I am not someone who writes reviews, but I feel strongly enough about this experience that I need to share. I am in charge of creating professional development plans for emerging leaders in our company. I have used Fred Pryor for many of these seminars over the years and have received satisfactory feedback. However, I have terminated using their services completely after the atrocious customer service and charging of a credit card with my authorization. A very long story short. I received a overdue invoice notice for one of my team members trainings. It was for $49. I pulled my receipts and forwarded the fully paid invoice for the same class, same date and same attendee to Pryor. I received no response for about 2 months. I then received another reminder of the same overdue invoice. Again, I sent the paid invoice and called to explain that there were two invoices for the same person for the same seminar and obviously since I was charged twice, I believed the appropriate course of action would be delete the repeat invoice. Received no response and the person on the phone had no idea what they were doing. Fast forward 2 months later, my employee receives a COLLECTIONS LETTER, for $49!!!! I immediately forwarded the already paid invoice to the collections agency and to fred pryor. TO this I received a response, that I no longer owed the $49.00 because they had charged my credit card on file. WITH NO AUTHORIZATION. At this point, I am not only reporting Fred Pryor to the better business bureau, I have stopped a 5 year customer relationship with them and removed them from our preferred vendor for our new franchise business. read more

My employer has paid for me to take all of these courses. We have set up my account multiple times. There system won't let me in and I have had multiple chat sessions of which were closed out by them because I was not moving fast enough for them. They gave me a number to call to get me set up that way. The gentleman on the phone said he was going to send me another email to reset. The link in the email for the forth time does not work. The customer service is horrible and they simply don't care if you get to take the course as long as you have already given them your money. read more

Won't stop sending junk mail for training even though I've called them to stop. My business has been closed for 5 years and still get junk mail. read more

I just finished the Excel Basics and Excel beyond the basics classes. I felt that our instuctor, Nick Bass did I great job of explaining the content and I walked away feeling like I have the tools that I need to be more productive at my job. I am excited to take what I have learned and apply it in my job. I felt that these classes were time and money well spent. I signed up to be a pryor plus member so that I can continue to learn. read more

I attended the Advanced Microsoft Excel Seminar in Tucson, AZ. I was very skeptical based on previous reviews. My low expectations were completely squashed. Our instructor, Rodney, was anything but boring. He was upbeat, personable, extremely knowledgeable and very relatable. His method of teaching made the seminar fun and intriguing. I opened myself to learning, and came away with much more then expected. There were no high pressure sales pitch as others had mentioned. I've been to other excel seminars (not Fred Pryor) where I regretted attending within the first 15 minutes of the program. In this session, I couldn't get enough and the time flew by. The instructor made the difference. I am thinking of signing up for another class. read more

Quality sometimes does not meet expectations, but staff are excellent and responsive. As a non-profit, this is an affordable option for us and has been helpful to staff. read more

I have been to 3 seminars with this company (all located in Massachusetts, as they offer courses nationally). I actually drive from over an hour away each time, because I find them so helpful. I work for a small/medium non-profit with 30 employees, but I work remotely from my home office. Part of what I like most about the in-person seminars is getting to interact and learn with others wanting to learn about the same topic. I have met many great people from other industries and learned a lot from their experiences. The instructors have also been fantastic! They are very engaging and give real world experiences alongside standardized content. I am signed up for 2 more sessions in the next 2 months. My work has outlined a new professional development framework for what trainings we need to move up and 90% of the topics are covered through Fred Pryor Seminars. After paying for the first course, I now have the unlimited plan for one year and it is well worth the money! It sounds like other posts on here either had bad experiences with payment/refunds (which I have not experienced) or poor instructors, which is unfortunate. Not a single person left early in any of the 3 sessions I attended, so I really think the bad reviews on here are not representative of all seminars. read more

Updated Review: I'm very pleased with the results of my refund request. Supervisor Kimberly was very helpful resolving this situation. I wasn't looking for a full refund just for the programs I didn't want. I would recommend but they need a quicker response time for customer service. I went to the Excel Basics and the Excel Beyond Basics 3 weeks ago. I bought the Evelyn Wood Reading Packet the first day and the Conqueror packet the second day. Once I received the email with the downloadable programs, I can't open a couple of links for the Evelyn Wood Reading Packet. So I've been trying for three days to get a refund, I've sent emails requesting help and finally asking for a refund; but no response to my emails, also been calling just to hold forever without answer. SO this morning, I called again and talked to Kimberly. I told Kimberly that I wanted a refund for the Evelyn Wood Reading Packet at first she stated that she couldn't do refunds and referred me to the customerservice@pryor.com email address that I've been emailing. I asked to speak with someone above her and she made that request, but was told to fill out an e-form for my refund request. After collecting the refund request information, she told me to call back Monday if I haven't heard anything. I asked for a confirmation number for the phone call refund request, they don't give out confirmation numbers for phone call refund request. So I asked her Kimberly's last name or employee ID, that way I could verify who I talked too if I have to call back, she can't provide that information. So I asked for her supervisor, she couldn't let me talk to her. I asked for supervisor's name and amazingly enough it is Kimberly also, with no last name or employee ID... read more

So found out after the fact that my company pays for these courses for free. They charge $25.00 per course to cancel in advance and if less than 10 days from a seminar then you get a credit for a different course you want to take within the year. read more

Don't know how they got my name, but I have been getting spammed for 6 years and never once been interested in a flyer. So today when I received two flyers I rang to get them to stop. Couldn't find me with either VIP number, company or address, I eventually had to hang up cause this was taking forever. What a colossal waste of resource. Who organizes their business like this? Certainly not organized people, which is one of the courses they are trying teach. read more

I have attended several seminars through Pryor Learning and they never disappoint. Their customer service representatives are always pleasant and willing to help very quickly. Highly recommended! read more

I have taken a few seminars and utilized the online courses, all of the information as been beneficial. Trainers do a great job with important points. read more

I am so angry with this company. I attended one of their seminars almost a year ago. It was horrible, but now the problem is I can't get them to stop sending their flyers for a million other seminars. I have called twice trying to get them to remove my name and address from their mailing list and explained that I'm receiving 4 to 5 seminar phamplets from them PER WEEK in the mail. Not only is that ridiculous, but I don't want to be reminded of the $199.00 I wasted of my own money to go to this thing. 2ND CALL (6 weeks ago) I was as nice as possible and basically pleaded with the lady to remove my info and stop bombarding my mailbox. She said it would be taken care of. They are still coming, almost every day, every week! Feels like harassment when they won't acknowledge me making it clear I'm not interested and don't want my mailbox full of their material! read more

They have a horrible website that will not accept visa payments even if you refresh the browser and correctly enter your card details. One needs to call the 1-800 customer service no. or chat with online with an agent. phone customer service agents are either slow or unmotivated. Takes forever to get your name right even if you spell it out as in A for apple. I can only wonder what the training is like. Highly disappointed with this institution. read more

I have been a Pryor + member for a couple of years - 80% of the seminars I have taken have been excellent. And the online classes are very good - they have many that are just a few minutes so you can do them during work as you have some time. read more

Took one class about 5-6 months ago. It was great, learned a lot and got out of it what I needed. Since then i receive 2 mailings a week and now mailings from other companies like headsets.com. When I called Fred Pryor to be removed I asked if they sell your info to other companies. They said yes! Such a scam of a company. read more

Do not sign up for their classes, you cannot get off their mailing lists, it is crazy the amount of mail you get in addition to mailing for personnel that have been gone for years. read more

There are no hands on training in this seminar.If you are serious about learning excel enroll in an adult school or a reputable trade school. The goal of this seminar is to sell online training and CBT on a USB drive. The trainer said, he will reward us with excel shortcut keys on a laminated sheet if we buy any of the training packages and made it sound that he put a lot of effort in putting them together. You can actually go to Microsoft office website and print the excel shortcut keys. read more

Dunno why my other review is listed as "not helpful" as well as a plethora of all the other negative reviews on here. I will say this again, DO NOT GIVE THIS COMPANY YOUR MONEY. read more

I took the 1-day "Fundamentals of Project Management" seminar in Portland on May 19, 2014. This was my second Fred Pryor seminar. The first was long enough ago that I don't even remember the topic, but this class made me remember why I hadn't taken another one after the first. 1) The "class" was filled with advertisements for other Fred Pryor classes. The instructor started the class by giving an overly long bio of his background that included sentences like "Evelyn Wood [speed reading course] changed my life," and Fred Pryor offers this and that class, Fred Pryor offers Excel, "I used to think Fred Pryor was the Wizard of Oz because he's from Kansas" and "Fred Pryor was a great guy." The "high" point of the sales pitch-slash-seminar came at a little after 2 when the slide presentation changed to an advertisement and he instructed the class to pull out a brochure that was tucked in every workbook (keep in mind, at this point, with only two hours left of the class, and 4 hours under our belts, we were on page 16 of a 45-page workbook). He said he wasn't going to give us a sales pitch and then proceeded with a sales pitch, walking the class through the brochure (it was 3-4 full-size pages). "Class" didn't resume until 2:30. 2) He referred to class time as "a paid day off from work" during his sales pitch. I was under the impression that I was there to work. A paid day off is vacation. 3) Between his long bio and his early glorification of the late Fred Pryor, it took us an hour and 45 minutes to get through the first 3 pages of the workbook. We did have a 7-minute partner discussion introducing ourselves to one other person, but that was it as far as activities during that period. 4) At the beginning of class, he assured us that "I won't read the workbook to you" and then spent the non-sales pitch parts of class reading the workbook to us. 5) He had entire slides of such valuable information as "fail to plan, plan to fail," "proper preparation prevents poor performance," and "measure twice, cut once." 6) We didn't talk about budget management at all and there's really nothing about it in the workbook. 7) The parts that might have been useful (such as charting the project) came so late in the class that he completely skimmed through them (he just read the pages with no practical examples). 8) He spent about 20 minutes on how to conduct a meeting. Not a project planning meeting, but just a meeting in general. 9) There are about 10 pages in the workbook that we didn't even discuss. I can probably figure them out, but if I (or my boss) wanted me to figure stuff out on my own, I wouldn't have been sent to the class in the first place. This class would have been MUCH better if we had been set up in small groups from the beginning, assigned a hypothetical project to work on, and worked through each phase with guidance from the instructor. We did a very little bit of that (4 exercises that went from 2-7 minutes. That's 4 exercises for the entire day, totalling a maximum of 28 minutes of actual work, which isn't accurate because not all 4 exercises were allotted 7 minutes). There was very little in this class that I didn't get from either my training design class at university last year or the 7-week supervision training I took through my employer back in 1997 or 1998. I'm either already an expert project manager (surprise!), or this was not a good class, because I came out of it with nothing useful to share. I would definitely not recommend Fred Pryor seminars in the future; I had forgotten about the captive-audience sales pitches. read more

beware of their scam.!!!! i paid for 1 year plus acc. in march 0f 2017. no good siminars for the first 4 months and now when the good seminars are coming up, they tell me my memberships is expiring at the end of the year. never even got to use it!!!!!!!!! your better off paying for each course individually!!!! read more

SUPREME WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY. Speaker was NOT intelligible on the subject of HR law, FLEW through the meat and potatoes essentials yet took his time telling stories, insulting his company, and being rude to the people in the seminar! He stressed how much he wanted to get us out of there before the allotted time - I'm not in high school - I am paying to be there, and I sadly I left with little to no more knowledge than what I came with. I cleared all of my appointments to be there, which is a considerable expense for our medical office. I wouldn't recommend this seminar to anyone wanting to actually learn. I asked several questions to get as much as I could out of the experience, and often he didn't know the answer (yet the others in seminar did and answered for him), or he would tell me to "Google it". Save yourself the cost and hassle - go ahead and just "Google" whatever you'd like to know about HR law. I wish I had. read more

Company had subpar training but what is worse is they sent via mail "invoices" to all other employees in our organization for $199 each that look like legitimate invoices- completely unethical and fraudulent. We are still in complete shock they would do this- our organization almost paid the "invoices" until realizing it was a "promotion" to get more people to sign up for training. Awful. read more

I received an enrollment form for Managing Time in the mail. I wish I would have looked at the reviews before I asked my boss to send myself and 3 of my supervisors to this seminar. We were all very excited to attend and learn, expecting to come back with useful information and let me say, WHAT A LET DOWN!!! We did not finish the seminar, much to say. We felt as though we were in the audience for an infomercial. I had, however, made a note to ask the instructor to please have them stop sending so many emails (up to 3 a day). I have them in my spam now. My coworkers and I decided over lunch that we would take the one or two things we learned and try to implement them somehow. On a positive note, my 3 supervisors and I got to spend a nice day together as a team. Our company paid for the day and our lunch. With the extra time we had from leaving the seminar early, we had a leisurely lunch and decided to go ride the ferry across and back on Lake Wisconsin. The seminar was in Madison, WI at the Doubletree Hotel. The hotel was very nice and easy to find. Next time I will save my company $200 and just ask for a paid day off with lunch and a full tank of gas so we can take a nice road trip without the aggravation. I'm sure there must be some good seminars but this company is not one of them!! read more

High cancellation fees even when a seminar is months away. Had to speak with customer service multiple times just to get a confirmation of the amount of the refund and how much the fees were. Then they missed cancelling one item on the original invoice. Had to call in again! The company is not about learning, it is only about making money. They do not care if there customers are 100% satisfied, as their policy states. If you have a job where your schedule changes, I suggest not signing up for a FP seminar. There are so many other companies out there that are customer friendly and provide 100% refunds months prior to a class. FP policy of 100% customer satisfaction is false. read more

Went to Human Resource class today The teacher very nice and knowledgeable, but OMG the sales pitches to buy other class. Why,you not teaching me anything in this one. I want our money back. this was a serious waste of my time. I lost not gain here.Then to top it off they want me to fill in my own name on the certificate. come on you are paid to do this, you know who is coming to the class, why not have it nicely pre-printed so we can feel like we got something out of it. Never again. this was the 3rd class I have attended in 10 years and it hasn't changed. read more

I was looking forward to learning a few new Excel techniques and signed up for a Beyond the Basics Excel seminar, but was extremely disappointed a few minutes into the class. Our instructor, Mani, was friendly and engaging, but he spent a good hour, if not 2 hours, going through the table of contents and making all these sales pitches, from getting Microsoft certified, to buying Pryor Plus, it was ridiculous! I don't think we touched our workbooks until the 2nd hour of the seminar. Speaking of workbooks, I would have to agree with some of the other reviews - attendees pay a decent amount of money to attend these seminars, and physical workbooks aren't even provided on the day of the seminar? They claim to be part of the green movement, but how does that explain the COUNTLESS brochures they've sent to our office? We get multiple brochures for multiple employees each week, and they all end up getting recycled. Great job being green, folks. All in all, I wouldn't recommend paying for this seminar. I'd like to give them the benefit of the doubt and say maybe it was just my instructor, but the other reviews seem pretty consistent with mine. read more

Took a project management class. There were some interesting concepts but overall it was incohesive. The instructor spent about 60% of the time pitching other fred pryor seminars. After that they were sending me fliers in the mail so I called and asked to be removed from their mailing list. Then they started mailing me even more junk. read more

Nothing but a shameless day long sales pitch. They should be ashamed of themselves. Learned absolutely nothing from the canned, useless PowerPoint,and from what I am reading here, all presenters have the same opening story. Left at lunch. read more

Instructor was a nice guy, but the course level and content was elementary at best. Had the combined feeling of a training talk + timeshare sale. Took the leadership transition course - you learn more on the job than you ever will in this seminar. Waste of $. read more

If I could give them zero stars I would. I attended both their Basic Excel and Beyond Basics Excel seminars. I wanted to refresh my skills as well as build more. Not only did they graze over 95% of topics, they spent the majority of the time giving us "personal" stories and trying to sell us their other seminars and products. Both 6 hour seminars could have been completed in 3 hours if they only discussed Excel. I was annoyed by the comments made towards "millennials" and our inability to recognized out of date software, such as floppy disks, and our lack of knowledge of "pound". I was aggravated that there were no real world applications used in class. We were talked at and not taught. I want to be able to go into excel with actual problems and learn how to execute them properly in the program. That was never an option. We were told at the beginning of the seminar that most "teachers" don't even allow you to have laptops. Most people learn by doing, so why aren't we "doing" anything? They also gear the seminar towards PC users. I have a Mac and never once was I given the alternative options. More than half of the shortcuts that were given, were not available on my Mac, nor was I told what the alternative is. I'm tired of the sales pitches and stories and "tiny breaks". I want to learn and this seminar did not teach. I'm extremely disappointed that I wasted 12 hours of my time. Do yourself a favor and DO NOT ATTEND ANY FRED PRYOR SEMINARS read more

I have attended a few courses through Pryor and have been happy with the many takeaways I've had. Each class has had wonderful instructors that were energetic and passionate about what they were doing. I read the reviews of the "sales pitches" that are given, and do not disagree that they are in the courses. I have not experienced it as being the large amount of time some reviews gave, but they are built into a few segments of the training. I did sign up for Pryor+ during my first course based on these, and am glad I did (tactic works). Finally, if attending a training to better yourself professionally and sharpen sales or technical skills, you should focus on the approach that they take during these "pitches". The language, enthusiasm, and delivery are teaching moments in themselves. If you see things from other people's point of view, work to take something away from every moment in life, you will come out ahead even with the less than interesting moments. read more

Terrible experience with the "How to Communicate with Tact and Professionalism". Aside from the fast-paced-information-dump format of the class, I took particular issue with the gender stereotypes and hetero-normative assumptions reinforced throughout. Lots of "women are this way" and "men are this way" sort-of talk. Or "ladies, you know what I'm talking about when your fella does this." Ugh! The assumption seemed to be that everyone was not only CIS-gendered, but also heterosexual. Particularly ironic in a class that is supposed to teach people how to communicate in a way that doesn't exclude others and considers diversity in lifestyle and opinion. And this was in Oakland, CA. The most egregious act was when the instructor used the analogy that "Every good dictator hangs people from time to time to keep people fearful and in line" as an example of good business practice (i.e., you need to fire people that don't work out to bring fear to other employees). So, the good way to manage people is to make them fear you?! I couldn't believe my ears. What if there was a refugee in the class, or worse yet, someone who's family was killed by such a dictator. Such an insensitive thing to say! read more

Careful of taking a sales and use tax workshop. I attended a session recently, and about a week later, our company was audited by agency that the instructor had once worked for. read more

I attended a Sales & Use Tax Workshop from Fred Pryor within the past year and found it useless. The presenter worked in the state of Florida representing clients who were being audited in Florida so the phrase was used often in the state of Florida this applies not sure about the state of Texas. Many specific questions were answered with it depends on how the auditor interprets the law. The seminar did not answer the topics of common transactions for your industry, records that stand up under fire, the law and your company, etc. as advertised in the brochure. The most valuable part of the seminar was the answers provided by the audience. I was very disappointed as we were seeking advise. It was a waste of time and money. read more

I've been to several Fred Pryor seminars and some are worth the costs if you are new to the topics, but if you are familiar, don't waste your time. Also, you can become a Pryor+ member and go to an unlimited amount of seminars in a year's time-frame. However, I have been told multiple times during the "sales pitch" of each seminar that with the Pryor+ membership, you can actually send an online training course to an employee for them to complete. After searching this to no avail, I contacted customer service. They tell me that you can only do this if you have a membership with 20+ accounts and tried to get me to buy more memberships. LIES! Several of us in the last seminar asked multiple questions about this because we were all fairly small companies that have no interest in this many memberships and were told that it didn't matter how many you had, well, apparently it does. No use. Will not be renewing membership and will find another source. read more

I really enjoyed the many seminars over the 2 years I was a member. I found them to be informative and motivating. Unfortunately, they are obsessed with sending out flier after flier every month and it drove me crazy. I've tried and tried to get them to stop sending me fliers and I keep getting them month after month. They should offer a seminar on how to get people to stop sending you fliers. all those fliers make me wish I had never bought a membership. The seminars are good; the constant fliers will drive you crazy. read more

Fred Pryor seminars is an illegitimate company and doesn't have qualified people to run seminars and should be shut down. I didn't learn anything at my Excel because the person who taught the class had such a heavy indian accent it was impossible to understand. The communication between myself and the company stunk. They charged me three times the original price and refused to give a refund. DON'T WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY WITH THESE CON ARTISTS read more

I have been to several Fred Pryor Seminars and all were very helpful. I have a college degree in Architecture, but they taught us very little about running a business - which is why so many people in my field fail.... I am shocked that not all the reviews are not 5 star - for one thing, they offer a 100% refund if you are not 100% satisfied, so why would anyone bother to post a bad review if you are getting your money back anyway. Moving on....I attended a very valuable course about Managing Multiple Priorities and I implemented the ideas at work the very next day and my stress level is already down! And I attended a management course today that reinforced what I learned the other day, and elaborated on it. I am finding the information to apply even to family life - how to deal with your spouse and kids as well as your co-workers! I only wish I would have known about these courses years ago, since this is my 30th year in business - but it is never too late to learn! read more

don't sign up! this company is a waste of time. they did not forward my continuing legal education credits to the ky bar association and i had to pay for it. they tried to sell me tons of books at outrageous prices. don't fall for this company. i am an attorney in lexington, ky, and this company is a rip-off. read more