“This a disaster! they are a disgrace to education, knowledge and human life in general! Started a free course, disaster of a course, everzthing prerecorded, no communication with lecturers for whom you dont even know who they are, awful website and support. Charged me for the free 4 weeks, dont want to return money. SCAM! SCAM! AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!!”
“I have never dealt with a worse company, they are complete frauds.
Signed upto a 4week trial, tried to cancel after 3 days by email as the would not allow me to do on my account. They still took 49.99 from my account after the 4 week trial. Contacted them again to cancel and they could not give me a refund but confirmed they have cancelled my membership. 1 year later and they have started taking money from my account again. Will not refund me and said my account will be cancelled after my membership had ended which is dated next year. I never signed up to to any membership and I will be contacting my solicitor regarding my cancellation. It's complete fraud. I never even used their services. I'm warning everyone to stay clear of them, they will find a way to keep takìng money from your account. All you need to do is check the reviews to see they are doing the same to everyone, It's an absolute disgrace they are doing this, even worse we are in a worldwide pandemic. This company should be closed down for fraud!!!!”
“£44.99 was taken from my account for a "toolkit" that I DID NOT PURCHASE!
I called to request a refund and was very politely promised I'd hear back from the billing team the same day and the refund would be processed in 24-48 hours.
5 days later I still hadn't heard anything and was still chasing.
Any attempts to call and speaknto someone after cancelling are futile, a robot will recognise the number, say sorry your account has been cancelled, and cut off the line immediately!
Any emails send via the contact us form will be responded to saying someone will be in touch within 48 hours, and that is the last you will hear.
Thankfully my bank have raised a dispute and have BLOCKED all future attempts at taking money from my accounts.
The person I spoke to at the bank asked me if it was Shaw Academy I was talking about before I even had a chnace to me tion the name, and said they get A LOT of calls about this.
I would not reccomend this company to my worst enemy, in fact, I will be ensuring I actively DETER people from using this service, as well as making a complaint to the financial ombudsman and trading standards.”
“Joined up to do a course, but then I got swamped with work. Cancelled account over phone. All good...except they still took money out of my account. I contacted them and after 6 days had a reply - they couldn't help as my account was active (even though I'd not logged in at all since the call) and if i cancel my account then nothing can be done. I googled "shaw academy scam" and hundreds of links appear for people who have had similar issues.Scammers pure and simple. Why is this company allowed to operate?! Despicable lot.”
“They had an interesting program with a free trial. I signed up and thought their program was terrible so I cancelled it. The next month they charged me. On top of that they have made it where you can’t find their customer service number. So good luck trying to get your money back. I had to go in PayPal and remove my card so they won’t charge me.”
“I wish I could give them a minus star review. This is my first negative review online and I intend to share as much details as I can afford.
These people ripped me off £249.99 and they don't want to pay me back. I swear, I'll go to every website and interview I can find to tell the world how horrific these people are.
I got a free trial from them on Instagram and decided to try it out. Within 12 hours of signing up, they started calling my number during work hours. I always ignored it until I finished my first week of Video Editing course. I completed the entire course and even left them a positive review here on TrustPilot. I truly apologise if anyone read that review and made a buying decision. I have taken it down now.
The following week, I decided I'll invest in their course in order to see what I can learn in the following Modules of the course.
Coincidentally, one of their agents called me while I was free and spoke me into investing. I told him I'll take the annual one ASAP because I can't wait to study the rest. The money, £199.99 was taken from me immediately and I was happy to invest in my education.
7 days passed and I still had no access to the following Modules of my course. At this point, I had sent them 2 emails and no one had gotten back to me. Unfortunately, that was when my common sense kicked in and I decided to read other people's reviews online.
I was so shocked by the reviews I saw and felt like a total idiot for not looking here sooner. I decided to cut my losses and Get Out asap (get it? because I'm black. lol.) I tried to cancel my account, and these people offered me unrealistic deals such as lifetime membership for £24.99. I knew immediately that I had paid money to the wrong people.
After declining all their offers, I finally reached the place to cancel my account and they told me to give them a call before I'll be able to.
I gave them a call and nice lady called Nadia answered. She apologised in her most faked sincere voice and practically begged me to not cancel my account - saying she'll make sure I have access to my courses by the end of the day. Well, I'm an idiot and instead of demanding my refund and getting out like the hero in Get Out, I instead listened to the teaspoon in the cup and fell into darkness.
It's been 5 days since then and I still don't have access to my account. In that time, I took a closer look at their website and found that they don't even have Modules 2,3 and 4 as promised. They made me invest money into a course that they promised they had, and it doesn't even exist. It's just a bunch of titles with no content under them. There's some that say "Change Course Title" which means, they've not even bothered editing those titles yet.
I sent them yet another email demanding my refund, and I got a response from the worst customer service correspondent called Josiah. He ignored everything I said and sent this reply,"
"
Josiah (Shaw Academy)
Feb 20, 2021, 9:31 GMT
Hi Menelek,
Thank you for reaching out to us and for your patience!
We are sorry to hear that you wish to terminate your account and receive a refund.
Please Note - If a student purchases an E-cert or toolkit or any other optional course content from the members' area, by checkout page or any other method like promotional emails, refunds cannot be provided without just cause, as defined by incorrect content or pricing.
The course material is not free.
This is highlighted during the sign-up and in our terms and conditions located [here](https://www.shawacademy.com/terms/) in section 5.8.
Unfortunately, this purchase is non-refundable.
We understand that you wish to delete your account completely, but please be advised that we can no longer able to assist with any further queries once deleted.
Please confirm if you would like to delete your account instantly so that we can initiate the process. If we do not receive a response from your side, we will process the deletion request within the next 5 business days without any refund.
Thanks for your understanding!
Shaw Academy Support Team.
"
I called them today, and they have an automated voice saying "Press any number to confirm your account cancellation".
I'm going on a campaign against these people and I won't rest until they're brought to justice for their crimes against ordinary people who are just thirsty for knowledge. Such a shameful company.”
“Please refund my money i been debited twice now. After clicking on free trail since 2017 you guys are debiting me in 2021 this is not fair at all..... If there any sense humanity stop this scam.”
“Awful setup. Clicked through on a "free trial month". Took £49.99 straight away and refused to refund when 10 minutes later we realised it was NOT worth joining.
Many hours of fighting later we have given up.”
“Hello all,
Please beware of Shaw Academy's fake trial period. There are numerous reports of fraud out there but you will have to research to find them. I click on the so call "FREE" trial period on social media. I am good at using the trial period then either purchasing or canceling before the end of the trial. While on the website, the prompts to purchase such as "Purchase Course Materials" is a 1 click service. I clicked to read more about the item and was immediately billed. The company will ignore your emails and eventually tell you the charge is NOT refundable. There are numerous reports online of people being falsely billed or billed months after the trial period. My advice is DO NOT DEAL WITH THEM. I wrote this review to raise awareness for others...”
“AWFUL COMPANY THEY TRICK YOU AND TAKE MONEY WITHOUT CONSENT!! Avoid at all costs - trying to get a refund for my vulnerable teenager they skew reviews on trust pilot and block negative reviews on their Facebook page!!! Absolutely disgusting scam artists”
“Total scam. I had my account cancelled months ago by one of their own customer service teammates. Then, out of the blue I was charged for a subscription renewal. I was really confused and logged into the account, which I could see had a status of cancelled. I took a screenshot of this, and since I had great customer service when cancelling initially, I assumed they would be easy to deal with to get a refund and ensure I wouldn't be charged again.
The response I got was very fishy, they tried to tell me that I "didn't cancel in time" (even after being presented with the original cancellation confirmation from their colleague as well as the screenshot of the account's up to date status set to cancelled) and told me that "the good news" was that I now have access to my account again!
I've been waiting 3 weeks for a reply, refund and confirmation that all of my data will be permanently deleted from their system. This company is knowingly taking money from people who have confirmed cancelled accounts and then trying to say that it's normal.
Even if the course content is interesting for you, I'd recommend you try to find it on a more reputable online learning platform.”
“NEVER EVER use this company. They send a lot of messages to the company but they are scammers!!!!!!!!!! SCAMMERS!!!!
No real response from this company and the phone number is not valid!!!!!!”
“Please please please stay away from this company. They are disgusting. I was charged 49.99 in my free trial and phoned up multiple times to cancel, my request was always ignored and turned into them demanding more money out of me. It got to the point that I had to get my husband to phone them as I couldn't take it anymore. None of their qualifications are legit and verified. They are an absolutely vile company, and I am just so annoyed I got suckered into this.”
“I was scammed for a pathetic TOOL KIT that they make very hard to ignore and you simply can click by accident! This was supposed to be a trial for 4 weeks. I have now emailed multiple times, tried calling on multiple non-existent numbers. I have reached out to my bank in attempts to dispute this unauthorized payment. I did not agree to pay anything until my month long trial was over! Official complaint was also filed.”
“The Shaw Academy "free trial" is bogus! After joining in less than a month I received over 100 emails from Shaw Academy. After unsubscribing they're still coming. I've tried canceling by following all their instructions. Let me tell you that when the Shaw Academy responds to your cancellations requests with their canned automated messages they actually use the term "journey" next to the word process when telling you to follow it in order to cancel. Well I did go down that rabbit hole and took that long painful journey which is more like a quiz about why you should stay and reach your goals. The Shaw Academy makes it impossible to cancel. Then on the last page they say you have to call a certain number and give them your student ID# which is also revealed on that last page. Well after entering that the recording states you have the wrong student ID# and to try again. It just loops and loops after that. There is NO WAY to cancel. So I then went to Google and researched the Shaw Academy to see if others had this problem and to my surprise (shouldn't have been though) this has been happening to others as far back as 2015!! Why has no one put a stop to Shaw Academy. They are the worst! Biggest scammers. They'll charge your credit card anyways and keep charging you month after month. They're crooks and scammers! Stay away and run when you see anything related to Shaw Academy!!!!
Shaw Academy = Con
Shaw Academy = Scam
Shaw Academy = Crooks
Shaw Academy = Unethical
Shaw Academy = Needs To Be Investigated!”
“The lectures for the Web Development course are not live. They were recorded in 2016-2017 by a guy with a funny accent. The worst part is the instructor (Julian Quirke) seems to not have a very good grasp of the material he is teaching. A LOT of copying and pasting code from online resources which don't even exist in 2021. Talk about outdated.
For example, in Module 2 Lesson 1 "Bootstrap Fundamentals", instead of teaching us how to set up the bootstrap container by writing the code, he copies it from getbootsrap.com. He does the same with CSS sheets in previous lessons, which are no longer available on the web. I tried copying a snippet for JQuery from the above website (as he does in the Bootstrap lecture) only to find that Bootstrap doesn't even require this snippet of code to run JQuery anymore. None of the code that is pasted in these lectures is available in the Resources, and I don't know why.
Also, several minutes of each lecture are spent fixing errors in the instructor's code, because.... he doesn't seem to know what he's doing. He even asks the audience if they see the error. How professional. And he also spends time answering non-relevant questions posted by users who were lucky enough to view the live lecture in 2016. It makes for an incredibly slow-moving and hard-to-follow learning experience.
If you are going to have recorded lectures, they should be recorded professionally (not live), and you should make sure all the bugs are worked out beforehand. The way the program is right now, the lectures all seem ghetto and half-assed.”
“If I could give negative ratings, I would. It is a TOTAL SCAM. They scammed me of $70 before, but my bank resolved the dispute in my favor when these fraudsters refused a refund. After that, I canceled my account on October 7, 2020 (I have written proof). There were no charges from them after that, but these fraudsters tried to charge my account again on February 15, 2021. These scammers stored my payment details as a recurring charge on their database. I do not understand how any decent or ethical company would try to charge people after they canceled their accounts. If they charge me and have to go through the hassle of the whole refund thing again, I am dragging these fraudsters to court.”
