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Shaw Academy is facing an investigation regarding Trustpilot reviews amongst booming student numbers during the coronavirus lockdown.
Online courses rapidly gained popularity when the global lockdowns due to COVID-19 commenced.
However, Guardian Money reveals that one of the biggest players in the online course game has been receiving massive numbers of complaints from upset customers, many of whom are requesting refunds. Shaw Academy is being investigated by the reviews website Trustpilot.
Shaw Academy is one of the biggest companies in online education and states 12 million students have “graduated” from its many online courses, with a huge spike of students who joined during the lockdown.
The diverse collection of courses ranges from digital marketing and web design to music lessons and wedding photography. Most courses are free for four weeks and then cost £49.99 a month.
In order to sign up for Shaw Academy, users have to enter their payment information, and some students have criticised the company, saying it makes it complicated to cancel the free trial. Many students claim they cancelled before the deadline, and yet the funds were still taken out of their account.
Guardian Money claims to have seen emails from Shaw Academy asking customers to delete unfavourable Trustpilot reviews and replace them with positive ones.
Many customers state they have been pestered with emails, texts, WhatsApp messages and phone calls that try to persuade them to buy more services.
However, Shaw Academy tells Guardian Money that “99.5% of customers have zero issues,” adding that its global ratings were “exceptionally high.” While the coronavirus pandemic has been a difficult time, Shaw Acadmey said, “we have worked tirelessly to make improvements.”
Despite its alert about the investigation, huge numbers of Trustpilot reviews are still being written. Guardian Money counted about 25 in the space of one hour. Of the 25 Trustpilot reviews, nine were one-star ratings.
As of 18 June 2020, Trustpilot announced a warning on the Shaw Academy review page that the company has been persuading customers to leave biased reviews, namely, selecting only students that were happy with their services. According to Trustpilot, Shaw Academy has asked students to delete negative reviews or change them to positive reviews.
These actions directly breach Trustpilot’s guidelines and have the potential to mislead customers.
Veronika Solnickova, 33, told Guardian Money she signed up for a sports nutrition course with Shaw Academy. She later wanted to end her €179.95 (£162) yearly membership and thought the process would be a simple one.
She says opted to be notified one day prior to the subscription end date, but she was never notified. She was stunned to find she had been charged £162 for another year.
Solnickova states she should have been notified before being charged for another yearly subscription and claims the activity is in breach of the company’s contract. She was forced to file a grievance with PayPal.
After she posted a negative review on Trustpilot a couple of days later, Shaw Academy emailed to say her refund would arrive shortly.
As seen by Guardian Money, the email states: “I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t mind removing your review or giving us a good rating on trustpilot.com, just until I have the chance to rectify the problem for you.” A follow-up email with a similar message was sent a few days later.
Solnickova refused to change her review and eventually received her refund.
“I assume Shaw Academy gave the go-ahead to PayPal to proceed with the refund,” she told Guardian Money. “I consider myself to be lucky. Many people all over the world are being taken advantage of during the pandemic. They make it impossible to cancel and keep charging people.”
When asked about the alert on the Shaw Academy page, Trustpilot told Guardian Money: “We take the integrity of our platform extremely seriously. Should we become aware of any company breaching our guidelines and trying to mislead consumers, we will take action. Our investigation continues but we have already issued formal cease-and-desist proceedings and if we don’t receive a satisfactory response we will take further enforcement action.”
The UK’s CPD Standards Office, an accreditation service for training and learning, announced in March that anyone looking to pursue an online course should choose one that has been externally verified, to reduce the risk of purchasing a course that has misleading adverts or contains incorrect information.
Have you purchased a course from Shaw Academy? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below.
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85 thoughts onShaw Academy Facing Investigation, Calls for Refunds
How can we get the refund? Can we hire a lawyer? Does anyone have any experience?
I am one of the victims too, I really want to do that!
I am a current student as have been refused and given the run around as well. They actually have me another module free due to my anger over their charging my card without proper authorization from me first.
I really want to take these guys to court too, I emailed them to cancel my free trial & 6 months later I realised they had taken 99.95 GBP out of my account without my authorisation and they are refusing to refund.
It’s fraud, I’ve never been tricked like this by a company.. Guardian or any legal advisors please help
In the same boat. I have been through the run around. Cancelled on website, told to call, call and get automation saying my account is cancelled and I’ll be emailed… no email. I’ve put in a ton of tickets with their support team.. two people emailed back and ignore my cancellation request. Charged my MasterCard and MasterCard won’t stop the payments or dispute it as I have no proof of cancellation. My 20+ attempts to cancel don’t count.
Signed up for a free trial and was charged $139 just 3 days after. As I requested for a refund they just deleted my account on their website. Biggest scam ever!!
Signed up for the free trial and tried cancelling the following week. Thought everything was done and dusted until they took £49.95 sometime later. Emailed them and was told they couldn’t give a refund and instead offered me a further 6 months free, telling me it was worth £300. I told them I didn’t want it and just wanted the refund but they refused. Why give someone £300 worth of a product and refuse them a refund request of £49.95? Probably because what they’re offering is useless crap and what they received is real hard earnt money.
I will now cancel my debit card as I don’t trust neither them or my bank. Why are scam companies able to operate like this and get away with it. STAY AWAY from them at all costs and especially be wary about entering card details in their site.
Signed up for the free trial and tried cancelling the following week. Thought everything was done and dusted until they took £49.95 sometime later. Emailed them and was told they couldn’t give a refund and instead offered me a further 6 months free, telling me it was worth £300. I told them I didn’t want it and just wanted the refund but they refused. Why give someone £300 worth of a product and refuse them a refund request of £49.95? Probably because what they’re offering is useless crap and what they received is real hard earnt money.
I will now cancel my debit card as I don’t trust neither them or my bank. Why are scam companies able to operate like this and get away with it. STAY AWAY from them at all costs and be especially VERY wary about entering card details in their site.
Pure and utter scamming fraudsters. May the fullest extent of the law be coming your way
Shaw Academy is the largest Online Scam on the Planet. They took money from my account after I cancelled. They are unethical and one day im sure legal action with cost them millions.
They are no different than the average street criminal except they pretend to be a legit business. Total Fraudsters.
Do not sign up with them or you will regret it.
Shaw Academy is the largest Online Scam on the Planet. They took money from my account after I cancelled. They are unethical and one day im sure legal action with cost them millions.
They are no different than the average street criminal except they pretend to be a legit business. Total Fraudsters.
Do not sign up with them or you will regret it.
Same here! Second draw after they said they closed my account.
That’s the worst organization I’ve work with so far. They charged me 99.95 GBP although I did not confirm it. I was still in trial period!
It’s very difficult to cancel accounts and getting your money back. Their way of working is not ethical!
I have been charged for 10 months and never received a bank notification that I am being charged. I initiated the refund almost a month ago and a certain Anthony kept calling me outside the preferred time I mentioned in the email. His last call was this Monday – November 23rd at 11 AM GMT. I told him many times in the email to call me at 3:30 PM GMT and it never happened.
I was charged Php 500 per month for 10 months and I have never enrolled in any class. On Anthony’s first attempt to call, he was a bit surprised that I answered. He was pursuing me to cancel the request for a refund. Instead, he wanted me to take a lifetime membership free of all certifications and downloads of materials whatsoever.
I told him that I do not trust their company anymore. First, they charge you and never talk to you about your satisfaction with the course. Then they give you the hardest way to cancel the subscription and much more they don’t delete your bank details on their platform. It was EXCRUCIATING!
Anthony even told me that they have already deleted my bank details and I will never be charged again, and now today, a certain Sarah sent me an email that my payment didn’t go through! What a bunch of scammers! If you have managed to be a bit more respectful of people’s time and money, maybe you’ll be staying in business for a long time.
How can you trust this company? They don’t call on your preferred time and they lie to you! It’s a good thing I alerted the bank and I have alerted a lot of freelancers in one of my community.
If anyone is going to file a lawsuit against this company, I will support you and I will be there to witness.
Hi Marianne, I am sorry to read about your bad experience with Shaw Academy. 3 days ago they charged me £99.95 for a premium membership which I never actually bought! They are just scammers! You may join a FB group where all the members have been swindled by Shaw Academy one way or another – original shaw academy/scam academy. Maybe we can all file a lawsuit against Shaw Academy?
I agree!
Please let me know as well!
Ok ive been charged by them for months and i been fighting for refund they say they dont do that .. ok everyone here suffering the same .. lets get some laywers on this and shut them down after they pay everyone they robbed ten fold
Agreed, let’s sue them.
Agreed!
Last week I took out the 4 weeks free trial in the understanding that £49.99 will be billed unless cancelled before the 4 weeks is up. After just 1 week and 2 lessons, I had had enough of the constant pop up’s and text messages asking me to “unlock your course materials” at a cost. So on the 6th day I issued a cancellation request and received an email confirming cancellation. But 2 days later, Shaw Academy had taken £99.95 from my account, despite me already cancelling any future payments via paypal.
A guy from Shaw Academy phoned me today and told me they don’t encourage refunds. I told them about their T&C’s with regards the 4 week trial and he tried to tell me I had taken out a premium membership – which I obviously hadn’t. When I told him about the email cancellation confirmation, he says there are 2 kinds of cancellation. Unbelievable, so I will have to open a paypal dispute to get my money back.
The same exact thing happened to me. I am demanding them to show me WHERE I confirmed to make a payment for downloading the material. There was NEVER a disclaimer before downloading what appears to be a free ppt provided for the first upcoming class. The PPT does not even provide any real information so I assumed after I downloaded it that it must just be highlights of what we will be going over – but they are instead call this the toolkit. There is not a disclaimer before downloading, there is NOT a confirm button before you download – and there is NOT a receipt given for your purchase after you download. I am going to keep demanding they show me where I confirmed this purchase.