A driver’s experience
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Kevin Fleat was unemployed and desperate for work when he came across an online training firm offering fast-track employment.
He says the reviews on its website were favourable and it also promised full employment at the end of his LGV training; he claims it even named a well-known courier company he could work for.
“With the employment at the end it seemed too good to be true, and they were very pushy,” he tells CM. “My gut feeling was ‘is this for real’? But I guess being out of work and just about to spend £1,000 on a new career, I just needed
the work and to get back to being employed.” Fleat was told he would receive online instruction, a medical and five days of practical training for his money.
But after he’d paid £89 for the medical and it took weeks to sort out, with no date provided for the practical training either, he started to worry that he’d been scammed.
Fleat says he made a complaint to the company but it was ignored and so then he did more research about it online and found complaints from people who were in a similar position to himself. “I did not realise it was a broker at all,” he adds. “Even when they said about the practical training they referred to it as ‘one of our training schools near you’.” But in one important way, Fleat was lucky. The training was paid for on a credit card, which meant he was able to claw back the money through the card provider.
Following his experience he says: “The advice I would give now is to contact the Driving Standards Agency. Find out where the local test centre is, go there and ask them for local training schools.”