Phase 2 Driver's Ed. Prep LLC

Me and my daughter had the worst experience there! I deliberately waited until my daughter had completed the program and received her certificate before writing this review because we didn’t want to risk creating any issues while she was still enrolled. When we signed up, we specifically chose lessons with the owner, Vito. We assumed that if anyone would provide a professional, positive learning experience, it would be the owner. Looking back, that was a big mistake. From our very first meeting, the way he spoke to both my daughter and me was noticeably condescending. We tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and assumed that was simply his communication style. We didn’t want to judge him based on one conversation. Unfortunately, things got much worse during my daughter’s very first driving lesson. My daughter is a quiet, respectful teenager. She isn’t argumentative. She isn’t disrespectful. Like most new drivers, she was nervous, but she was there to learn. By the end of that lesson, she was crying so hard she could barely catch her breath. She called me because she couldn’t continue. When I arrived, Vito immediately explained the situation from his perspective. He told me my daughter wasn’t responding appropriately to instruction and made it sound as though she was the problem. I believed him because I trusted that the owner of a driving school would give me an honest account of what had happened. He also told us there was a recording of the lesson and offered to send it to us. It took about three weeks for him to finally give us that recording. When my husband and I watched it, we were honestly shocked. What we saw was completely different from what we had been led to believe. We watched our daughter be spoken to with a level of harshness, condescension, and disrespect that no teenage student should have to endure. We watched her become increasingly upset snd uncomfortable while the lesson continued until she completely broke down. It was incredibly difficult to watch, and it became painfully clear why she had been so upset that day. The moment the video ended, I apologized to my daughter. I felt awful for not believing her. As parents, we had trusted the adult in the situation, and after watching that recording ourselves, we realized she had been telling us the truth. At that point, we wanted to leave the driving school altogether. The only reason we didn’t was because we had already paid for the remaining lessons and were concerned about creating problems before she received her completion certificate. Instead, we requested a different instructor. Thankfully, we were assigned Crystal. Crystal was everything a driving instructor should be. She was patient, respectful, encouraging, and actually professional. My daughter completed the rest of her lessons without any problems, gained confidence behind the wheel, and earned her certificate. That experience proved to us that the problem had never been my daughter’s willingness to learn. She simply needed an instructor who knew how to teach without belittling the student. What continues to disappoint me is that although an apology was sent to me, my daughter—the person this actually happened to—never received a direct apology. We saw Vito several times after that, and he never once acknowledged what had happened or apologized to her. He simply acted as though nothing had happened. Learning to drive is already stressful for teenagers. They’re going to make mistakes—that’s the entire reason they’re taking lessons. An instructor’s job is to correct those mistakes with patience and professionalism, not leave a young student so overwhelmed that they end their very first lesson balling and unable to breath. I rarely leave negative reviews, but parents deserve to know about our experience before trusting someone with their child. If sharing what happened prevents even one other parent from watching their child come home from a driving lesson the way ours did, then writing this review was absolutely worth it.