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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
I have been arguing with Shaw Academy since end of January when I signed up for a ‘free’ 4 week course. On the day I signed up they took £44 from my account, then they took a further £99.95 on the 2nd of Feb. I complained about both transactions as I HAD NOT authorised anything to be taken from my account. They claimed £44 was for a toolkit (which I knew nothing about), and the second was on my authority to sign up to a subscription. Utter lies. I have since spoken to them twice where they are trying to convince me to accept lifetime membership in return for no refund. I said no. The battle continues. My bank told me today that they have received numerous identical complaints about this company, yet no one is shutting them down. I am going to try and get some legal advice as to where we stand and if we can get together a large number of people in the same situation to take joint legal action. If anyone else is interested I could set up a mail box for people to email with their stories…. someone has to do something!!
Shaw academy and there scam this is ridiculous and very low to steal money from people who never even signed up to your academy!!! I worked hard for my money! I never even subscribed to your scam of a company for you to take 30$ from me !!! I will be suing if my money will not be returned. How did your company even get my payment information and why is your company want to use my info knowing I will never go to school through you all EVER I love Florida and the schools here where I’m from !!! Give me my money back I don’t know who you all think you are!
Do not fall into the trap of signing for free trial. You will eventually end up paying much more. Shaw Academy makes it really difficult to cancel the subscription. Also, Shaw Academy takes advantage of less careful customers by making them click unintentionally on the multiple pop ups that keep appearing frequently, which are sometimes difficult to cancel on mobile screen. Once you click at a pop up even by mistake, you money is immediately debited from your bank without even asking for a final confirmation.
Do not sign up even for the free trial… You will regret.
Thieves!!!
I am still in 4 weeks free trial and they already took 34e for some toolkit. Once they called me and were asking me how am I doing with the course, I said fine, taking in on my own pace and after the phone call I received an email that a transaction of 139e was made by Shaw Academy.
I tried to get refunds, they are taking time with replying on an email, so they said they will try to fix my refunds and somebody from customer service will call me, they asked me when i am available, i said any day after 1pm. Customer service worker called at 9am!!!! He was trying to offer me something for free. I was very strict and to the point, all what he said was that THEY DONT DO REFUNDS and he can only disconnect my paypal account.
They should be called thief academy, not shaw academy.
I dont understand they still exist, nobody sue them yet????? Because this is what they deserve.
You lost your job thanks to corona crisis and you want to do something useful for yourself in a lockdown and all you get out from this is MINUS on your bank account.
So lets see, if my bank will not be able to get me this money back, WHO WILL and WHEN????!!!
I have been fleeced by this company as well. I have spent the whole day arguing with them about a refund.
Hi Kate! Any success with the refund? They told me today i wont get any.
Yeah me too just now i have been charge for a 3 month plan and got upgraded to premiim account.. I was really shock . But i didnt know jow to cancel the submission. There is no choices in there
I had got the trial to try a class and canceled it within 30 days and they continued to take money out of my account and I have sent them money emails and proof of bank statements for 4 months and my father had just passed away so I wasn’t all in the right stand of mind and not paying attention to my statements until I finally stopped feeling so sad and I was just paying every bill and not looking over my statements, then I got the Corona virus and maybe it was the rush of getting better and not having any more symptoms that joy got me back on track when I noticed all the months they were charging me and I remembered this was the one thing I had got accomplished in calling and canceling before my father passed away at home I’m going through financial hardship and need my money back I spoke with someone twice they said they need something from the bank I keep emailing them the statements and the bank told me they need to refund my money because they sent them proof I signed up and yes I did for the trial and then canceled I just can’t beileve this mess and how long it’s taking to get 4 months of 69.99 of money taken I need help
I am being scammed by them as well. I signed up for their free floral course at the end of December 2020. After signing up a pop up for their course materials showed up on my screen. My intention was to close the pop-up but instead it switched to a payment screen. I exited out of that screen and was still charged. I asked for a refund, they told me it was non refundable. I let them know (and I have documented proof) that I wanted to cancel my course, the trial, and all services offer. I refused anything they offered to make up for them not wanting to refund me.
Today, I woke up to an automatic reoccurring charge to my account from them.
I have contacted them and will be filing a dispute with my bank. I want to know if i can take legal action.
Same happened to me. I have sent them proof that they told me no subscription had been set up. I’m getting nowhere.
I have been scammed by this company and they are refusing to give me a refund. How do I make them pay up?
Why is this company still exist ? A lot of people has been a victim. More and more people will become a victim.. and I am one of them ,is there anyway to report this ?
What this is happening to other people too!?!?! They did not honor my request to cancel and have been swindling unauthorized transactions of my money out of my accounts since last year and won’t return my emails nor have a way to contact or speak to them!!! This is ridiculous!!! How do we file a lawsuit against these people and get a full refund!?!?
What this is happening to other people too!?!?! They did not honor my request to cancel and have been swindling unauthorized transactions of my money out of my account since last year and won’t return my emails nor have a way to contact or speak to them!!! This is ridiculous!!! How do we file a lawsuit against these people and get a full refund!?!?