World Education Services [WES]
reviews and complaints

This company takes your money and you never hear from them. They do not pick up the phone, do not reply to email but have time to deposit your checks. BTW, do not even try to receive a copy of your transcript from them, again, they will take your money and instead of transcript, ask you to resend all original documents again! What a joke! Consider other options.

Absolute disaster...

1/it took 21 minutes to pick up my call... gets heavy on the wallet when you're calling international.

2/they send back generic, vague and inaccurate letters by email regarding your documents, and you have no way to speak to a human to clarify. Customer service agents, when they pick up, give you generic answers and ask you to wait for another email from the evaluator.

3/They are not accepting my transcript from one of the most prominent schools in Europe. No explanation as to why, and again, impossible to get a straight answer from their phone agents.

4/I sent 4 emails on point 3 above over a period of 3 weeks through their archaic website and no response whatsoever… to date.

5/where in our era can't you upload documents online? Well at WES... they only accept mailed photocopies, which obviously leads to additional cost and delays.

Not to sound pretentious but I lived around the world, emerging and mature countries alike (I'm originally from WES's hometown!), and I was convinced that banking sector in developing countries had the worst costumer service... Well, WES proved me wrong. I will make sure to share a piece of my mind with the institution applying for, for allowing WES to enjoy this monopoly and therefore encourage their complacency.

I’m still hoping WES reads my emails, gets the point and turns around my evaluation in the next week. On the bright side, I have everything documented, and should I miss my Master's degree application deadline because of their painful (aka ‘needle in the eyeball') service and unsubstantiated refusal of my transcript, I will not hesitate to file a case when I move back to NYC next month. Judging from the widely spread discontent on the web, it will not be that difficult to have joint lawsuit case...

Piece of advise to WES: turn your business into a profit organization if you have to, but for god sake's, PICK UP YOUR GAME. I would love to run your company for couple of years…

They are absolutely horrendous. The way they treat customers is disgusting! They have given me an incorrect report which includes courses I DID NOT TAKE, and they made spelling errors wrong and got the titles of some of my classes wrong. Once you have your report it is absolutely impossible to get in touch with them - no one will speak to you on the phone or via email. The only thing you can do is write online via their contact form and then you just get bog standard reply which doesn't address any issues. They are disgusting! Before I ordered my report any questions I had they replied within hours. Once I received it... nothing. Avoid them like the plague! If you can. Unfortunately my schools would only accept WES reports so I had no choice. The school demands a report from WES only - WES lowers my grade by putting courses I had nothing to do with - the school says I don't have a high enough GPA and need to take more of their courses at their tuition rates.

Terrible service! I have been waiting for my verification reports from WES over 7 months after I paid $ 640 ( $ 325 for WES; $ 315 for WES's authorized agent) for the whole process ! I'm VERY angry at them.

DON"T EVER USE THEIR SERVICE.
after they take your money, they don't care about anything.
i use them to get my degree certify, after they took my money, they do not answer any of my question.
and all the phone is to voice mail. when i finally get a hold of a supervisor over there, she said they are non profit organization and it's not their fault. i mean WTF, you charge people big money for the service, and you call that non-profit organization? after i complain many time, they finally get my degree certified, but they mailed it to the wrong address i want them to mail to. are those people who work there stupid or something? if you can't mail a letter to the correct adress, you should close the service.
for these past few weeks, it's nothing but pain. hope someone will do something about it.

World education Services really is a weird company, i had to go trough the process with them for my credential evaluation. After i had my schools send them all documents directly, and i sent them translations of these too by courier, they claimed not to have one translation which was included. So the evaluation was put on hold for a month and a half, numberous phonecalls and emails ensued. Then a week ago i SUDDENLY got an email that they had all my documents and evaluated them. I'm happy with the endresult but they are NOT reachable AT ALL. I was in hold for a good 30 minutes while calling them and when someone did pick up and put me on hold again to "look some info up" i mysteriously got a line disruption, strange isn't it how being on hold for 30 minutes goes without a hitch but when i get an employee suddenly the line goes *poof*.

Then the only other way to communicate with them is a contact form on their website, they don't even have an email address, so whether this even reaches a human being remains to be seen.

If you do need to get something done with these people make 101% sure you have all the required documents directly from your schools, have them send it themselves in a sealed school envelope. Also get translations of all of those that arent in english. And lastly ONLY send by courier eventhough its more expensive, they'll just claim your stuff got lost otherwise!

Reading the complaints here i guess im one of the LUCKY ones to have gotten a completed evaluation, eventhough the wait was incredibly long due to the document loss.

How hard is it to start up a proper customer service for a charity (which is weird by itself) thats supposed to help students?

I'm seriously glad i dont have to deal with them ever again.

The company claimed to be the best in evaluation services in the U.S when the reverse is true. They have lobbied many schoools to be upset with the evaluations when infact they do nothing but scam clients. I paid $175.00 to have my transcript evaluated and they asked me to send in photo copies which i did. And at the same time they asked me to fill out a transcript request form and mail to my school directly so that they can send them my transcripts in a sealed enveloped. My school confirmed that they mailed the transcript and even provided me with the tracking number. WES received the transcript and the status online stated again that we have mailed copies of your transcript to your school for confirmation. My school states that they have not received any letter from WES and that if they did they had already responded to my transcript request. Schools is Africa do not have funds set aside for this international posting and when you write to them without paying for your postatge, forget it the student will have to pay for it... now i have no transcript evaluated... the school stated that the transcripts have been mailed and confirmation shows WES received it and now they want another one again... who pays for that and how long does that take... buch of liars, no 1800- number and when you call you stay on the phone for every... no office that you can go and talk to someone, , , , how reputable is the scam in the name of WES, , , , i'm emailing schools and also the government about this easy way to make money. I talked to a friend who told me the same thing happned to him and evaluated his transcript from another NACES® member and now he has even finish is Doctorate degree and has been working for two years and has never received anything from WES. what is this?

I am a Lecturer in a College of the CUNY, in NEw York. I was adressed by their HR to have my University Degree translated and turned into American Academic standards. Eversince I have been dealing with WES it has been a hell for me. I paid them 229 US dollars, I sent the required documents. Eversince it has become more and more absurd. They expect that my What follows is an extract from an email I sent them in November:

I just received an email from you. I am surprised by what you are asking. you attached a document (in english) that my University shoud fill in.
Here is my response to you:
- first of all, how can you expect that people at my former University in Italy will read and fill a document in a foreign language?
- Like I already said to you before, italian bureaucracy requests to attach expensive stamps to the Degree, and the University doesn't go and buy it, for a former student or for nobody. I should be there myself and do it in person, which is impossible, since I am in New York.
I already sent an original of my degree you should receive soon.
Your attitude on the whole has been unprofessional.
Your toll free number doesnt' work, there is no way to talk to someone of your staff.
At the college where I am working, they wonder why is taking so long.
Your service is poor and disfunctional. I already addressed you these same issues but you never wrote back.

Finally I travelled back to Italy and had my former University send the required document. When they received they sent two mails in the arch of... 20 minutes. The first sayd that they received the document (University Degree). The second says that the document is not clear, or better that they need to find in it the words that they can only expect to find otherwise they don't process. They basically brought me back to the start.

I am starting a lawsuit against them, and I would like to turn it into a class action. I already emailed some of the other people who complained about WES. Please let's all join in this action in order to overcome and have our rights respected.

Wes is brand name for bad and inaccurage services
Poor customer quality - phone call s of no use, you will always listen to voice message.
If you post your query - if they remember they will send you an email saying "log into website and help your self. There is no count for time
The details given on the website for the requirement of documents is not at ambigious, after paying the fees they will send you an email... So and so documents are not received. You will have to struggle to get these documents as required by wes.
For their inaccurate service they give a name called"i. T or technical problems"
I have not seen such bad service. I suggest no one should go for wes for credential evaluation. If you go there you will be trapped, you will be highly exhausted and stressed out if you are opting for wes. I literally had mental torture after paying lot of money. Do not get trapped at wes. I suggest in canada better go to u of t or icas.

They claim to have received only half of the documents that were in the envelop... Seems like a usual practice for them.. No response to my emails and got them to hang-up on me (after waiting for more than 20 minutes on the phone...)

Anybody wants to join in a class action lawsuit?
I found that website on the web:
http://www.classactionconnect.com/?gclid=COzHp7TP86UCFRxqgwodC2jhoQ

Thanks

I do not believe there is another single company under the sun which is less customer oriented than WES.

They argue that they've received only one of the two required documents that i've sent. At first it sounds reasonable but it's completely impossible because both documents were sent in the SAME envelope. What kind of an humanbeing can receive only one of the items in the same envelope and claim that he did not receive the other one.?!

Most important issue is that it is impossible to reach anyone in the company. I've been trying to talk to the customer representatives for more than 3 days and each time waiting around 20-25 minutes, listening to the same tape record. No way..

I even do not belive that there are somebody working in the office and answering the phone calls. Indeed i do not think that the company itself exists.. Maybe it's totally fake. Building a good website, receiving the checks, no need to worry about the rest.. Good idea..

I've filled out the form on their web site but i do not believe that any response will be sent till the end of this year, even i don't think i'll be able to reach them in this century.

If i miss the deadline of my application, i absolutely will have my lawyer talk to them in detail.

They cash your money and if you are not able to provide them all the documents they need (because the school of your country does not provide them to you), they just refuse to help you and refuse to reimburse you.
Stay away, THIEVES!

My name is Max Jordan Nguemeni. I am from Cameroon, where the secondary education system is french-based. I applied for an evaluation of my credentials in October 2009 Because it was required for my admission at Howard University, in Yaounde. The evaluation took so long, Because the people at W.E.S were trying to "verify" the authenticity of my credencials, even though they were sent directly from my high school in Yaounde, Cameroon. They wanted the documents to be sent by the "ministry of secondary Education" in Cameroon, which is a silly request because the ministry in every counntry probably has an eye on everything going on but only the school itself can really authentify the transcripts since they issue all of them, besides the final and National exam`s degree. If my father did not have enough connections at the ministry it would have never happened. when you call WES to explain it to them first they put you on hold for an hour maybe, which is very discouraging, but then they cannot even help you. They finally received everything in february, and on february 23 they sent the evaluation. I was very surprised, because a HIGH school evaluation is supposed to show every class i took, but they provided only "Maths" and "Physics" because they were in what what we call in cameroon stream, which is essentially specialization. However, Chemistry is part of the stream, but they ignored it. the stream`s name is actually "MATHEMATICS AND PHYSICS SCIENCES", which includes chemistry. In addition, i took PHILOSOPHY, GEOGRAPHY, CIVICS, HISTORY, LITTERATURE, LIFE SCIENCES (BIOLOGY AND GEOLOGY). but they ignored everything. When i complained they said they did not make any mistake. WHY is is that they do not put everything I learned? HOWARD UNIVERSITY Reqests that evaluation by the end of the spring semester. if not i will be purged. THIIS ORGANISATION IS FULL OF CRAP. THEY DO NOT KNOW THEIR JOB, ...OR WHAT THEY ARE DOING IT IS ALL SCAMING. THEY HAD ME PAY EXTRA MONEY FOR WHAT THEY CALL COURSE BY COUSE EVALUATION, AND IT DOES NOT REFLECT MY CREDENTIALS.

I contacted WES(World Education Services) over phone on the 23rd of Feb '10, so that they can have my foreign academic degree evaluated. After speaking to them about payments/costs etc I was assured that no money would be charged to my account until and unless they received all documents in it's entirety needed to complete the evaluation, also they informed that a rep would be contacting me if further docs were required, no one contacted me from WES, I called them to find out as to what was going on then I was informed that I had to get in touch with my foreign University and have them mail a sealed envelope containing the required grade sheets, I contacted the University and was informed that it was not their policy to mail such documents, I could get them in person only, which would cost me $2400 in air fare in addition to other expenses, so that was not a logical financial decision, I can get a BA degree here in the US. So, I called back WES and explained the scenario and asked them to refund money wrongfully charged as no services were performed by them at all, because how could they do anything when they had nothing to work with, they asked me to use the "contact us" feature on their website, I did so, and today I received an email saying that I would not receive any refund. Why not? how are they allowed to keep this money? based on what services?.
First they say they would not charge money and now they did. They forced me to include a credit card number for assurance purposes.
Please help me receive appropriate assistance in this matter.
Thank you.

I have filed a complaint with the BBB and the FTC, I would urge others to do the same so our voice can be heard.

I am an American student who has completed a Master’s degree abroad. I am currently applying to graduate programs in the United States which required my foreign degree to be evaluated by a third-party. I chose to go with World Education Services to evaluate my credential. This is a relatively long complaint, but for any student or anyone that is thinking of going with WES this might be worth a read.

The WES course by course evaluation report I was issued contained numerous errors including:

1) Assigning two different American grades for the same Foreign Grade. In one case, the higher numeric grade received a lower American grade, while the lower numeric grade (which was the same as letter grade as the first) received a higher American grade. I also received both an A and an A- for the exact same grade in two different places. This occurred multiple times throughout my evaluation. No explanation was ever given for this despite many complaints.

2) Selectively and inaccurately applied WES’ own listed grading conversion scale, by issuing A minuses when their grading scale for my particular university did not have any pluses or minuses. While according to the WES grading scale, as posted on the web, confirmed by their Customer Service Representatives, and by a letter by the Director of Evaluations, indicated that both grades should have been an A.

But even assuming that their grading scale was supposed to include pluses and minuses, then one would assume that all grades that were on the borderline would receive plus and minuses as well. However, this was not the case since WES found that only minuses applied to certain grades, but not others, without any explanation to why this distinction has been made in the first place.

3) Containing spelling errors within the evaluation (which was corrected after numerous complaints).

4) WES failed to provide accurate information distinguishing between two courses received from two different department or schools (something that all transcripts should provide). The course by course evaluation did not indicate what particular discipline did the course fall under. This could be an issue of evaluation standards as a whole, but this was not explained to me through e-mail or over the phone.

5) Failed to give accurate weighting specific to particular courses (such as courses spanning over the course of two semesters rather than one), thereby skewing the entire assessment. For example, I took a year long dissertation unit which spanned over the course of two semesters, but only received one semester’s worth of credit. I contacted my university to confirm that this is the case and told me that all this information on how to interpret dissertation grades are located on the back of the transcript.

The service at the WES was also atrocious. World Education Services:

1) Refused to change the aforementioned errors and replied through an e-mail with the same grading scale that WES failed to uphold or adhere to. Within my letters that I faxed to the Director of Evaluation, I included the grading scale as an example of why my evaluation needed to be fixed. In response, they simply gave me a copy of the very same scale I used to critique their evaluation, while asserting that no changes were warranted. They did not bother to explain why their scale was not followed nor did they bother addressing any other of the concerns that I mentioned before.

2) They sent virtually the same e-mail as a reply to each of the three letters I sent. None of the e-mails they sent explained any of the discrepancies that I found in my evaluation.

3) Customer Service representatives informed me that the same grading scale used on website would be used to evaluate my credentials before and after the fact that WES did not use such scale. One of the main reasons I went with World Education Services was because the Customer Service representatives told me before I filed a request for an evaluation that my credentials would be evaluated in accordance to their grading scale.

4) I was put through to the Manager’s voicemail twice, after waiting 20 minutes on the phone to speak to a representatives only to have both my messages not responded to.

Overall, my experience with WES has been terrible at best. Not only was their evaluation riddled with errors, the Customer Service representatives were enormously unhelpful and unwilling to assist me in any regard except to provide me with either a fax number or the manager’s voicemail. The manager seems to be perpetually “at lunch” or unavailable no matter how long I waited on the phone to speak with him or her. The processing of my complaints would take over a day each time only to be receiving the same half-baked reply every time.

I hope this serves as a warning to anybody seeking services from WES and cannot stress how distasteful my entire experience was with them. Because of school deadlines, I am forced to find another company to do the same job. In doing some brief calls to other companies, I found them to be much more courteous and helpful to any concerns and questions I had regarding their evaluation service. They were also much more forthright and transparent with how my credentials were going to be evaluated. I would not want any future dealings with World Education Services.

I am an American student who has completed a Master's degree abroad. I am currently applying to graduate programs in the United States which required my foreign degree to be evaluated by a third-party. I chose to go with World Education Services to evaluate my credential. This is a relatively long complaint, but for any student or anyone that is thinking of going with WES this might be worth a read.

The WES course by course evaluation report I was issued contained numerous errors including:

1) Assigning two different American grades for the same Foreign Grade. In one case, the higher numeric grade received a lower American grade, while the lower numeric grade (which was the same as letter grade as the first) received a higher American grade. I also received both an A and an A- for the exact same grade in two different places. This occurred multiple times throughout my evaluation. No explanation was ever given for this despite many complaints.

2) Selectively and inaccurately applied WES' own listed grading conversion scale, by issuing A minuses when their grading scale for my particular university did not have any pluses or minuses. While according to the WES grading scale, as posted on the web, confirmed by their Customer Service Representatives, and by a letter by the Director of Evaluations, indicated that both grades should have been an A.

But even assuming that their grading scale was supposed to include pluses and minuses, then one would assume that all grades that were on the borderline would receive plus and minuses as well. However, this was not the case since WES found that only minuses applied to certain grades, but not others, without any explanation to why this distinction has been made in the first place.

3) Containing spelling errors within the evaluation (which was corrected after numerous complaints).

4) WES failed to provide accurate information distinguishing between two courses received from two different department or schools (something that all transcripts should provide). The course by course evaluation did not indicate what particular discipline did the course fall under. This could be an issue of evaluation standards as a whole, but this was not explained to me through e-mail or over the phone.

5) Failed to give accurate weighting specific to particular courses (such as courses spanning over the course of two semesters rather than one), thereby skewing the entire assessment. For example, I took a year long dissertation unit which spanned over the course of two semesters, but only received one semester's worth of credit. I contacted my university to confirm that this is the case and told me that all this information on how to interpret dissertation grades are located on the back of the transcript.

The service at the WES was also atrocious. World Education Services:

1) Refused to change the aforementioned errors and replied through an e-mail with the same grading scale that WES failed to uphold or adhere to. Within my letters that I faxed to the Director of Evaluation, I included the grading scale as an example of why my evaluation needed to be fixed. In response, they simply gave me a copy of the very same scale I used to critique their evaluation, while asserting that no changes were warranted. They did not bother to explain why their scale was not followed nor did they bother addressing any other of the concerns that I mentioned before.

2) They sent virtually the same e-mail as a reply to each of the three letters I sent. None of the e-mails they sent explained any of the discrepancies that I found in my evaluation.

3) Customer Service representatives informed me that the same grading scale used on website would be used to evaluate my credentials before and after the fact that WES did not use such scale. One of the main reasons I went with World Education Services was because the Customer Service representatives told me before I filed a request for an evaluation that my credentials would be evaluated in accordance to their grading scale.

4) I was put through to the Manager's voicemail twice, after waiting 20 minutes on the phone to speak to a representatives only to have both my messages not responded to.

Overall, my experience with WES has been terrible at best. Not only was their evaluation riddled with errors, the Customer Service representatives were enormously unhelpful and unwilling to assist me in any regard except to provide me with either a fax number or the manager's voice mail. The manager seems to be perpetually at lunch or unavailable no matter how long I waited on the phone to speak with him or her. The processing of my complaints would take over a day each time only to be receiving the same half-baked reply every time.

I hope this serves as a warning to anybody seeking services from WES and cannot stress how distasteful my entire experience was with them. Because of school deadlines, I am forced to find another company to do the same job. In doing some brief calls to other companies, I found them to be much more courteous and helpful to any concerns and questions I had regarding their evaluation service. They were also much more forthright and transparent with how my credentials were going to be evaluated. I would not want any future dealings with World Education Services.

Never Ever go and evaluate your degree in WES. Fraud and completed rip off. totally rip off . Total dishonest people run the company. I applied for the evaluation in June of 2009 as per company they will evaluate your degree within 2 week.I send my degree and certificate in seal enveleop from University . As per them University don't exist and its ranked as 20 the best university in India. Such poor knowledge about university . As per customer service degree is not in English, DAHHH did they ever went to school to read english alphabets ...Its all in english. We should petition against this company for fraud activity .ripping people money and not providing service as promised on web site .

I paid for evaluation with wes.org for evaluation of certificate for international schooling. They were quick to accept payment fee but since then nothing had been done. It wasn't until recently when I couldn't wait I discovered that not only did they send my evaluation to the wrong address, they also didn't notify me or pay the Council their evaluation processing fee, so my form was sitting out there in my country of Education, untouched until I contacted them and paid the fee and filled out their own forms. These fees was supposedly to be covered by the $160 they (wes.org) had collected from me. And when I called to complain, the customer service lady whoever she was said sorry, some school's don't require payments while others do, we didn't know they required payment or we would have notified you, and when I said I am very upset by the way my evaluation had been handled, she just kept mute and when I asked hello? I am speaking alone or is there someone else on the other side of the line? She said yes, is that all? alright great and hung up the phone!
I have never been so hurt in all my life and neither have I met with any organization so unprofessional and need I say I was on hold for over 25mins four times and the phone would go off and then I'll have to call again before I could speak with someone? Please people beware, use any other evaluating body if need be, unless you do not have a choice but to use them. Truly, it is traumatic. When you depend on such organizations in order to get your life back in terms of certification, evaluation, Education and job opportunities.
They will treat you like you don't matter as soon as you pay them. My evaluation has been delayed for 8mths now... need I say more?