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If you are considering a career in Cosmetology, please do your research! I was taken in by a very convincing speech about why I should go the STL Academy (it has since changed it's name to Paul Mitchell The School-St. Louis, but has all of the same incompetent staff still employed.) I regret it more than anything in the world.
When I was first looking into schools in early 2007, I was immediately drawn into the glitz and glamour of going to a Paul Mitchell School. I love PM products, and thought if the school is half as good as the products, it's gonna be the best experience of my life. I was so wrong.
I was told on my tour that my $15, 000 tuition would cover EVERYTHING I would need for the entire 1 year duration of the program. While it did include a mediocre kit and lackluster training dvds and books, I was still forced to buy additional training supplies on a weekly basis...extra doll heads, scissor sharpening and razors, make-up for required make-up courses that would have to be used on several other students during classtime, combs, clips, papers, pens, dye...and a monster car park fee because there was absolutely NO free on-street parking. I had to pay on average an extra $20-50 a week on extra training materials, transportation, and clothes that would get easily worn working 35 hrs a week being splashed with dye, etc.
My kit was pathetic, cheap, and virtually useless. The scissors are not good enough quality to be used in your career after school. The combs and brushes are flimsy and most are not heat resistant. The clippers' batteries only last for about ten minutes before needing a charge. On time after all of the students left for the day, the kits were raided by administrators to retrieve our capes. We were no allowed to take our kits home with us, yet admin could just raid out kits whenever they wanted? These kits, btw, cost $3, 000! If we were allowed to assemble our own kits, we could have had better materials for half as much. It was just another way to gauge students for every penny they could.
The staff is dreadfully incompetent! I cannot believe how many stories I heard of our teachers being irresponsible! In the 6 short months I went to this school, guess how many staff members had either quit or been fired: 6! Six out of the less than dozen people that are employed by the school at a given time, were fired or quit in six months. Why is turnover so high here, yet some teachers are allowed to stay and continually slack off and get "chummy" with students?
Besides the teachers, be prepared to deal with a TON of student drama! The people that go here are straight up CATTY. Police have been called, fights have been started, numerous things had been stolen. One girl had her camera stolen by a girl in her own class. Even the nicest person is not immune to the name-calling and cliquey-ness. Prepare to enter high school, part 2. This school constantly promotes a book called BE NICE OR ELSE, a book that encourages students to supress negativity in their lives, not watch violent movies, and basically be fake to everybody they meet in order to get what they want, yet it's one of the meanest environments I've ever been in.
Speaking of high school, be prepared to spend a lot of time making posters with magic markers and magazine cut-outs. And they waste a lot of valuable learning time doing things like pancake breakfasts, "free hugs, " and charity. I know a ton of students that can't get jobs because they just aren't taught anything! Favorite students get passed without a second thought, and the others are either forced out or made to work twice as hard for their grades.
I could go on, but if this isn't enough to change your mind, I don't know what will!
P.S. This school IS NOT ACCREDITED! That means no government loans or grants. The only fin. aid available to students is a loan from Sallie Mae at a very high interest rate. This is a $15, 000 program that is not accredited, when you could get thousands of dollars from the US government in grants and low-interest loans if you simply choose an accredited school!
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
Full disclosure: I was once a "Learning Leader" at this chain of Mormon Cults. I lasted three months. After 20+ yrs in the business it was painful for me to only teach ONE methodology, as if Paul Mitchell invented hair. I'd be forced to sit through endless meetings where nothing was accomplished other than people patting eachother on the back while applying a smiley face sticker to their Hot Topic blouse. Ridiculous in the highest sense, this is- in my opinion- truly a cult and they are in it for the money and the mind control. The more clones they spit out, the more money for PMTS, Winn Clayhole and all those creepy, greasy "visionaries" they seem to "celebrate" every ten minutes. Ick. You need a license, not a way of looking at the world. This "education" is masked theology, full of acronyms, jargon (fake it till you make it!), and posters full of promotional crap. Crap they want YOU, the student (oops, Future professional) to SELL if you want to graduate in time. All in all, a watered down education given by PMTS graduates and other cult members. Save your $$$. Go to a cheap school and get your license and probably a much more focused education. Unless you require a glitter and glue approach to learning. Then this place is for you.
WHAT IS THE CORPORATE NUMBER? I WAS A CLIENT AND THE LEARNING LEADER DID MY HAIR...DIDN'T EVEN LET THE STUDENT DO MY HAIR ...THEN HE TOTALLY SCREWED IT UP. I CALLED AND WAS INVITED TO RETURN TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT ONLY TO HAVE THEM HIDE THE STUDENT SAYING SHE WASN'T THERE EVEN THOUGH SHE IS A RELATIVE... TO THEN BE YELLED AT AND ACCUSED OF SAYING VULGAR THINGS... I WISH...AND TOLD TO NOT RETURN WHILE SOME BUTCH AGGRESSIVE WOMAN THREATENED ME. NOBODY SEEMS TO BE IN CHARGE, AND NOBODY SEEMS TO KNOW THE CORPORATE NUMBER... I WAS ALSO LECTURED ABOUT LIFE. GET OUTTA HERE WITH THAT. TOTALLY FEEL SORRY FOR THE STUDENTS WHO COULD NOT COMPLAIN...I WANT THE CORPORATE NUMBER AND THEY ARE HOLDING IT HOSTAGE...FIERYONE@COX.NET...PLEASE ... ANYONE SEND ME THE CORPORATE NUMBER
PMsucks. you should come to the Tampa Location. I keep to myself and that's proved beneficial in my case.
I totally agree with everyones post. The Paul Mitchell school is everything and they are all the same cult-like, ridiculous, rude, like high school all over again. I just had an arguement just today with one of the workers there, they are all fake superficial idiotic crazy people/ Its like they brain wash you into their culture. They all gossip, rude, judge you and make you feel awful. No one should go here I REGRET IT ALL! NO ONE go pm the school, if you want to be happy and have a life dont go here! Im so miserable here and they are so rude to me I argued with the girl about how fake everyone is and i told her its a cult, she didnt like that and she got offended. PAUL MITCHELL ORLANDO school sucks. And also you work for free for them its all a vicious cult and they are all hyporcrites and nuts!
ohh btw does anyone have corp. number?
agree paul mitchell in fayetteville nc sucks too, they tell you lie after lie after lie and make up class is a joke we use $.99 cent make up from the clearence rack fron the dollar store and never get to use real color on our doll heads. cutting class haha thats funny, because our cutting teacher is a national educator haha yes ok and shes only a level 2 cutter but she knows it all, yet we never see her cut, NEVER we watch the dvd then told to cut our doll heads. our learning leaders are never in the zone they are suppose to be in and when you need a consultation they just sign it and tell you ohh you know what your doing. my tuition has been paid for a little over a month and i have a balance of 2, 000 and still pulling 6, 000 more in student loans and they will not write me a check for the over amount. WTF IS THAT? a rip off. i really wish i could stand at the front door when we get girls in wanting to tour the school and tell them they dont wanna be here. Our school is full of mold, we dont have enough stations for all of our students, our phase 2 LL is also the LL adv. and she sucks. we got to use real color on our doll heads for the first time yesterday and ive been there 7 months. ohh nad every week when you have cutting class you have to buy a new doll head and they are 20.00 every time or you have to go home. i hell hate this school i really wish i would have went to a community college. i have to have 75 live haircuts for board and i have 7. really? we have no clients and the ones that we do have are all old ladies and they only want a roller set. PAUL MITCHELL THE SCHOOL OF FAYETTEVILLE SUCKS!
Paul Mitchell School is really bad..They are not organized. I went there for hair color. They messed up my hair and asked me to come the next day for Re-Do and I have to pay for that, even though it was not my fault. I did pay and they messed up again and then they told me to come the next day and unfortunately I had to go out of the town and than they told me to come a week later for the re-do. On the day of my appointment this new lady which calls herself the observer said that they cannot give me service for re-do and I have to pay the whole amount againg..Isn't that suckkkkkssss...I am so disappointed with them. If a customer is respecting tehir view and paying three times for the same service and for their fault..How can they say that since it's the fourth time they cannot fix it and pay again...NO ONE SHOULD GO TO PAUL MITCHELL SCHOOL FOR HAIR COLOR OR CUT AT 1303 SW 107 Ave MIAMI, FLORIDA 33174..NOT THE STUDENTS BUT THE OBSERVER SUCKS...It's not the student fault when they mess up..all student's in all school do but IN NO SCHOOL THE OBSERVER SAYS THEY WILL NOT GET IT FIXED UNTIL PAY THE FULL AMOUNT AGAIN...SO THE ADVICE IS NO NO NO..DON'T GO
i completely agree with everything stated above. i attended THE COSMETOLOGY INSTITUTE A PAUL MITCHELL PARTNER SCHOOL IN TEMECULA, CA and i was promised everything i needed while attending school there would be provided yet as soon as i entered into the adaptive level i was told i needed to purchase additional doll heads from the school or be sent home. we were also told that i would be provided with a makeup kit that i have yet to recieve and have been sent home for not wanting to use the same cleansing cream out of a jar that every other girl was sticking their dirty hands into...ummm HELLO!? what would state board have to say about this? the night students pay the exact same tuition amount as the day students but get nowhere near the same opportunites...no design team...no phase 2...no take home team. and do not even get me started on the staff, the girls get written up for some of the dumbest things i have ever heard of in my life and most of the time due to not calling in sick, yet when a phone call is placed into the school noone answers let alone calls you back, even if you leave a message or 20 the exscuse is that they never got it. teachers quit or are fired every 3 months or so and i could not count on 2 hands how many different teachers i had while i was there. final phase classes were a joke for the most part as the teacher who originally started teaching them could barely speak english. the temecula school will bend over backwards and promise you the world to get you to sign up but as soon as you start its like you are invisble. the owners are just out for money and pull fake tears out as soon as you try to file a complaint. give me a break. i would not refer anyone...even my worst enemy...to this school and i feel bad for the girls who believe in their lies.
...Is it really that bad? I just enrolled on Friday. I was a bit anxious cause I'm a total casual/laid back country girl and not really edgy at all.
I agree with this entirely. I also attended a PM school for a short amount of time, attracted to how well-known PM is. It ended up being something I should have further researched. I could not stand the fake culture...having to make cow sounds, being told to dance like a teenage girl listening to Lady Gaga - I just found it all very irrelevant to learning cosmetology, and most of all, plain bizarre. Some really immature girl in my class made up some rumor that I said I "hated everyone in the school" which was completely false. Of course, she was into the culture, so they believed her. I was very nice with everyone, partially because I knew by not fitting into the school's culture I was being judged more strictly by faculty, and as a straight male, I knew I stood out in an environment like this tremendously. The culture does nothing more than make the already annoying, significantly more annoying. What they don't realize, is the average student is going to fit into this by default, those who are not shouldn't be judged unfairly, most people who are serious about this industry don't want to goto school to spent up to 1 hour a day playing games that would be meant for elementary school. If your personality isn't that of a "beauty school brat" or anything like Richard Simmons..you probably won't like it here. They definitely do play favorites, whoever is the most brainwashed by the culture wins.
Oh and one more thing, who is sick and tired or wearing a label of whether you are a "visionary, fence sitter, or a resister?" what a non-discriminatory school, right? Loads of crap!
I must say reading the original post sounds exactly the same as our Paul Mitchell School in Cincinnati. Today I just about went off! I am sick of the "learning leaders" getting chummy with certain students and the students who don't get chummy with them are treated like garbage. Today a learning leader was trying to get me to get written up for a saturday that I was at school. I physically walked her to the computer where she pulled up my file and saw that I was there that day! And in the same conversation "lost" one of my monthly assignments and said I was going to have to make it up or I couldn't graduate. So I asked another learning leader if I could get into my file folder and see if it was filed away. She opened it up and there was my monthly assignment...score #2! So I brought it back into the learning leader and was screamed at for getting into my file folder and finding it! This is not the first time things like this has happened! I am sick and tired of paying money for this nonsense school! It's a joke! Half the time they don't teach you anything at all, but the teachers want to jump rope or play red rover on days that it's nice. I am 25 and a single mom, I don't have time for games I am here to learn and make a better life for us. And the fact that this crap is going on and I'm paying a ton of money and putting myself in debt for this really angers me.
Another incident happened when the owner was at the school, my Droid phone was stolen out of my purse while I was in the bathroom. When I reported it to the owner and the learning leaders their response was "this is a no phone zone" and didn't help me at all or anything! I had to call the police and write up a report. I don't know what to do and I want something or someone to know about this because the schools are so fake. They tell you at the beginnning that they encourage you to be yourself and they don't discriminate, blah, blah, blah and I think if John Paul or Wynn knew about this stuff...I would hope it would be over.
Does anyone know who above the schools we can complain to? Because this has got to stop!
I can back you up on everything you just stated. I am going through a tuition battle with them, and they are supposedly suing me now. I left because I became pregnant and my work would not allow me to do both. As I needed money fast I decided to quit. EVERYONE there knew that I was leaving, yet nobody had the decency to remind me that I had to give written notice that I would not be attending.
You would think this would be obvious, as it is stated in the contract that you sign when you first start.
However, if one were to quit any other accredited college you can be positive that they would contact you in some kind of way to determine your status and verify the situation.
Cunningly, Paul Mitchell failed to mention this and a year later I get a call stating that I owe $8000! They were so "generous" to take it down to $4000. I settled for this as long as I had their word that I could pay them directly so that it would not be taken to collections. For 9 months I paid $100 to the school directly, seeing as that is all I could afford after having a baby, being on leave, then becoming a single mother.
Around 9 months I received a letter from a collection agency stating my account was delinquent and that I owed $8000!
Funny. I thought I had an agreement.
Apparently, the financial office did not follow through, let the balance go to collections, then never forwarded my payments to the collection agency. I finally got that situation figured out, so that the agency realized that I had been paying. Continuously, of course, afterwards I was bombarded with phone calls. I actually answered them and assured them that I would love to pay that off if I could and as soon as I could I would pay. Keep in mind I am still keeping up on my payments. On one occasion the collector threatened me that if I didn't pay at least $2000 they would have to take it up and consider me for further action. I apologized once again, repeated that I shouldn't be paying this anyways, and assured once again that I would pay.
I have tried contacting the school numerous times. I have made contact to the desk, the message is conveyed, then the dean and I play phone tag repeatedly for a few months. Every other time I call it is a different dean. I even tried calling another school that opened in my region if I could AT LEAST finish my schooling if I had to pay for it. Unfortunately "they are franchises, " and neither of them could do anything about the situation.
This is upsetting as I paid out of pocket for the schooling I received. Then they have the audacity to sit back and let my tuition accrue without contacting me. It is sad that a company which avidly promotes the "BE NICE OR ELSE" book could be so conniving.
It would be different if they had called me to say "hey if you don't sign this you will be charged." Then, yes, I would totally charge me. Yet they remained silent and let it accumulate.
The worse part out of this- no matter how much I pay per month, it will not effect my balance because the interest charges are something like 20%. I mean, something RIDICULOUS. I thought I had misheard the collector and asked her to repeat herself and she did. Unless I pay it off in full, after winning the lottery, I will never be able to get rid of this debt.
About 4 months later after not hearing from any agencies or the school, I get a letter from a law firm claiming if I do not respond within 30 days (which will be the end of this month then I will be sued).
I called the school AND corporate last week. No return from corporate but I did receive a call from financial aid at the school claiming I am to fault. This situation is insane, and I feel helpless against such a large corporation. My options are slim.
I could sue, but it would cost more to do that. I might as well pay.
Lastly, I concur that, especially after this fiasco, this school has some issues. Apparently the case we received along with the DVD's had an estimated value of $1500. The CD's alone were claimed to be worth $500. When I first started, it seemed as though they somewhat had their situation together. I could have been blinded by the glamourous facade. Approximately within the 3 months that I attended Paul Mitchell, they fired/lost about 3-5 instructors, lost the financial aid woman who held them together, several assistants, and even the Dean himself.
Regarding the financial situation outside of tuition... we did have fashion shows and the one I did cost me money. The model or the "Future Professional" was supposed to supply the clothing, shoes, hair accessories, and essentially make-up (considering our kit was a joke.) I ended up having to buy my model clothing because she didn't bring anything, and my clothes and shoes didn't fit her. Luckily we were located within the mall, so we just went out and bought something. The plan was to just take it back, or she was gonna keep it and reimburse me. We decided on the latter. I never received my money from her because she claimed that I owed her that because she could have "worked that day." Even though I asked her if it would put her out of her way. That night I even bought her dinner because she was broke, yet driving a benz.
Yes, this woman was supposed to be a friend... but that is besides the point...
For being such a luxurious company, you would think they would have connections to supply clothing instead of leaving a bunch of struggling college students to supply for such a massive event. It is particularly embarrassing for the school and its image with it being in such a huge city.
If anyone has any ideas on how to get through this or how to handle the situation please let me know as soon as possible. This is such a bad dream, wish I would wake up, knowing that I never took a step in that school.
I would try to find a legal aid group that can help you for free. There is also a government program for financial issues. Here is the link - https://www.usa.gov/federal-agencies/consumer-financial-protection-bureau