RED Driving School

Hands down Red Driving School is without a doubt the worst company I have ever had the misfortune of interacting with. Not "driving school", *company*. Period. I can barely put into words how disgusted I am with their service, or lack there of. However potential customers of theirs really do need to know just how shockingly bad they are. Whatever you do, DO NOT use them. I regret having done so on so many levels. Where to begin with this saga but the start, I suppose. I had the misfortune to book lessons with a woman named Shamime Emamally from RED. I've never had such an unpleasant tutor in any skill in my life. Rude, combative, unpleasant, defensive, condescending, deceitful... this woman was the works. What little she knew, she delivered incomprehensibly. Of the significant portions she didn't know, she would lie about and then become intensely abrasive when lightly questioned further about them. I learned more from my brother, my cousin and my girlfriend all separately having to correct her exhaustive list of mistakes than I ever did with her. Eventually when it became untenable, I was forced to make a complaint to RED directly. Hoping they would be able to make up for her deficit of manners, I alerted them to her rampant unprofessionalism and arranged a different instructor instead. I couldn't believe what happened next. I was contacted by RED again once they had spoken to Shamime and was informed I'd been accused of things not a single person had ever accused me of before. Constant swearing, rudeness... even entire fictitious events had been concocted from her mind like conversations we never had, or incidents that had never occurred like "nervous driving" or her having to pull me over for safety. Absurdly and demonstrably untrue. What had started out as a mutual distaste had now become being the recipient of wildly offensive and deceptive accusations. I was forced to escalate it further and that's when RED's uniquely poor customer service kicked in. They immediately wanted to wash their hands of it by repeating "it's he said/she said" over and over again, although they conspicuously seemed to drop that argument whenever there was an opportunity to defend one of their own. Never was I ever extended a similar benefit of the doubt. I felt I wasn't heard and when I was, I wasn't actually listened to, merely shooed away. The customer service agent Amy misquoted me several times and kept asking me "what did I want to happen"? I politely expressed that it wasn't my place to run their business, yet she kept asking it. Almost begging for me to just drop it so they could just pretend it hadn't happened. Ironically, whilst simultaneously saying that there was nothing they actually can do seeing as they're not technically employees, merely freelance associates. So any suggestions I might have had would have been met with confusing denials anyway. Clownish system. Sham's wildly inaccurate version was treated as gospel, whereas my version with 4 separate proofs provided was ignored entirely and every time I tried to get an answer to one of them, the subject was changed immediately. After being interrupted incessantly, rudely accused of doing the things Sham had said with zero reason or proofs, I was denied the opportunity by Amy to speak with a manager and was then hung up upon mid-sentence. Neither of which I have ever experienced before or even heard of being appropriate for a customer service representative to do. So there I was, trapped between exhaustion and helplessness. Whilst being treated with such a level of discourtesy you'd swear I'd actually done to RED what Shamime had accused me of! Nonetheless, I refused to give up and eventually escalated the situation to a manager who realised I was telling the truth and said he was "going to have a chat with her" whilst arranging a different instructor to take over. I knew the phrase was an impotent gesture, but absurdly I was just so grateful to actually be listened to and not treated like a liar that I accepted the situation and moved over to another instructor, despite the significant setback in progress that came with switching both cars and instructors as I had to prove myself once again, learn new methods of getting used to the new car and all the relearning of muscle memory therein and the various functions/accessories/show me-tell me questions etc that were all different in this new car. My new instructor was a man named Pawel Smigielski. Though relatively lethargic and disinterested, he wasn't too objectionable as I was just glad to have someone who wasn't as manic as Sham. It would only be later how "jobsworth" I would come to realise Pawel was when I got a better instructor who actually cared about his profession. However, it wasn't necessarily the man that was objectionable so much as it was a singular action he undertook that changed everything that came after & caused me more trouble than I can effectively convey As we all know, driving tests have become like golddust in the Covid era. It took me 18 months of solid searching before I found one. Just the one. 5 months ahead from the time I found it. I quickly confirmed with Pawel that he was available for it & he confirmed with me that he was. I asked for his driving number as they needed both his name & number to do so to make sure he wasn't double booked for the date in question. He said I didn't need the number & to just use his name. So I proceeded & booked the test. I was delighted. Finally all the months of exhaustive searching had paid off & I was on the books for a test. In the intervening months, we spoke about the test occasionally, with him telling me the protocols for it like how he won't sit in the back of the car, even though some instructors do & how he was going to drive me home afterwards because I would no longer be a learner if successful & therefore not covered by his insurance. Things that I wouldn't have guessed, but had no problem with obviously However just *ONE* month before my test finally arrived in August, Pawel casually announced to me mid-lesson that he was going on holiday & I'll need to book a replacement instructor to take me to the test I knew instantly this was a lot more serious that he was calmly stating. I also knew it was improper for him to be dropping this on me so close to the test itself. When I raised concerns about the timing & possibility of getting the same type of car I'd now practised in for about 25 lessons straight and was trained for, a renault clio, he dismissively said it would be fine & that that's the most common car at the company My head spinning with worry at such a magnitutinous change, declared so late in the game, with such dire consequences if I was to fail because of it, such as another protracted period of months, maybe years, before I could get another test again, plus the hundreds or thousands of pounds I pay in the interim for lessons as to not get rusty & the cost of the test again etc, I was panicked. I felt aggreived that Pawel had not only dropped this on me so late, but also that he himself had apologised for doing so, nor felt even the slightest bit responsible to find an equivalent replacment for me in time. He simply dropped me in it and ran I obviously immediately rang RED driving school & began the unbelievably torturous process of finding an equivalent solution that wouldn't jeopardise my test It turns out that was *a lot* easier said than done Right off the bat, Pawel began to lie to cover his unprofessionalism. He outright DENIED he'd EVER been the instructor on file for my test and claimed he'd had his holiday booked for months and told me as such! My jaw was on the floor. My mind was swimming with incongruities. I didn't know which argument to put forward first! That I needed his permission to add his name to the record as the instructor on the day to automatically check his diary for clashes, that we had spoken about it for the intervening months and I knew things about the way he conducts his test days that I couldn't possibly have known without him expressely having told me so, that given how seriously I take my test and how hard I know I searched for so long to find one that there is percisely *zero* chance that I would have heard him say "I'm going to be on holiday for your test, make sure you have cover" and done NOTHING about it for the next 4 months! The mere concept was laughable! And so I'd hoped RED would agree. Especially given the speed at which I had contacted them in July a month before the test when he actually *did* tell me about the holiday. It was the very next day! Alas, because I didn't have "concrete evidence" of his lie, as in (no joke, an actual manager expected this of me) "voice notes" of him confiming that he was the instructor on record for my test day! Silly me, I didn't predict the need to record my instructor at all times just in case he chooses to unnecessarily lie about one of the most fundamentally necessary parts of the entire driving school process. I literally couldn't even conceived of such a blindside so late in the game. Common sense wasn't used in the adjudication. I wasn't given the benefit of the doubt and Pawel got away with it scot free. The customer service I've experienced at Red really has been mindblowingly awful as some points. As in, unprecedented in any company I've ever dealt with. Once again, I was told it was "he said/she said" because I hadn't undertaken the action of invading someone's privacy and recording them the entire time I was in their presence. It was clearly a way for Red to just dust their hands of it and shrug their shoulders rather than use an ounce of common sense and realise Pawel's story doesn't hold up to any scrutiny whatsoever and in order for it to be true, so many other basic, human instincts and behaviours would have to be forgone and bits of information would have been needed to miraculously have formed out of the ether and manifested. I was bitterly disapointed with how they dealt with the Pawel situation and even more so when they tried to shut me up and move me from it by forcing me to take an non-equivalent solution. I had unpleasent experience of being dealt with by a member of the "customer care team" which, in retrospect, is an almost Orwellian euphemism for the department. She was curt, impolite, impatient, shouted at me, interrupted serveral times, denied me the opportunity to even speak to a manager (which to this day is the only company I've ever known to do that). She threatened me with simply not dealing with my call because for all of my flexibility in trying to clean up Pawel's mess, from being willing to change instructors, times/dates etc if RED could find me a new test, to changing my schedule to accomodate Red's insistence that the new instructor see my skill level before taking me on the test etc, the one point on which I was trying to remain consistent on was the need for the same car that I had practised in for about 25 lessons now. Something that I thought would have gone without even needing to be said, especially this close to the test itself less than a month out. At one point Louise just point blank hung up the phone on me because she lost her patience when I asked not to be interrupted so I could finish my point. She rang me back and, in my opinion, outright lied about having hung up on me. She said it was a fault. Just one that happened to sound like being hung up upon and happened just as she was losing her cool. Believable... I tried meeting Red in the middle so many times but every time my flexibility and concessions were taken for granted, abused and then even more expected of me. I didn't think it was so unreasonable to hold out hope that though their employee had dropped me in this situation, that the one thing I could hope they would make right is that they help me, as a paying customer, to pass my test by consistently providing something as integral as the same car that I'd trained for for a year now. I even provided them with so many reasonable solutions to solve the problem such as borrowing Pawel's car for just two hours, which he clearly wouldn't be needing if he was going on holiday. Or if that wasn't feasible, asking another driving school for an instructor with a clio to take over for just the two hours that was necessary. Or even just renting a clio from a car rental place. These and so many other, tangible, reasonable, actual solutions to the problem were not only rejected outright, but without explanation despite asking for one several times and the mere idea of any of these actual equivalent solutions were scoffed at. Instead I was backed into a corner as they wasted the final month I had before my test with constant promises of "getting back to me", which half the time they didn't and then I had to follow up myself, with them knowing the more time they wasted, the more I'd feel pressured and cajoled into just accepting their offer of a different car, a different instructor, only *a week* before my test date. I felt so let down by them. I was genuinely concerned that this would have an impact on my test and hoped they'd come through on an actual equivalent solution and not merely some other approximation of something which I'd just have to 'like or lump'. Which is essentially what the head manager, a dishonest man by the name of Chris, essentially told me in the several conversations we had as he tried to strong arm me into accepting this, whilst luring me on with the promise of looking into my solutions, none of which he took seriously he eventually admitted. I even only got to speak to him after going around Louise who'd told me it wasn't possible to speak to a manager about this problem, despite the severity of it, the time sensative nature of it and the fact that it was Red and Pawel's responsibility to deal with this serious issue. They knew what they were doing. As they wasted time, I was the only one who suffered and was forced into acquiescing into this non-solution with less than a week to go. Despite my pleas for some understanding about how vital a difference the changing of an entire car makes this close to a test date, I was constantly gaslit into being told that 'it didn't make a difference at all' and that I didn't know what I was talking about. This despite the fact that both instructors I'd had had both emphasised to me several times about how important even things down to "the pair of shoes I was wearing must be consistent so I get used to them". Funny how shoes apparently make a difference, but when it suits their arguments, suddenly something as integral to the success rate of a test like A CAR 'isn't relevent to the equation at all'. By their logic, it would have been perfectly acceptable to give me a Land Rover, dust their hands and say they found me a replacement. It would have been laughable if it wasn't so stressful. I just knew instinctually how wrong they were and how much they were just wanting me to give in, shut up and cover for Pawel and their rampant unprofessionalism. I was constantly belittled, my opinions denegrated, I wasn't listened to and I could barely get a sentence out without being interrupted and when I was it was with increasing hostility, decreasing patience and the ever present threat of them just dropping the pretence of assistance altogether and leaving me truly in the learch without a car at all. I expressed several times that though they may have experience in the driving school I knew my own abilities and I didn't feel comfortable nor safe being pressured to drive this new car, with its countless differences like whole new handbraking system from manual to electronic, to the now two sat navs whereas there was once one, to the bonnet structure which forced me to learn the new placement and look of all the various bonnet question tanks, to the new push pulse take off command which I now had to factor into every equation, even the gearstick felt more loose and the pedals lighter which cause me to overrev. On top of that even the dimensions of the new car felt off and as a consequence, none of the various reference points I'd memorised no longer worked and I had to start from scratch getting used to how a new car navigated manoeuvering into various bays and streets etc. All of which I had to do a week before the test with them offering me a tokenary lesson to get used to it and telling me I needed to pay if I wanted more. I had to pay more if I were to have the privilege of cleaning up Pawel's mess. Needless to say, I felt wildly out of my element in this new situation and expressed so several times to Chris' disinterest. As ever, the mere fact that I'd been open to the possibility of concilliation on the matter meant that I now had conceded everything and therefore had no right to be heard on any matter, or any of my concerns taken seriously. On top of all the safety and comfortability issues I now also had to get used to a new instructor a week out correcting all of my bad habits and innacurate lessons I'd been taught by Pawel. So as if it wasn't enough, I was now feeling like I was back at square one techincally with a new tutor who found fault with things I'd taken for granted. I went from being "test-ready" in a clio with Pawel to not being test-ready with a new guy in a completely different car. I even went as far as to try and look to change the test date so that I may avail of a clio again, which obviously was impossible because as I said in the beginning, tests were next to impossible to get and no one is giving them up once they have one. I tried every solution possible to clean up their mess even trying to get test cover with a dozen different driving schools I rang trying to find an adequate replacement. It was then I realised why Pawel felt the need to lie about having told me about his holidays for so many months before: because no other driving school would take a student with only a month to go before his test. It was an industry standard apparently. They just didn't do it. Pawel had screwed me. No two ways about it. Then he lied about it to cover it up so he wouldn't be on the hook for my inability to manouever. I was stuck. Because of him. Suffice it to say my nerves were shot, my confidence in bits, stressed beyond belief and I just knew catagorically I was going to fail the test. Would you honestly feel different in my position given everything I went through with Red Driving School? Even if I had have been positive, the practicalities of the myriad changes in circumstance I found myself in so soon before the test and without any understanding with insurmountable. My worst fear came true. The very thing I had warned Red about from the start. Mid test, despite my best efforts to assimilate the changes as I had no other alternative thanks to them, I got two serious faults, causing me to fail my test. Both because of the change of car. Exactly as I'd forseen. I was devastated. All that work, effort, expense, hope, thought, all of the stress, arguing, worrying, lies, concerns, gaslighting, dismissal... everything was instantly made not worth it when I failed because of their actions and inability to accept responsibility for a paying customer who they had a duty of care towards. All of it I could have forgiven and put behind me if my concessions and reasonability had at least been rewarded with a pass on the test. I could move on from it knowing the nightmare is over and not have to deal with the endless negativity anymore. However it didn't. My meeting them more than in the middle and good faith negotiation was met with the very failure I specifically warned them of. Because of them, my nightmare continues, trapped in this perpetual limbo constantly trying to look for new test dates every day. Having to pay all this extra money unnecessarily so I don't get rusty in the interim. The stress and worry of it all still stays with me. I wish I'd never gone with Red. To be honest, I wish I'd never started driving altogether. My life would have been immeasurably easier if I hadn't had the misfortune to come across them and give them my money in good faith for a service I *drastically* don't feel I received. Due to the impropriety of the whole misadventure and the rampant unprofessionalism, deceit and abject lack of responsibility therein, I've been forced to escalate this case to the DVSA and the the ombudsman so no other learner has to go through what I did. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. If you're still here and reading this, first off, well done and secondly, please just don't make the same mistake I did and make the simple decision to go with a different school that actually cares about it's students and has an assemblance of honour. If you doubt anything I've said above, its only natural. The story seems so wild as to beggar belief. I'd almost not believe it myself if I hadn't have gone through it. Just note two points though: One, I've never posted a review before as evidenced by my new profile. This is my very first one and I assure you it was cathartic to tell. Two, what could possibly motivate a man this much to chronicle such a saga of this sheer length if not abject disgust for the way Red conducted themselves throughout the proceedings. It's taken me about two hours and I still feel it's worth it. Especially if only one person heeds my warning and doesn't go with them. I wish you well in your driving tests and hopefully you get an instructor who actually turns up, let alone all the rest. Trust me, you cannot do worse than Red Driving School. You're better than to have to risk them.