Diary Of An ADI

On one of my Google Ads I noticed someone offering the first lesson for £1!

Admittedly, it was an introductory offer, and after that normal prices were £20 an hour (or £18 an hour if booked in blocks of 10 hours) – but this was in an area which is one of the most affluent in the country, and where the national schools charge £25 an hour!

It’s worth just emphasising this point, because ADIs are more than happy to make up any weird and wonderful story to explain why they don’t have any work, and yet conveniently miss the truth. So…

An independent school operating in an area which can easily command £25 an hour, and which is in the most populous part of the country, is offering the first lesson for £1 and hourly rates of between £18-20 thereafter.

I won’t suggest that all the reasons ADIs cut their prices are like this one, but a lot of them are: they are cutting prices unnecessarily, then trying to blame it on certain national training establishments (one of them in particular tends to be their preferred flavour), the DSA (for not capping the register), other ADIs (who have cut prices more than they did), and so on.

It’s the same round this way. You can easily charge £24 or £25 an hour, and yet people are charging under £20 in the mistaken and desperate belief they will steal all the business from the big schools and become millionaires!

Not long after I posted this, I saw another Google Ad advertising “5 for £55, and £15 an hour after that”. When I looked at the website, it said that £15 is a “limited time offer” – it didn’t say how long the offer is limited to, but what it did do was say:

Compare our standard hourly rate with other driving schools in your area.

• Us – £18.95
• AA – £26.00
• BSM – £25.25
• Acclaim – £22.00
• Red – £21.00
• ?????? – £20
• Bill Plant – £20.95

I couldn’t see who that second to last one was – some of the graphics are very messy – but the point is that in an area where the going rate is £25-26 an hour, this outfit is charging £18.95 as standard (and £15 for a “limited time”). Even normally, with block bookings they are charging £17 an hour.

This is suicidal. These people can’t possibly have considered how much it costs to run the car, and what hourly wage it puts the ADI on. They’d be better off serving orders at McDonalds.

It all comes down to desperation due to not understanding business.

On one of the forums, someone has written that they have been missing for a while because they have taken on a full-time job (i.e. moved away from full-time instruction), because:

…Regular pay, holiday pay, prospects of promotion, free training and development, off bank holidays weekends, set working hours, regular review of performance (unlike ct) which is as and when dsa fancy.

…the mortage paid every month without fail, a professional approach to work from work collegues, unlike driving instruction, and real potential to earn good money!

OK. So far, so good, though not sure where the DSA comes into it. But this character’s reason for posting is this:

Difficulties been that I cannot take my students for test! I have taken 1 day off but these are precious (I know paid holiday) and these are booked up for personal holidays.

My local test centre ****** and ****** are NOT doing sat tests. I called customer services at dsa they said to speak to test centres directly. They replied No can do!

I emailed dsa and 10days later they said No can do.

I want to take my students for test, I have had a fellow adi take mine for test before but this is not very consistant for the students!

I would go further afield but we are taking a long way out, and although I believe students should be able to drive anywhere, I think it is somewhat unfair to cart them miles away to do tests (****** do sat)

I have sent another email to dsa but this will take another 10days.

I’m not sure what to tell students who are pretty much ready for test to do now?

Any advice?

Right, so the problem is that by taking on a full-time job, he no longer has time available to take his pupils to test. And there are no Saturday tests available unless he travels quite a way to another test centre.

In the back of your mind, one half of you thinks “tricky one “, whilst the other half thinks “but why should everyone drop everything just because you took on a full-time job and more or less gave this up? ” But the topic develops a little – first of all, it toys with the obvious bad DSA route, with such comments from someone else as:

Like everyone else, DSA has cut back on spending, which includes paying examiners overtime.  It now has a policy that it will only consider out of hours testing if waiting lists at a TC go beyond target (which I think is 8 weeks).

You are wasting your time sending emails.

Later on, this same poster says:

No it’s not good customer service.  But when has DSA ever given a good service?

But the original poster – when informed that his third choice test centre isn’t doing Saturdays either, bursts out:

That is crazy! If I was employed by dsa I would want some flexibility.

My employer at the moment I feel has been great, in the first few months why would you take on an instructor? Its been hard enough to get a full time job, oh and by the way I would like to come in late cos I have a driving test. I know I was taking about dsa having flexibility, and why should my employer be flexible?

Thanks for all the suggestions, however I feel those are not very good compromises? Get another adi, ok done this before, I do not like this, why should I have to do this, when I’ve put the hard work in. Yes its good practice for students to drive with someone else. Oct would be ok because it is an option, we have been looking for sat tests since Jan!

Ok, so I’ll wait til Oct, then drive 19miles there and 19 miles back, that’s 1 hour already!

I’m not expecting a sat test next week! I’m not expecting the closest test centre, just somewhere with sat tests in a reasonable distance, with a reasonable wait!

I know this is dsa, but is that much to ask?

Right, so now he is blaming the DSA completely for the fact that he has virtually given up teaching and can only do it Saturdays and evenings – and they don’t do driving tests those times.

But now, an “expert” on these matters chimes in:

I found out this week I booked a pupils test. She never received a letter, we never received an email although the booking was an email request. I never checked online to confirm the booking 3 days before so have to admit I was sitting at the TC like a lemon…

Im shocked to think that in halfterm week all the examiners but 1 have decided to take holidays or are booked on courses. There is usually about 6 or more working at this TC.

They should be made to work during the school holidays as this is a busy time. Now pupil waits till summer for next day off

Fortunately, the next poster is a little more in touch with reality:

…many examiners have children too and may need to take a break now and then! My husband [who it would appear was an examiner] was never allowed to take holidays in August so we had to grab any chance to take a week off with the children.

The “expert” is nonplussed that anyone should doubt his wisdom on these matters:

You dont say…..So employ people who want to work!

However, the previous poster’s realistic approach seems to trigger a few of the others. The DSA-basher (and others) say:

…They probably aren’t going to change their policy just because you’ve got a full time job…

…To be fair ****** you do have options, the fact is, it comes across that you don’t like the options…

…You made the choice to change your work patterns and not make yourself available to your clients at the DSA published test times.

Is it the DSA’s fault that they CONTINUE not to offer times that are convenient to your new career or work patterns? Baring in mind they weren’t offering weekend slots whilst you were a full time ADI…

But the best one has to be this:

I looked back at your earlier posts and saw how keen you were and the excellent training and guidance you received from *********, you were on cloud nine back then and nothing could hold you back, but now you seem quite bitter and I have not reached the posts that tell me why!

Now, doesn’t that open up a can of worms about this industry? Bitterness towards the DSA, everyone, and everything amongst many ADIs?

A reader has brought this link to my attention. It concerns two new speed cameras in Peterborough, which have netted £54,000 in fines in their first 10 days of service.

Speed Camera Sign

Installed on the A1139 Frank Perkins Parkway, these cameras are allegedly there to “protect the workforce” while roadworks are carried out. The Police have commented that they will be putting up more signs to warn motorists of the amended limit. That’s good of them, isn’t it?

You can’t help wonder why they didn’t do it the right way round, and put the signs up first.

The story points out that at the current rate of entrapment these two cameras will overtake the current record-holding snap-happy camera on the M11 in Essex – which already catches 9,000 speeders each year. It nets around £500,000 in fines.

By how much? Well, they calculate that these two will manage almost double that… in half the time! So nearly £2,000,000 extra income for someone out there.

I should point out that I am a great believer in the principle that if you don’t speed, you don’t get caught by speed cameras. But this appears to be a cynical attempt to catch people out by having moved the goalposts without informing anyone.

Temporary and variable speed limits are a bloody nuisance, especially when they stay in force when no one is working (and if it’s anything like roadworks carried out by Nottinghamshire County Council, that’s anytime before 11am and anytime after 3pm).

There’s a BBC show called Don’t Get Done Get Dom. Dom fights for consumers’ rights after they write in to him.

Red Driving School Logo

On this latest episode – shown today, and available on iPlayer for a limited time – he looked into the situation facing two people who had signed up to do training with Red Driving School .

One of the people was unhappy about how quickly he was getting training. The other one had suffered two heart attacks and his doctor had told him he shouldn’t teach people to drive. They had been unable to get their agreements cancelled through their own efforts, so Dom stepped in and got it sorted out.

Before the programme was aired, some of the forums were in meltdown with the usual learned opinions from the usual learned crowd. The reality was always going to be that Dom was fighting for two people who had been unable to get their agreements cancelled (even though only one of them had a cast iron reason, the other one was a little bit grey and was based on alleged promises and admittedly hard-to-get training slots). But the learned crowd – as usual – speculated that the industry was going to be turned on its head and Red would be forced to close down!

It’s worth noting that the “agreement” I refer to is that the training course costs several thousand pounds and can be paid for with a loan. The loan has an APR of around 30%, so you end up paying back almost double the original loan amount. The argument is that the first 12 months of the loan are interest free, and you pay it back out of your first year’s earnings. This is how the advertising goes.

The reality isn’t always the same as the advertising, though. It is a massive subject, but some people don’t qualify as quickly as they’d like (or in the shortest time mentioned by the advertising). Some never qualify at all (the pass rate is very low). Some decide it is too hard and give up. Undoubtedly, Red is unable to provide lessons in some cases – but by no means in all of them. And so on.

Dom and the two people he was representing referred to the number of complaints on the Internet about Red. What they didn’t make fully clear – though Dom hinted at it – is that the vast majority of those complaints are about issues which do not justify cancellation of the agreement those people signed. However, you do get situations where someone has a real and genuine claim, but it is lost in the noise made by those others, and it was two of these that Dom was dealing with.

It was also interesting that right at the end they said that Red was under new ownership and had said that it was intending to address some areas where there were problems.

I’ll tell you what, though. I’d love to be able to sit in on some of those sales meetings and listen to what really gets said. Everyone who wants to get out of their agreement – usually the day before they have to start paying it back – claims they were promised absolutely that they would pass within six weeks and be earning £30,000 within 6 months. Such claims are always dubious when you consider that anyone with an ounce of sense, and who had looked into this even a little bit, would realise that failure at the first, second, and even third attempts (Part 2 and 3) is easily possible, and that exam lead times can be several months. Add to that the people who state categorically that Red’s advertising says things it clearly doesn’t (they ignore key words like “could” and “up to”), and you just know that something is amiss.

I don’t doubt some sales reps go too far, especially if they are on commission. But not all of them.

As an aside, since the programme was shown this morning the blog is getting a lot of hits on terms like “has red gone bust”. It worries me slightly that people who are currently in training with Red or who are already involved in the industry as ADIs  don’t know what has happened. I even edited the posts about Red because it was clear people were finding the earliest post (” Red HAS Gone Bust “) and not moving on to the almost immediate update ( ” Red Is Saved “).

This is a very old post.

I keep getting hits for this – I mentioned it in a post earlier this year. It is one of the things Red Driving School had listed under its assets when it was put up for sale.

Here is the outline from the Trademark application LVG made in the USA (in 2009, granted this year):

I’m a little confused by the amount of interest there is in this. Indeed, the title of this blog attracts a lot of people who are searching based on the words “ADI” and “diary”, so there is obviously a lot I am missing.

Spyda appears to be oriented towards franchisers – the part about “payments in car” and “payments with head office” give that away. Not many solo ADIs can justify having a merchant account that lets them take credit card payments in the car – it just isn’t cost effective. (Edit: this is a very old post, and this last statement is no longer true. Taking solo payments in the car is extremely cost-effective and very simple in 2023).

I always think that ADIs make life very complicated for themselves. A mobile PDA running Outlook and a PC/laptop with Outlook are just about all you need – sync them and you have up to date files very quickly. Add mobile Excel and you can sync pupil records.

Mind you, if offered the choice of the two products shown below, I’m pretty sure I know which one many ADIs would go for – even if they had to pay twice as much for it:

This is the whole point: you don’t need fancy software to run your business if you are solo. The more complicated it is, the greater your overheads – and it’s hard enough as it is.

For franchisers, though, it is different. Administration is easier if you have a centralised system.