All that remains of Driving school Mustangs is its recognizable name. This year the website also saw no changes, and it has not become more user-friendly.
Instead of focusing on improving the quality of training, Mustangs has turned to various Facebook campaigns to attract students to the driving school; the December tactic was a very simple and obvious question — almost like asking “what is 1+1”.
Among other Facebook activities we observed that Mustangs deletes unwanted comments and blocks users who have posted negative remarks; such behavior indicates that the driving school is trying to create a misleading impression that it is flawless.
Driving school gift cards for 10 driving hours, or 5 driving lessons, are used to attract students to the school.
“Special offers” do not make the training process cheaper, but instead create the opposite result — instructors are interested in “recovering” the cost of the free lessons by deliberately prolonging the driving course.
Driving school Gross has turned to rather shameless tricks to attract new students. At first it lured people with the slogan “Theory training only for 30 EUR”, whereas now it claims “Driver’s license – 30 EUR”. Such attention-grabbing advertising clearly misleads consumers and raises the question of where the responsible authorities are looking.
We observed that expired “promotions” are deleted from the Facebook page in order to create the impression that the “new promotions” price is truly a new offer and a rare opportunity that should not be missed.
It has also been observed that Driving school Gross adds a clause to contracts within promotional offers stating that, in order to receive the discount, the student is “bound” to take driving lessons at the driving school (or even with one specific instructor). This condition contradicts driver training regulations, which give students the right to freely choose the instructor with whom to take driving lessons, regardless of which driving school the instructor is associated with.
It has also been noticed that Gross does not always provide all information in Latvian, for example in the driving school’s winter offer (winter.gross.lv).
Gross claims that it has the “highest success rate in Riga”, however this statement is not entirely accurate. Although the results for passing the theory exam have been high, they rank 2nd rather than 1st place.
In 2016 CredoAutoprieks received a new face — the driving schools Credo and Autoprieks officially acknowledged their merger, and a new website was created for the school. It may seem like a small detail, but the Latvian version of the website is full of various grammatical mistakes.
A promotion in recent months invites people to “study two for the price of one”, while also alternately offering a discounted theory training price — 69.80 EUR instead of 139.80 EUR. So whichever way you look at it, the theory training price is essentially one and the same — reduced — a classic attraction tactic.
Driving school CredoAutoprieks does not stop with promotions on its website — throughout the year discount coupons were also available on shopping portals, with the offer period extended depending on convenience. Both of these tactics indicate that the real price of the service is always the same — low.
Is it acceptable for a driving school that positions itself as a “university for drivers” to persistently offer discount coupons? What do such prices say about the true value of the service or the level of training?
CredoAutoprieks claims that 92% of students finish the driving school on their first exam attempt, yet the actual pass rate for the B category driving exam over the last six months has been only 42%. Do these 92% refer to everyone who eventually returns to the driving school again and finally obtains the desired driver’s license?
In terms of training, Driving school Fortūna is at an average level within the industry (87% of students have passed the theory exam). What caught our attention were the driving school’s marketing activities, which have not been fair.
Free theory comes with obligations to the driving school; Fortūna regularly participates in coupon campaigns, which at the same time overlap with offers on its website, creating confusion about the real value of the offer or service.
Driving school Eksperts is about 10% below the industry average in theory training — only 3 out of 4 students of the driving school pass the theory exam. Slightly less than half of the students have passed the B category driving exam, while the A category level is alarmingly low — barely 14% have successfully passed the A category driving test.
The results of Driving school Eksperts raise doubts about the level of training and at the same time do not justify the name of the driving school.