Emirates Driving Institute [EDI] review: Driving lessons and test 1

After researching driving institutes in Dubai, we chose Emirates Driving Institute. Unfortunately, we have had a very disappointing experience with EDI and cannot recommend them.

Our son signed up for driving lessons with EDI in March. He completed the online theory and went on to book his driving lessons.

His first 2 lessons (30 min each lesson) were spent with the instructor going through the controls in the car; this seems an excessive amount of time. At the end, when asked to put the gear in drive the car did not move because there was a problem with the engine, which resulted in the car needing to be moved to the repair garage.

During the next 2 lessons the instructor paused the lesson to be able to pray in the mosque, with no additional time added to his lessons for the post time.

After the 5th lesson the instructor informed our son that he was going on holiday, so a new instructor had been assigned

The new instructor's English was poor. (Despite us requesting lessons in English)

Both instructors use their phones throughout the lessons.

The 2nd instructor gave conflicting instructions to our son about driving, resulting in confusion for him.

The 2nd instructor leaned over our son at the end of a lesson to reverse the car with him sitting at the controls and crashed the car into a parked car behind.

Last week, our son took his first driving test, he arrived 15 min early as instructed and was kept waiting 30 mins. He was informed they had had to make a change to an instructor as the examiner was not there.

The instructor immediately started to inform our son of violations he was making that he has not once been told about by either of the two previous instructors.

As a result, he failed the test and has been advised to book 4 more lessons and another test at a cost to him of around 700 AED.

Our son asked to speak to a supervisor immediately after the test, who was quite patronising to him and ended by saying they will look into this. Not sure how or when we can expect to hear back.

I emailed EDI a week ago to complain about the above, and to give them the opportunity to respond. They initially replied to say that 'our complaint request has been escalated to the relevant department they will check, and you will receive the final confirmation from the concerned department regarding the same.' We have still not heard anything.