Take a look at this message in the email inbox today: 

Good Afternoon, 

  

We have a 12 hour course in PE11 with a test on 11th March in Boston at 11.11am. 

  

Customer pays you £300 in full 48 hours before first lesson. 

  

Are you available please. 

  

Kind Regards 

 

Name withdrawn

  

Company name withdrawn

Company website withdrawn  

Company telepone number withdrawn

The sender of the email has a “customer” who has expressed an interest in receiving a 12-hour intensive driving course, which already has a test attached to it on a pre-determined date. They are desperately going around sending emails and texts to ANY driving instructor who is remotely near to the PE11 postcode (we received this and are a 50-minute drive away). And it is desperate. Look what assumptions are here. 

Who is to say that the pupil will be ready after 12 hours? Or is it more the case that the pupil has decided what they need. We know that pupils are notorious for not knowing what they do not know and tend to underestimate the number of hours they need [Dunning Kruger effect]. 

Does the 12-hour “course” include test day? No mention is made; maybe it does, more likely it doesn’t. So the hourly rate for the instructor is £25/hr and very possibly less than that if the time needed for the test is not included. 

Who has quality assessed what the pupil has previously covered in line with the DVSA Driving Standard, and just as important, the pupil’s ability for those covered subjects? 

So what you have here is a “middle-man” who is connecting up a customer (pupil) with a provider (instructor) with very little ownership of the outcome. Who is responsible for the results here? It is very unclear. Very likely, with such ambiguity, no one is responsible for consequences:

• The driving test gets aborted. 
• There is an accident on the test. 
• The result is a test fail. 
• The confidence of the pupil is knocked. 
• The customer is unhappy. 
• The driving instructor has a “test fail” racked up against their name by the DVSA trigger data.
• The pupil although not being safe actually passes the driving test more by luck than ability. 
• The pupil goes on to drive alone to a poor standard, risking safety for all. 

In effect, this is the worst kind of dumbing down of driving training that there could be.   

Is it any wonder that this kind of service gives providers of intensive driving courses a lousy reputation? 

If you are reading this blog because you are interested in joining the BIG TOM franchise, this is NOT how we go about business, and this is as far removed from the level of care and service that we offer as you can get. 

If you want to understand how we provide intensive driving courses with integrity, then get in touch.  Call us – 07498 337 629 (Mon-Fri 9-5)