One of my favorite things about living in Amsterdam is that I don't have to depend on public…read moretransportation or a vehicle. However, after driving to South of France for the holidays I decided that I wanted to get my Dutch license. So I did a little research and this is what I found out. "You can swap your license if you are from the EU, the EEA, Switzerland OR are from a country with a special agreement or you have the 30% ruling. Americans can not swap their license for a Dutch one. Have to do the theory,practical and register with a driving school." So, I made an appointment for my Dutch license through this driving school. Talk about back to the basics. When I first found out that I could not swap my American license for a Dutch one I was truly disappointed. I could not imagine going back to driver's ed and learning all the basic rules of driving all over. So, I lucked up on on this driver ed company website (alldrive.nl) which I found out when I had to start from scratch when it came to preparing for my Dutch license in the Netherlands. I am a fan of this company because the prices with this driving school is as good as it gets in Amsterdam! A few of my Dutch friends were surprised how reasonable the prices were for the practical and theory. This company is probably the best source to go for information when it comes to preparing for your theory and practical. I even bought a book from them, so I could be prepared for the theory exam at CBR. The only disadvantage is they only drive with a stick shift, which was a big one for me because I only knew how to drive an automatic. Most of the cars in Europe are stick shifts. Talk about going through life changes.Well I am happy that I lucked up on this company because they seam the best. Also, they speak English and Dutch so I thought that was a plus being the fact that I am an expat.

From the owner: Onze rijschool biedt kwalitatief hoogwaardige rijles in een gemoedelijke sfeer. Door de…read morepersoonlijke benadering van onze gemotiveerde instructeurs leveren wij maatwerk. Daardoor neem je geen les teveel. Dit is ook te merken aan onze hoge slagingspercentages bij het CBR. Je kan bij ons terecht voor bromfiets- , motor- en autorijles. Zowel voor beginners als gevorderden. Wij geven ook spoedcursussen, opfrislessen, rijangst- en faalangstbegeleiding. Ook geven wij theoriecursus voor auto en bromfiets.

From the owner: Als je wilt slagen voor je rijexamen staat onze rijschool Amsterdam garant voor een uitstekende rij…read moreopleiding. Naast rijles krijg je bij ons ook persoonlijk begeleide theorielessen en mocht je faalangst hebben, dan besteden we ook daar extra aandacht aan. Als 1 van de weinige rijscholen in provincie Noord Holland mag Autorijschool Ayana zich met recht de rijschool Amsterdam noemen, omdat verkeerstaken en vaardigheden een belangrijke aspect zijn binnen onze theorieopleidingen. Dit vergroot het rij inzicht aanzienlijk waardoor veel cursisten minder rijlessen nodig hebben om met succes het rijexamen af te leggen. Wij werken volgens de boekje van cbr niet minder maar wel veel. We beginnen altijd op een rustige omgeving en vertellen we eerst een stukje over binnen de auto waarvoor de instrumenten voor dienen. Vervolgens krijg je uitleg over de bediening van de auto en dan begin je met makkelijke oefeningen. Tijdens je rijlessen ben je feitelijke bestuurder en je rijinstructeur is dan de juridische bestuurder dat wil zeggen dat je nooit alleen voor staat. De opbouw van je rijopleiding begint altijd bij makkelijke stappen en met je voldoende vorderingen wordt het elke keer ietsje meer er word altijd rekening gehouden met je niveau. Wij vertellen onze lessen altijd zoals het is beschreven in het boekje van de rij procedure B. Wij doen er echt alles aan om van jouw een veilig zelfstandige bestuurder te maken. Wij geven les in een nieuwe Volkswagen Golf dat door Cbr goedgekeurd

I do NOT recommend this school. The teachers do not listen to what the students need. They use…read moretheir own "tried and true" method no matter the learning style of the student. I tested every single teacher (all male, go figure) and they were all rude and didn't even answer my questions. Would give 0 stars if I could. Also, the last instructor made me cry. Only good thing is they gave me a refund.

A big thank you to Bastiaan and Carlos who helped me get my licence it such a short period of time…read more Carlos really helped me focus on what is expected when obtaining your dutch licence. Being an expat was no problem. Highly recommend!

After a few months of studying on my own, I took a one-day driving theory crash course at this…read moreschool. Actually I ended up having to cancel at the last minute because I had pneumonia, and whereas the CBR will give you a refund if you cancel for illness reasons, this place wouldn't. I had to pay most of their class fee, again, for a rescheduled class, even though they claim a part of their fee is to pay the CBR exam fee, so you end up paying the CBR exam fee twice through them. This really pissed me off and was poor customer service. When I attended the rescheduled class, the woman teaching was just reading off of powerpoint slides, and was getting all sorts of information wrong. She was very unprofessional. When students would ask her about wrong or confusing information she had a very low threshold for answering questions and would get annoyed pretty quickly. Even when a slide said that clearance around a car is X number of meters for an attached load on the car, she claimed the slide was wrong. Even if other people were pointing out she was wrong according to their theory books, she still insisted they and the slide were wrong. At the end of the class they had this snazzy animated set of right-of-way questions that she was supposed to have people answer, and that would show them an animated illustration of how things would play out based on if they chose correctly who had the right-of-way in an intersection. So for example if you got the right-of-way order wrong as to who could go first, maybe a pedestrian gets run over, or two cars crash, or a bike gets bumped by a tram. As far as I can tell, this driving school spent a lot of money paying someone to animate all these different driving scenarios, and the teacher wouldn't let the animated scenarios play out. Even after repeated complaints and requests by the students to see the animated sequences so we could picture the right-of-way rules better, she would just skip the animations and move on to the next question, she said in order to save time. This ended up costing a lot more time, because people were asking a lot more questions without the animated visual aide. But in the end I did pass my theory exam on the first try, so there is that. I don't know if that's because of all my previous self-study efforts, or if it was due to this class, but I passed. It's probably a combination of both of these things. I studied a lot and took lots of online practice tests, and while this class was pretty bad, it was not so terrible that I didn't get anything out of it. Just having someone cram the important stuff into your head a day or two before the exam helped a lot.

From the owner: We help people study and pass for there Theory Exam of CBR. One day courses in Amsterdam,…read moreEindhoven, Utrecht, Den Haag, Groningen and Breda.

I only did a trial lesson here before I ran away, far away. The instructor was using half…read moredutch/half english, even though the lesson was supposed to be in English. His 'assessment' involved nitpicking all sorts of small things he claimed that I did (but I didn't!) to demonstrate that I was really bad at driving and I needed lots of lessons. Afterwards I was handed off to a smarmy guy in a suit who pressured me into signing up for a 1300 euro driving lesson package. And that was a 'special offer' that I had to agree to the same day or else the price would go up. It didn't matter to him that I had driven for 15 years in America. He gave me the hard sell that he was "concerned about my driving success", and that involved signing up for a 35 lesson package, because you can't "just start driving and sign up for the test whenever. It has to be a coordinated effort." He also pressured me into buying their English study book set (for 40 euros!) that didn't even come with a practice test book in English. He gave me a Dutch practice test book and that was missing the section with the answers to the questions, so he had to mail me a photocopy of the answer set later. I of course lost the answer set from the book later when I actually needed it a few years later, so I had to do practice tests online instead of using the book I purchased. Their website claims they have a high success rate for their students passing the driving exam, but if they pressure everyone to sign up for giant non-refundable package deals then I can see how they do that. Their other selling point is that they drive the routes that the testers drive, but that is not unique to them. That area of Amsterdam is lousy with driving schools who all drive on the same roads as the exam is given on, so you can easily find an alternative school, and I encourage you to do so.

Warning! Don't choose this driving school! All the time during my lessons was a drivable car,…read morehowever last minute (15mins) before my exam, they ask me to drive another one which is almost broken! The boss only care about money, he doesn't care of whether u can pass the exam or not. Walk away from this school ASAP really