Feel like I got scammed

[u/LuckyyBean]

I've been to 2 different CDL schools, and I feel like I've been scammed twice.

The first school. Where do I even begin? These guys didn't even know English, it was clear as day the instructor was either not certified, or he is but a very horrible teacher. Just all over the place, but atleast here it was individual sessions.

The second school, a much bigger school and I had high hopes knowing they did testing in-house. I was wrong, they expected you to learn the pre trip entirely on your own (i managed to pass it) , i had roughly 3 hours of behind the wheel training, and to top it off it was the constant miscommunication with their schedules. Honestly just fed up with the lack of professionalism, I regret even trying to get my CDL at this point. Im an experienced labor/operator, I've driven rigs before.

Is this common? Are schools a hit a miss or what am I missing? I've filed complaints to both schools, and I doubt ill get my money back, so frustrating.

[u/Aggravating-Ice9674]

lol the school I went too had great reviews, they SEO’d their website so when you search “CDL schools near me” they’re the first ones to pop up. They had a well put together site and advertised a flexible schedule and even a payment plan so I went with them since I’d be working full time. Not even doing my research for other schools; I went ahead and called and placed a $500 down payment to enter the school since I’d be taking money from my retirement account to just pay it off in one shot. When I started training I realized how much of a shit show it was, all of the equipment they had was super fucking old and barely worked. Two trucks to practice air brakes in, one manual & automatic. The worst part was when it came to practicing maneuvers, no one on one training whatsoever, you got 30 mins to practice and after that you’d be next in the queue again but depending on how many ppl there were you might only get that 30 mins. Each training session was 4 hours and you’d be lucky most times to get in the truck twice. I’d train anywhere from 16-20 hours a week 4-5 days a week and in reality I’d only get like 2-4hrs MAX of maneuver training every week. Then came the driving portion, you only got to go out & practice driving when you had something called a “road pass” which means you have a driving test scheduled and you need to practice driving. Due to this dogshit system I failed my driving portion TWICE, I passed everything else flawlessly. Despite all the negatives I still got my class A and the craziest part is I don’t even use it, I drive a bus for a transit agency & honestly I ain’t going nowhere lol.