Friendly Driving School

HUGE SCAM. Sanctioned by the state of Virginia no less. Now that the state has made a specific teen «behind the wheel» class– that is very often not offered in school– a requirement for a new license, places like this are making out like bandits, literally.
I paid over $ 200 for my daughter to take 14 sessions with the «school» and 7 were to be observation and 7 actual driving. They come and pick you up, so I thought that was great. My daughter went for her first lesson and was back in under an hour. I thought these were supposed to be two hour sessions? The second time, again she was back in less than an hour. It’s a pain in general to schedule with these guys– we had one instructor who I would have to wrangle with over times and then he’d cancel and reschedule etc.
Then came the real shocker. After the third or fourth outing, the instructor called me out to the car, has me sign my daughter’s temporary license and announces that she is done, and that the school would send the paperwork to the DMV/​court and we would receive a date for the licensing ceremony in the mail. But that was it– she was now a licensed driver.
And thank God I taught her to drive, because this «school» did not teach her to park, did not have her drive on the highway, did not teach her about traffic situations, and from what my daughter told me, she nearly wrecked the car on the way back to the house from the last «lesson» and the guy still passed her!
They do not care– they just want the money. I will not repeat the stories that some of her schoolmates had about this place in regard to the time vs money scam this place seems to be running because I want to stick strictly to my own experience.
The last thing that happened was that we never got the paperwork in the mail from the court. My daughters temp papers expired, and when I called the DMV they told me Friendlys had never sent in the paperwork. They had also filled in my daughter’s birthdate on the papers with the birth month as «0».
So I had to go back to her school, re-​obtain the classroom driving test documentation, track the teacher down, have him sign the papers, take my daughter out of school and go down to the DMV to sit for an hour and fill everything out all over again. Very, very inconvenient.
If the state of Virginia had not instituted this requirement, these places would not be able to run this con on people. Why are they not doing behind the wheel either through the schools or through the state. Privatizing it has made it ridiculously easy for unscrupulous places to just collect money in exchange for a signature and a piece of paper. These places don’t care about safety or teaching kids to drive safely, they don’t even care enough to send in the darned paperwork. All they care about is money, and how many paying students they can cram in on any given day. Think about it: the less time a kid spends in the company’s car, the more time that instructor has to rack up quantity. The whole thing makes me sick. I wish I could give a «0» rating.

Signed up for a class and upon showing up the doors are locked and no one is there. Called to find out why and said they had cancelled the class. Never received a phone call or any type of notification. They asked for phone number and information when I registered and I asked how the confirmation worked. Told me it was confirmed by this phone call. Would never recommend this behavior.