Hi Sirlp01,
Thanks for your enquiry regarding refresher courses.
Allow us the chance to clarify with regards to the rates quoted.
I would like to stress that we were in no way looking to make a quick buck out of you, nor does the extra $60 go to us as you have suggested.
A few points to establish:
Different private driving instructors charge different rates for lessons, especially for refresher courses where the rates tend to vary widely ($50-$80/hr).
As refresher students such as yourself normally seek minimal lessons (2-5), some instructors tend not to be too interested as there is little commitment and little money to be made in those few lessons.
Hence, instructors tend to charge an extra "registration fee" as an incentive for them to teach refresher students.
However, please note that this does not apply to all instructors. If you find an instructor who is willing to teach you without the extra charges or for high hourly rates, I would strongly recommend that you go for it as it is pretty rare in the market.
At Le Driving Instructors, our company's function is to match students based on their preference and requests to our existing pool of over 50 private instructors. With our service, we hope to minimize the hassle of students having to call instructor by instructor to look for the right one who is able to match their personal preferences, such as pick-up point, language, test location...etc.
You are right to say we are not a driving school, our functions are more similar to that of a a middleman.
However, we do not make a profit by increasing lessons prices or registration fees. We quote the exact rates that the same instructors would quote on a normal day or to a random new student.
Our business approach bases itself solely on agreements with driving instructors, and not from charging students extra just to earn a profit.
We would like to reemphasize that students who utilize our services do not pay extra for lessons just because they have gotten to know the instructor through us.
Back to your case, you requested a pick-up location closeby to Ubi. We found an instructor which was willing to do it at ($50/hr), unfortunately he requested for the $60 registration fee.
I hope that you understand that we were merely conveying his quoted rates to you, and not looking to make a quick profit out of you. We apologize if there was any misunderstanding involved.
We wish you all the best in looking for your refresher course, and we appreciate the chance to clarify this important underlying concern on a social and public platform.
Thank you.
Yours Sincerely,
Le Driving Instructors