We had a terrible experience with Joe's Driving School. We used them many years ago for my oldest child, and other than the long break the instructor takes in the middle of the lesson, things went OK.... Read More
We had a terrible experience with Joe's Driving School. We used them many years ago for my oldest child, and other than the long break the instructor takes in the middle of the lesson, things went OK. We decided to use them for my second child and it it was an awful experience!For the first lesson Joe came to our house 10 minutes late, saying that he couldn't find our house and had to park a block away. I thought this was strange because he drives the same area for a living and had been to our house for our oldest child. He had our son drive back to his Glendora office where he took a 30 minute break, and told our son he was,"doing paperwork," Then he returned our son to our house 10 minutes before his appointment was up. I thought this was strange, and that his timing cut almost half of our sons driving time out, but we figured it would be better at the next appointment. For the second lesson, Joe was 10 minutes late again, with no excuse given this time. He again parked a block away and then had our son drive back to his Glendora office for a 30 minute, "paperwork session," while my son waited. He brought him home on time this time. When my son got home he told me that when Joe picked him up there was a man in the backseat (is this why he parked a block away from our house?), and that Joe had my son drive the guy to his house, no explanation given. What?!?!I called their office the next day to ask who the man was in the car during my 16 year olds lesson, and was told by the girl that this was strange because the NEVER do piggyback lessons (her words). She then put me on hold, and told me she was going to ask Joe about it. A few seconds later, Joe picked up the phone, and he was obviously not happy with me for questioning why a strange adult was in the car while my son was taking his lesson!He started screaming at me that the man was a student and that he could prove it to me by showing me paperwork. He was literally screaming at me. I have never had a business owner behave like this, so it was really unnerving. I told him that were unhappy with the stranger being in the car, student or not, and that I also felt like he was cutting into my sons driving time with his lateness and long breaks. He screamed, " Are you going to let me talk?" even though I had barely finished one sentence. So, I let him rant for five minutes about having students drive other students home and about it's a human right to take a bathroom break in the middle of a lesson, a 30 minute "bathroom break," mind you. When he was finished with his tantrum, I told him that the reason I had called him to discuss my concerns was that I would rather talk to him than leave him a bad review. All of a sudden he calmed down, as if he suddenly realized that I could share how he was acting with other people. He then told me that he would add time to my son's third and final lesson because he had been late to the first two sessions.This whole experience freaked me out. I didn't want my son in a car with this man, and my son asked me not to put him in a car with this man. I didn't know what to do, being that we had paid for three lessons with this company and I didn't know if a new company would even let us do only one lesson with them. I called and asked if we could change instructors to Martha for my sons last lesson, and they let us do that.Martha was fine, I didn't like that her car was pretty rough (she had to cover the drivers seat with a towel), and that she answered a personal call during the lesson (though she did tell the person on the phone in Spanish that she couldn't talk). We were never given the extra 30 minutes of lesson time to make up for Joe's lateness, but we were just glad to be done with this company.I have another child coming up who needs driving lessons and we will definitely find a new company for her lessons. Read Less