Arabic-egypt

I signed up for Qur'an lessons via Skype with the Egypt Institute for Arabic Language Sciences. They also offer online lessons for Arabic and tajwid. Unfortunately, I started noticing that my teacher, Mohamed Waked [*******@hotmail.com or *******@arabic-egypt.com], who is also apparently the director of the institute, was using his laptop and chatting while "listening" to my lessons. This was after a few months with the institute when I got better at memorizing and knew what I had memorized better, so I could notice it. I noticed more and more that I would make mistakes, which he would fail to correct, or, if I suddenly pause because I forget what to recite next, he will often be totally unaware of where I am on the page or in the current chapter. I would check these after our lessons to confirm. Next, I starting holding the Qur'an in my hand to confirm this suspicion before asking my wife to sit in on a lesson and also listen to me recite. He continued to miss mistakes and forget, several times within our hour-long classes, from where I was reading. I then decided to confront him about the issue because the truth is that 3-5 mistakes, on average, would not be corrected per hour-long class because of inattentiveness and distraction on his part. In addition, he told me that he does not keep a copy of the Qur'an in his hand; note that one of my previous teachers is one of the greatest scholars of Qur'an, and he still had a copy in his hand because it's a big responsibility to make sure a student doesn't memorize incorrectly. These are best practices when teaching the Qur'an. When I did bring this to his attention, he admitted to using his computer to do other things during our one-on-one private tutoring sessions and not having a Qur'an in his hand but assured me that it wasn't a big deal. He also rejected any notion that he would ever make a mistake or that he has never corrected a mistake. Ironically, right after this back-and-forth, he didn't know where I was on the page, actually thinking I was on another page, so it was just another example of not paying attention to his student. For the remainder of the lesson, he was really mean to me and kept stopping me for things that aren't really mistakes; he said he just decided, at that moment, that I was ready for a higher standard, so it became impossible for me to read flowingly. After that last lesson, I asked for another teacher, complaining via e-mail, to the institute's coordinator, Umm Saif [*******@hotmail.com or *******@arabic-egypt.com], who is the female teacher and, obviously, closely related to Mohamed, based on many details I will not share here, which are proofs of this. She had a very strong response, called me rude for complaining, and said if I want to switch teachers it may take months to find a replacement, which got me thinking that there actually was no replacement, i. E., they are the only two people in this "institute." She said that it is not a big deal that he doesn't have a Qur'an in his hand, he is allowed to use the computer for other things during our lessons, and it is totally natural and not wrong at all that he misses some of my mistakes during each lesson, even defending the fact that he was intentionally being extra strict for non-mistakes when I called him out. I said that I am paying for a service and expect that it be delivered as promised, but she said that they don't do this for the money and are extremely offended that I would even call it a "service," i. E., they are serving me by teaching me. Note that I had transferred them $176 a couple of weeks prior via MoneyGram to Cairo, which is where this institute is allegedly run, probably from their apartment. I had only used up about 20 or 30 dollars in hour-long lessons and still had a large sum left with them as credit. I asked for a refund because the policies of the institute do not care if teachers do not have a copy of the Qur'an at hand, use their computers during lessons, are distracted as a result of using their computers and consequently miss students' mistakes, thus not even correcting them, which is the whole point of taking classes in the first place (I was told this by "Umm Saif," which is probably not even her real name; this is a nickname in Arabic, mind you.). I then get a response from someone unknown to me and not listed on the website of an online "institute" which only has a handful of students (I know this because an e-mail was sent out to all students for the 'Id Celebration and included a handful of e-mails.), who is apparently the institute's Director of Finances [Umar Muhammad - *******@arabic-egypt.com], to whom I complain again about this being wrong because I haven't taken classes. Within 30 minutes of sending a response, I get another response from another unknown person, who is supposed to be the institute's Legal Accountant [Dr. Ahmad Sa'id - *******@yahoo.com], and I doubt that a small, online "institute" run out of an apartment has a legal accountant with a PhD, who would respond to my inquiries within 30 minutes, especially considering it was dinner time in Egypt on a weekday evening. Needless to say, they refused to refund my money, called me rude (the director, the coordinator, the fictional director of finances, and the fictional legal accountant; all of whom I suspect are the same two people and the only two people mentioned on the website (including the "reviews") as well as the only two people with whom I've actually spoken via Skype, so I've heard their voices. What really proved this to me was that "Umar Muhammad" sent me an e-mail with weird characters (unicode) I had to decipher, the same as when Mohamed Waked sends me e-mails from his cell phone to tell me he can't make it to class. In addition, the e-mail from "Ahmad Sa'id," had, when I clicked on the sender details, mentioned that replies would be sent to Mohamed Waked, i. E., *******@hotmail.com. This is another reason I love gmail! It basically showed that these were all the same person pretending to be others. I have been lied to repeatedly by both Mohamed Waked as well as Umm Saif, and I don't trust them one bit. They basically stole about $150, but I admit that I was fooled by transferring them the money in the first place. I recommend no one does business with them and avoids them like the plague. Do not trust them with your money! If you're currently a student, try to listen closely to typing or see if they actually pick up on your mistakes. I'm sure you'll find that they're getting paid while surfing the net and chatting with their buddies online. However, I don't recommend leaving the institute before your money is all spent on lessons because they will pocket the rest and still be able to sleep easy at night. I am posting this to protect other innocent seekers of knowledge from the fraud, theft, and lies I've experienced. I won't let that dishearten me, and I am continuing my search for a teacher I can see, face-to-face, because I have lost trust in these online classes.