Trustpilot reviews Categories My Reviews My Settings Help LOG OUT Alternate Text Stevie GB For companies Review of shawacademy.co.uk Stevie 5 reviews 1 star: Bad 8 hours ago PLEASE READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE YOU EVEN… PLEASE READ THIS REVIEW BEFORE YOU EVEN CONSIDER A FREE TRIAL WITH THIS COMPANY: I signed up for a free trial with the Shaw academy after receiving a free trial link by email. I joined their Diploma of Excel course with my first class booked for 2pm on 31st May 2020. I joined the class platform earlier than 2pm and noticed a link at the bottom of the page mentioning an 'e-certificate'. Wanting to know a little more about it I clicked on this link and without any further confirmation was charged 39.95 pounds. The link did not include the price and although it stated something along the lines of 'one click purchase' I thought that meant that it could be easily purchased after reading further information on its requirements etc. It did not present as a 'buy it now' button but was a highlighted banner of text and appears to have been designed to be deliberately unclear. This is on top of the fact that I was accessing the site as part of a 'free trial' and so one would expect that additional costs would be made much clearer. I believe the link is designed in this way to essentially coerce people into clicking it accidentally. As soon as I realised this had happened and quite upset by having been charged a relatively large amount for a document I had no use for / had not wanted nor authorised, I left the class and ended my free trial so have not accessed this 'e-certificate' in any way nor any classes with this company. I then contacted Shaw Academy by email on 31st May and the reply I received back on the 1st June was clearly automated, did not address my refund request at all and instead stated that they had in fact extended my free trial to give me further opportunity to use their service. Extending this without my request or permission but with my payment details clearly still attached to my account. I consider wholly unethical business practice and if you search them on this site, PayPal and instagram you will see that 100s of people have been scammed in this way. The 'ad' for the e-certificate does not from my understanding meet legal standards and I have reported this to the ASA amongst other regulatory bodies. In two more emails to the company about my refund request and wanting to receive confirmation that my account has been closed they've offered firstly $199 in online credit for their account and then in their latest email $499! Seems ridiculous to be trying to upsell to a customer who has explicitly requested their account to be closed on 3 occasions and I am still yet to receive any notice that my account has been closed despite these requests and actively ending my free trial one day into it! I am really concerned about how this company is trying to capitalise on the covid19 lockdown and take advantage of people attempting to upskill for 'free' during a very difficult period. PLEASE DON'T GET CAUGHT OUT LIKE I DID. This company use coercive one click payment links, that according to further negative reviews on Trust Pilot and Britain Reviews, can pop up at any time and can be easily clicked by accident and they are renowned for making it very difficult to cancel subscriptions leading to people being charged for these despite multiple attempts to close accounts. The reliability of their positive reviews on this very site have also been questioned. Look at the positive reviews and compare them to the negative ones? Which ones seem like actual people and not automated bots? Really concerned about the amount of people who will be scammed into essentially unauthorised payments to this company and so if my review can prevent just one of you going through what I have I'll be very pleased with myself.