
Sherri of Longmont, CO on Sept. 27, 2011
Satisfaction Rating1/5
Sylvan is sold out to franchisees. A lot of people don't know that. My daughter actually got a good education at the Longmont and Boulder, CO centers. She had a very good teacher. However, Sylvan, in general, doesn't keep their promises and don't trust them. My daughter took Algebra 1 for credit and it was approved by her school to do. At almost the end of her course in Longmont, CO, she was informed that the center would be closing and she would be moved to Boulder to finish. She went to Boulder and finished, and had the same teacher who moved there too and the director there said he would get the transcript to the school.
At that time, the Boulder center was closing down too and all the people there were upset at losing their jobs. My daughter went on to school and they allowed her to take Algebra 2, the following year. It wasn't until now that she is a senior that they informed us that Sylvan never gave them the paperwork. I do fault the school for waiting so long to let us know, because if we knew the year before, we could have enrolled her in different classes to make up for it. We had no way of knowing they didn't receive the transcript because they allowed her into Algebra 2 and she finished it.
We contacted Sylvan's head office in Baltimore because the franchisee of this area completely closed down all his centers. The four centers had been owned by H&S Educational Enterprises, Inc. which is owned by Bruce Hassan, Sherry Hassan and Kristin Smith of St. Augustine, FL. I do not know if they own Sylvans in Florida, but they owned the ones here in Colorado and will not acknowledge my emails. The head office said they only received the progress reports as far as Longmont, but none of the Boulder paperwork. Last week, they agreed to send the transcript with a lower grade taking into account the part of math they didn't have credit for. So basically, they were averaging the 0% into the 100%. We didn't like that, but if she doesn't get some type of credit, she doesn't graduate.
Today, Nina at the information desk contacted us to tell us that they changed their minds and couldn't, in good consciousness, give her a transcript based on something they didn't have; even though the director of this franchise area gave them a call and told them what happened. They want to do testing on Sarah (at my cost) and if she doesn't do well on material she studied back in 2009, I am fully confident they are going to offer their services for more money, of course. I don't trust them. I don't trust their test to be honest and I refused to have her take more hours from them. Fat chance of us paying them even more money. I don't trust their testing because every time my daughter took a test, they decided she didn't do well enough and that she needed to repeat almost everything at least once and sometimes, twice. That's how our bill got so elevated. We bought into it because she has never been strong in Math and thought maybe she was doing badly. Yet she went on to high school Algebra 2 in a highly-rated school, did well and never had to repeat anything.
Apparently, according to a woman named Glenda at the main office in Baltimore, they needed three or four days to sift through paperwork the franchisee 'might' have sent in when they closed and it 'depended on what condition they sent it in'. It totally flabbergasted me that there isn't a requirement for submitting paperwork regularly and in a certain order, or when a franchise closes. They didn't locate any paperwork and would only go with the numbers that had been entered into the computer system, which was only the work through the end of the Longmont center. So basically, I paid over $8,000 for a product I didn't receive and my daughter gets to pay for the mistake by not graduating with her friends and being embarrassed. She is devastated and she worked the hardest of all on this. Three days a week for two hours at a time, for almost a whole year.
The main office blames the franchisee, and the franchisee won't speak to us. It is the main offices' issue, though, in my opinion. It was their Sylvan name we trusted and no longer trust. They want to sell their franchises, but they don't want to be responsible for them. If your franchisee screws you over, tough luck. Even getting my money back for a product I didn't receive won't take the pain away from my daughter of not being able to graduate. They have even refused to do that and they only referred us to 'Legal'. My daughter is sweet and kind to everyone, shy and sensitive, and she works so hard at everything, even things she finds especially difficult. I've been blessed to have such a usual child who didn't take me through the teenage trauma of most girls, and I am angrier than I can ever convey.
Don't buy the lie that they care about you or their students. You are just money to them and if you aren't paying at the moment, you don't matter. I am posting this everywhere I can because I think people should be warned. You are putting your child in the hands of a franchisee that you know nothing about. It isn't the same thing as eating a burger at a McDonald's franchise or playing a game at a Laser Tag franchise. It is much more important than that. Unfortunately, Sylvan doesn't run franchises and keeps records with the same diligence and responsibility McDonald's does. Ask the teachers at school for recommendations for a tutor that other kids have worked with and had good experiences with, or ask other parents. It'll be cheaper and more reliable, and since the teachers and parents aren't usually making a living off selling the product, it will be more honest.
It should be a lot cheaper to find a tutor that way. We began by being told this was going to cost us $4,500 for the school credit and it kept elevating to almost $9,000. They knew we needed it as a credit and took advantage of that, and are still trying to. I am posting this everywhere a review is possible, just to warn people. The reason you read good reviews in one place and bad ones in others is because the franchisees are all different people and the company, as a whole, is not cohesive or discerning.