Elementary Driving Academy, Bodmin, Cornwall.

Wow, just been reading all the reviews, I too have been through this! Met at Asda coffee in Bodmin went through everything, went away thought about it. Decided that this was what I was going to do, all seemed great could fit it in around my employment at the time. Applied for the Career Development Loan and got it. Then came a the rest! Didn't show up, would cancel last minute, made out he had a lesson before me in the Redruth and would I meet him there. (I also lived in Bodmin so my own fuel ect) sat waiting for him didn't show, didn't answer his phone, then got a txt saying that one of the kids had been taken to hospital! An so it went on £2500 out for pocket and a loan to pay back.

As anybody else if I had known any of this before I would never of gone near the man.

Dsa approved this clown.. about time we got our hard earned cash back!

 i gave him money to send off for my tests, and on equiry the dsa knew nothing of any money. 

I am reading horrified how this man has swindled so many people out of their hard earned cash. 

I signed up with them and I must admit at the time I was impressed, then as the months went on and I found myself struggling along on my own and having tried to contact him for help he informed me one of his children was ill and he was not working. Next i receive a letter informing me that the business was in the hands of administrators and they would be in touch. Now more than a year later I havent heard a word and am still £2500 in debt basically just for a few books!!! He best hope I dont run into him amywhere.

April 2009, i was looking for a change in carrer and decided that qualifying as an ADI would be a good idea, after all, I had been an HGV driver for years but was fed up of being away from home.

So I tried most of the established schools, Red, BSM etc tec, I read all of the horror stories on the internet of driving schools letting trainees down and charging them fortunes for a Franchise after qualification.

Then i spoke to silver tongued man, there was no problems, I could qualify easily, I could have a Franchise which included a fully funded dual control car and a full apointment book for £108/wk. The car would be changed every 18 months and I could choose almost any car I wanted.

That was it, I was hooked. So Informed old Silver Tongue that I had been granted a Career Development Loan and was he by any chance an approved provider?

He does seem good at what he does I thought I was just unlucky in that he fell on hard times -I lost £500 but having seen this I'm quite shocked. He comes across well, but then by the look of it he gets a lot of pratice.

my story is the same as all the other reviews if not some what worse as I have received no tution at all from him only a DVD. I signed up in April 2011 and he provided me with a Part 1 DVD and sporadically contacted me with support regarding the Hazard Perception. I passed Part 1 in July and he booked my 1st part 2 lesson, which he never attended his wife texted & said he sick. I have had no further contact from him. I have contacted the Police but they say they cant prosecute as he provided a DVD & therefore it's not Fraud! but they have said even though he has no assets (having been repossessed in June) we can make a civil prosecution, if we can find him and get the court to place a levy on his income which would eventually repay his debt. I have also contacted Cornwall Trading Standards ref: 3605 can you all make sure you have provided them with your contact details and as much information about him as you have been able to find out. There is an online contact form on Cornwall Council website. I have also contacted the DSA who say they have insufficent evidence to remove him from the ADI register ! so can you all please make sure you complain to them in writing. As a last shot I have also contacted Rogue Traders from BBC Watchdog, no reply yet but I am sure the more cases they get the better our chances are.

I have also chosen to write about my experience with Elementary Driving Academy, Bodmin, Cornwall.

Like the ever-growing flow of people before and after me I too agreed to meet up with this man to discuss his unlimited tuition for ADI training. When he contacted me to arrange a meeting at his "office" he stated that the office (spare room in his house) was being re-wired and could we meet up at Morrisons for a coffee (which I paid for!!)

Upon meeting him he seemed a genuine man that put all of my reservations to rest as he explained that if I started with him in Oct 2010 he could easily have me qualified and working for him with a full diary by March 2011. I am in the construction industry and this was being hit very hard by the current economic climate and I made it perfectly clear to him that I was currently not working and if I paid £2500 for unlimited tuition then I would be available 5 days a week and I needed to qualify ASAP as I have a home and family to support. He assured me this wouldn't be a problem and that the whole thing was well structured and he had a string of ADI passes to his name. And, if I am being fair he is very knowledgeable and a I found him to be a good instructor when he actually bothered to turn up.

This is the point where hindsight comes into play. The very next day he came to my home as arranged and gave me a few books and a couple of DVD's to aid my learning. We discussed my options to join his company when I had qualified and I did think he was holding back the juiciest information (how did the advertising work, how much to pay for pupils he would send my way, different options for leasing an instructional car etc etc). But, he put his reluctance to share this info down to the fact that he wasn't going to over-load me with all that yet but all would be clearer as we progressed. I gave him the cheque and when it was safely in his pocket he then told me he was going camping the next day and would contact me when he returned to arrange my lessons. To be honest, I didn't really worry too much because he seemed so genuine and he is quite a gentle person.

When he didn't contact me when he said he would I rang his mobile and asked him when my lessons would begin? He told me to reserve every Monday at 9am for a 2 hour lesson and when I questioned him about having 3 double lessons a week he said we could discuss this after my first lesson and we could book some firm lesson dates then.

This never happened! It was one excuse after another, kids ill, car trouble, wife in hospital, stuck in traffic, poor weather conditions etc etc. And, just when I reach the point of breaking he would turn up, we'd have a good, constructive lesson and I would give him the benefit of the doubt. Afterall, I didn't want to have a massive argument with him and then have an atmosphere in the car. I didn't think that would help either of us, so we plodded on with one lesson a week. And everytime I would say to him that I need more than one lesson a week he would have a great excuse why we couldn't that week but the following weeks would be different! They never were! If we did manage to book a lesson for later in the week, 9 times out of 10 he would text me just before his due arrival time to cancel with some great excuse.

I failed my part 2 twice, and while I will take a little bit of blame for nerves etc, I know he wasn't bothered. The problem was he wasn't correcting my 20+ years of bad driving habits. He was quite happy to turn up occasionally, let me drive him round for 2 hours while telling me that I would sail through the part 2 test and I had only missed one mirror check for the whole 2 hour lesson!

I got a serious fault for checking over my shoulder as I joined the A30 dual carriage-way. This was something that he specifically told me to do! I received minor faults for not doing mirror checks when changing speed or direction. But, according to him my mirror use was "spot on"!

After failing the second attempt he told me not to worry as I won't fail the third attempt because the examiner will let me through because he can end it all in part 3 if he wants to!!

I did pass on my 3rd attempt and he told me that now we would "up the pace" to get me qualified.

Then over the next 6 weeks or so the excuses seemed to be more erratic and random. He was starting to ignore any texts I sent to him, the "office" phone was diverted to an answerphone and he wouldn't answer his mobile phone either. After 3 days of trying to contact him, I received a text from him telling me he had seen the doctor and he had a nasty case of Laryngitis and wouldn't be available for a few days.

After a week I decided to contact him to see if he was feeling any better and to inquire about the continuation of my training. All of my continuous texts and answerphone messages to him were ignored for another week until I got a text from his wife saying that he had a lump in his throat and needed to have some tests done.

At that point I put aside all of my fears and actually felt really guilty for hassling him when he was very ill!!

I even sent him a text wishing him well!! What a mug!!

Another 2 weeks or so fly by and although I wanted some reassurance from Elementary Driving Academy I resisted the urges to contact him and felt that the poor man deserved some space.

Some several days later I got another text from his wife saying that the lump in his throat was malignant and they should be allowed some time and space to deal with this tragedy! She said I would be contacted soon to discuss my future training. Again, I felt pangs of guilt for hounding him!

Then I noticed the company website had been suspended due to non-payment and the office telephone no longer existed.

Over the next week I tried several times a day to contact him via text, email and by ringing his mobile. No joy there!! All my messages were again ignored.

I wanted to go to his house and confront him about his ethics but resisted because I know I would have given him a slap and then I would be the wrong side of the law and after everything he had already done to me I wasn't prepared to let him have the satisfaction of having me arrested.

I did go and see another instructor who has been good enough to pick up my training at the start of part 3. When I explained to him what had happened and by whom he told me that the man was well known around the local test centres as being very unreliable and also known as a bit of a dreamer when it came to business ventures.

On my first lesson with my new instructor he gave me a printed page from reviewcentre.com with a review of Elementary Driving Academy. There's that hindsight thing again!!

I did write to him asking him for the return of £1250 of my £2500 fee as I thought it was a more than fair refund amount as he had failed in his commitment to me and had been providing inadequate training. A few days later I got a brief reply saying that the company had gone into receivership and I would be contacted by the receivers. Yeah, right!!

I decided that I had given up too much of my time in trying to sort out the mess and decided to chalk it up to experience and try to forget it. I had my new instructor, who is great, and I just wanted to continue training to achieve what I set out to do last October. I am still training for part 3 but it is now structured and more enjoyable. And, in the words of my new instructor, "the only reason I won't turn up for a lesson is if I'm dead" and he hasn't let me down!!

I wasn't going to bother giving a review on Elementary because, to be honest, I am sick and tired of hearing the name "Elemetary" but I happened to just check back on the review and have noticed a few more "victims" of Elementary. So, I decided to leave my story here for others to read and to realise that you are not "stupid" or "too trusting" but, that you have just been suckered in by a very good actor, who will go to any lengths for a few thousand quid!!

And, just in case you ever do read these reviews, I stick by what I said in the message I left on your mobile.  And as for the question "would i recommend Elementary to friend"......I wouldn't recommend Elementary to my worst enemy!! 

I signed up with the boss of elementary driving academy in Bodmin Cornwall in August 2009. When i called him about becoming a driving instructor he seemed to be very informative about the course that he was running and that he was much cheaper than the bigger driving schools than ran the same course. I also made it very clear to him that i had dyslexia and that i was very worried about getting through the part 1 which is the theory test and the hazard perception. after doing this he said it would not be a problem because he ran a course with cost £2,500 which entitled me to unlimited training. which i thort sounding really good for my circumstances. After this i paid him that sum of money and really through out that two years i have had nothing but excusses why he could not come around for a lesson that was pre arranged over the phone. Or he would not even contact me too say he would not be coming around it was always me doing the chasing around for something that i have paid him to train me on. As a positive note when he did come around i found that the information that he gave me was very good. The type of excusses that i would get were one of his kinds was taken ill, bad traffic, running late thanks to the dsa, away working with the ambulance service, away camping, or just simply running late. After all of this i can't get hold of him via his mobile or is house telephone and i still have all three parts to complete after two years of signing up. I have now since been told that he has gone bankrupt.