The administrative side of this place is ridiculous. I shopped around at different places where I…read morecould take the real estate licensing course, and finally, in November 2013, I decided to go with Real Estate Empower with the class beginning on 01/07/14. The main reason that I chose to go w/ his particular class is that their schedule worked with my schedule.
More than a full month after I signed up for the course and just days before the course began, they sent an email out changing the entire schedule. Apparently, the facility that was secured for the course, was now unavailable until later in the day for some of the courses, causing them to shorten some classes and add an entire day of class (on a weekend, I might add).
Unfortunately my schedule just doesn't work that way (I plan things in advance). After I initially paid for the course and locked down the course dates in my schedule, I later went on to plan an out of town weekend trip where I booked flights with both myself and husband, in addition to coordinating with our friends who lived where we were traveling to. So I asked when could I make up that day they told me at the end of February. WHAT?!... Are you kidding me?!... WOW, so that means I probably won't be able to take the exam until March...
Not only did they add a Saturday, and change start and end times, but they also changed other days. Initially the only week days were Tuesdays & Thursdays, but then they switched a Tuesday and Thursday for a Monday and Wednesday. Again throwing my schedule for another loop...
So after I began the course while in conversation with other classmates I found out that there were others who paid and were scheduled to take the class in December and that class was later cancelled completely - so (by default), they are in the January class.
Also, in my welcome email, they said that we needed two textbooks for the course. One of which we could purchase online and the other would be available for purchase on the first day of class. Yet, on the first day of class, our instructor was clueless that we were instructed to purchase the book on the first day of class, so the only book he had was the one he was teaching from.
Needless to say, I am not the least bit impressed with this company. To their defense, our first instructor is very knowledgeable and easy to follow. He answered our questions and explained things in a way for all of us to understand. So I will give RE Empower 1 extra star for giving us a great instructor. However in all other areas, they are seriously lacking the organizational, administrative and overall business skills needed to make them be an establishment that is highly desirable to attend.
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UPDATE: I actually did take another course with them (this time it was based online) around December 2014 to study for a license by reciprocity. There were problems with me paying for the course because their online portal was not set up to take payments, and then more problems with me downloading the course. Once I downloaded the course, the material was put together in a very unorganized way. So much so that I would have requested a refund, but I didn't want to deal with the headache of dealing with them again. I ended up purchasing another reciprocity preparation study course from another vendor.
[This is why I knocked my review back down to 1 star!]
I really think that they have good intentions, but they lack tremendously in the area of administration making it a HUGE inconvenience for people.
*** I'd also suggest you read the non-recommend reviews. Although they have been filtered out by the algorithm, they seem to be more consistent with the experience that I had. Unfortunately, if you never do any reviews, and create an account just to make 1 review of a bad experience, your review is likely to be filtered out because it may seem to be a fake review. I completely understand this, and I believe it helps to stop business owners from making fake reviews for their own business, and also from making bad fake reviews of their competitors, but I honestly believe that there is some truth to the filtered reviews in this case.
I'm not sure how K.T.'s review made it in with no photo, no friends and only 1 review
Here are the non recommended reviews that I agree with their experiences:
DeWayne U has a photo, 3 friends and 1 review and his review is still not recommended. But I agree that I had some of the same issues that DeWayne U had.
M.L.'s review. I agree with his review 100%.
Brother S's review. I agree that some of the material produced by REMPower is very substandard.
Please understand that my goal in giving this information is not to "bash" the company, but to help people make informed decisions, avoid headache and not waste time or money like I did. Hopefully this review will give you enough info to make an informed decision. I had problems all the way around w/this company.