I have been extremely frustrated with Greg's Driving School. I am giving them two stars because I had one employee help to arrange our second driving lesson by reaching out to a driver and this employ... Read More
I have been extremely frustrated with Greg's Driving School. I am giving them two stars because I had one employee help to arrange our second driving lesson by reaching out to a driver and this employee actually followed up with me the same day.
My teen completed driver's education last year and is only now getting their second driving lesson scheduled. Scheduling with this company has been a nightmare. I signed up for the auto-scheduler, requested after-school and weekend times, and rarely received any suitable openings. I later learned that I had been removed from the auto-scheduler because I supposedly missed three text messages, yet I was never notified that I had been removed.
Every time I call, I am told that instructors are booked one to two months out. When I ask to schedule further in advance, for the next month, I am told that instructors only release their schedules about a week at a time. I am never able to actually get an appointment scheduled! It should not be this difficult to schedule required lessons.
What also concerns me is the school's philosophy. I was told it is completely normal for there to be a year between completing driver's ed and finishing the driving lessons because students need to accumulate practice hours between sessions. However, the sessions themselves seem to function more as evaluations rather than actual lessons. In fact, I was told my son should already have 20–30 hours of driving experience before his third session because he would be evaluated on highway driving. I was told that if he didn't pass with at least an 80% that we would have to pay an additional $83 for another lesson. When I asked for the criteria they are evaluating for highway driving (I imagine it's merging, switching lanes, using mirrors) they couldn't give me an answer.
Perhaps I am old-fashioned, but I think all of this is backwards. Parents should absolutely help their teens practice, but the driving school should teach the skills during each lesson first and then have parents reinforce those skills through additional practice. Instead, it feels like parents are expected to do most of the teaching first while the school evaluates whether students have mastered the material.
One of the main reasons families pay for professional driving instruction is because instructors have experience teaching new drivers and have vehicles equipped with safety controls, including a brake pedal. I am not comfortable being the first person to take our teen on the highway, and I don't think that is an unreasonable expectation.
I also inquired about purchasing additional lessons and was told they would gladly take my payment but could not tell me when they could actually schedule the lesson because they were already booked for the next month or two. I was also told we had to schedule by 6/15/26 because the summer is their busy season. If you are paying for a service, there should be some guarantee of receiving that service in a timely fashion.
Greg's could greatly improve by offering clearer communication, allowing families to schedule further in advance, increasing lesson availability (teens shouldn't have to miss school or and families shouldn't have to wake up at the crack of dawn on weekends), and focusing on teaching the skills required for each lesson in addition to evaluation. Driving instruction should be a partnership between parents and professionals, with instructors teaching new skills and parents reinforcing them through practice.
Overall, the communication is poor, scheduling is unnecessarily limited and complicated, and the program feels more focused on evaluating than teaching. Read Less