TomB

Here's an update on my wife's experience so far: We wanted to get started by making sure that she has the software installed for some of the courses she'll primarily be focused on - namely Adobe Photoshop and other Adobe products. e-Careers said that she would be entitled to purchase Adobe software at a discount based on her enrollment in this course. I was, of course, very skeptical, so I asked a lot of questions. I questioned e-Careers. I questioned ISIC. I questioned Adobe. After she went through the process of obtaining an ISIC card, and submitting a copy of the ISIC card and the Groupon receipt to Adobe, they approved her for the purchase of the discounted software! The way I see it, she purchased a groupon for a course to learn this software. One way or another, she's going to learn it, and to do so, she's going to need this software on her PC to do so effectively enough to get a job using this software. For anyone that's not already a full time student somewhere, this can prove difficult since after taxes, you're somewhere in the neighborhood of paying $2000 USD for an Adobe CS6 Suite that covers most of it. We got her software for $449 direct from Adobe. Even if the e-Careers courses turn out to be total garbage, she's still ahead of the game. When she finishes with her Java course material and moves on to the e-Careers based courses, I'll let you know how that part goes. I suspect that she'll probably go through those courses as a good introduction to the topics and then have a good enough handle to explore further with the free online resources to broaden her knowledge.

This might possibly be one of those situations that I was referring to regarding someone's lack of comprehension of what was presented to them. If this was a Groupon purchase, for example, whatever you paid for the Groupon is able to be applied to a purchase without deadline if you miss the deadline to redeem your Groupon. For example, if I purchased a Groupon for $20 to get $40 worth of food from a local restaurant (common type of offering here), but I didn't redeem it in time, I could still go visit the restaurant and get at least my $20 worth of food for as long as the restaurant remains in business. If you missed your redemption date, that was your fault. If you took what their web site to say as to imply things that it doesn't say, that was your fault. They legally had you on the hook to only offer you an amount of courses that could be paid for with your original voucher purchase price. It looks to me like they were being very lenient to offer you the original deal for a nominal service fee. Dealing with reinstatements and the time it takes to read emails or take calls from customers who missed their deadlines probably causes an expense for them. You can't expect them to work for free, or to give you an additional 10 pounds worth of their time because you made a mistake. I'm sure those 'scam reports' are filled with garbage like this. Most always they are. I wish they were limited to the real scam reports because I don't get paid an extra 10 pounds to weed through the bad reports to find out if there is anything legit in them. Perhaps you should pay me 10 pounds too.

There are some very interesting opposing viewpoints about e-Careers here. What I did not see is any compelling evidence that they are 'scamming' or offering something of less value than they are charging. I can only assume that either A) there is none, what is conveyed is 100% opinionated, or C) there is some evidence that just hasn't been presented. If from the above, 'C' is the most accurate, I'd like to know more about it. The reason for my post is that I make it a habit to avoid funding organizations who are in the business of making money through means of deceit... even if it's only $149. I don't count people who have poor communication and/or comprehension skills who then misunderstand well intended information as the deliverer of that information as being deceitful. If anyone has anything meaningful to contribute on that topic, please spell it out and I'll get our $149 back from those 'deceitful bastards' (if that's what they are). I purchased this package for my wife via Groupon. We're looking at the '37 Web-Design Courses' package for the primary reason: It provides a way for her to get an introduction to products and technologies which she currently doesn't know what each are for individually except that they can be used in some way to create and maintain web sites. I did not purchase this for her with any expectation that her taking these courses would bring her up to an expert level in any of the topics offered. That would be foolish. I've also come across a few nice unexpected pluses: 1) The courses provide self-contained simulators so that the person taking the course does not need to own or purchase any expensive products, such as Adobe Photoshop, etc., to get the benefit of learning how to use the software. 2) If the course taker wants to use the 'real' software, they can purchase an NUS card for a nominal fee and use it to purchase Adobe Student and Teacher Edition products. 3) From Adobe's FAQ: Student and Teacher Edition products can be used commercially (means that if my wife eventually wants to use the software to help me with some of my commercial development, she can) Irregardless, if these folks are 'scamming' people, I'd still prefer to know this. Regarding the opinion of 'freely available online tutorials' are better than e-Careers, from what I've read in this thread, so far it's just a matter of personal opinion and what you expect to get out of either, and not a matter of factual information. As my wife progresses with her courses, I'll come back with mine and her takes on it. She'll be starting them some time early October after she's spent a little more time on other topics she's learning from a book.