructors are self-employed, you can get good and bad ones whatever the company name they go under. But you shift the baseline for that when you drop the price that far. Even a good instructor will perform less well if he isn't making any money out of it. It isn't a charity after all, as much as you'd like to think it is.

Understand that after the first 5 lessons you'll be paying the top price for that company's lessons again. They know that many people will stay because it is less hassle. When that happens their game plan has succeeded.

But the learner is the one who stands to lose out in the long run: more lessons to cover poorer teaching (to cut costs) from desperate instructors is not a good result when you get down to the bottom line.

iamcornholio

FallingDownMan wrote: »

etc etc.

Your hypothesis is all based on the concept of money equates to quality. That is a totally inaccurate statement.

It is impossible for a good instructor to become a bad instructor just because he is being paid less. If he is good, his standard of teaching will remain the same however much he his paid. If his quality drops depending on price, then I would argue he is not a good instructor. It is the same for any person in a teaching position. This is not an Aldi and Harrods comparison.

If the first five lessons are crap, then why would you want to stay with the school? More likely that the first five lessons will be as good as any to retain custom. Ok they may be bad, in which case all the full price lessons are likely to be bad too.

Loss leaders are a common business practice. Just because a loss is made on five lessons, does not mean that the instructor makes a net loss over the year. OK, profits are not as good, but it does not mean a loss. In fact the opposite is most likely to result.
It is pure snobbery for posters to imply that "good" or "reputable" instructors would not make similar offers. You see this offer everywhere in the business world from the largest corporations to the smallest one man band. Some instructors may not feel the need to make these offers, but some may. That does not imply it is a bad thing to do - it may be a good business decision

You clearly have an axe to grind on this issue, and every one of your points has a counter argument in favour of this deal. Your argument is not objective, and fails on that alone.

laughingreally

obviously the above poster is not an instructor to come out with such crap

Keith_F

You miss the reason for this offer.

This company is selling it's driver instructor training to potential driving instructors. It promises them 100 pupils in the first year.

It uses this offer to drum up those pupils, all of whom will undoubtably get an instructor who has either just passed his qualifications, (ADI) or who is 'trained' but failed his qualification test (PDI) and is now going to use those pupils to practice on before retaking.

A bit like the 'models' that student hairdressers practice on offering cheap hair cuts. OK if you want to save money, but you wouldn't use them for your wedding hair do!

The idea that you lose nothing by having 'free' lessons is bogus. The hardest thing to do is to 'unlearn' bad habits.

5 poor lessons could cost you another 10 lessons to put right and get back to square one.

Most pupils will probably take around 40 lessons to reach test standard, at 2 lessons per week that's 20 weeks.
100 pupils in a year will generate 4000 lessons,add in travelling time between pupils of 15 minutes that is 5000 hours work. This adds up to 96 hours work per week! There is no way an instructor can provide quality instruction when he/she is trying to juggle that workload!
For this to work, they must be expecting the vast majority of these new pupils to leave after 5 lessons, now why would they expect that?

The majority of good instructors run around a maximum 30 pupils at any one time. If they get one through the test every 2 weeks, they will only need to take on about 25 new pupils every year.

When taking driving lessons, ask your friends, listen to recommendations. If searching from scratch search on the internet of yellow pages, find a company that will let you speak directly to the instructor you will have, don't trust a lottery. Look for instructors that you see in your area, thier numbers are on the car, call them, talk to them. If you see them driving around near your home/school/college they are clearly being well used locally so must be doing something right.

Remember, if they promise to get you through the test within a given period of time they are lying, nobody can do that. Only you can get yourself through the test, you just need to find the right person who can best help you achieve your best possible result.

Sam_Spade_2

Nicely put Keith.