Shaw Academy Facing Investigation, Calls for Refunds

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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