Costas Constantinou

Apr 11, 2024

Beware of Taking a Study Break

I registered for a course in the past (quite a few years ago) and was told at the time that courses never expire. I had to take a break from my studies for personal reasons and returned to find that the course had been removed from my Portal. It took me three weeks of being pushed from pillar to post on three different live chat platforms to be told that as I did not inform them that I was taking a break, I had to pay £40 to reactivate the course to complete it. Never mind that not once was I sent an email to ask if I was planning to complete the course or to inform me that the course would be removed soon etc. Whichever live chat platform you go to, you are told to call the Customer Service number and then are on hold for ages as they are clearly short-staffed in the call center. When I finally gave up (after weeks of being given the runaround) and agreed to pay the £40 (again the only way to pay was to call and spend 20 minutes on hold), I was sent login details only to see that another course I purchased was still there and available, even though I stopped it much longer than the course I was being made to pay to reactivate for inactivity!!! Talk about moving the goalposts and saying whatever suit you in the moment! The only person who was actually helpful in this entire fiasco was Ben on Live Chat. He actually made an effort to get to the bottom of what was going on and then was restricted by his own systems when he couldn't take the payment and instead had to ask me to call the Customer Service 'not-so-hotline'. Dear Stonebridge...Don't tell people that your courses do not expire (check out their FAQs - it says it in black and white) and then proceed to remove courses without so much as a single email notification to your student. Staying silent and then trying to enforce a restart fee is a pretty dirty trick and only reflects on you. I will finish the course I paid for, but never again! Fool me once...