TL;DR: My driving instructor didn’t tell me 24h cancellation policy until I pointed out lessons on his calendar was incorrectly recorded. We’ve never had a contract as well, do I have a chance getting money back if I take it to court.
I started having lessons with the instructor from November last year and I bought a block of 10 hours (£450 in total) after the first lesson. He only gave me 30 mins to drive each time my friend told me it’s not common but his reason was I was too dangerous driving 1 hour wouldn’t help what I needed was to drive more frequently which I agreed. We have in total agreed on 25 lessons (they were arranged on a weekly basis) out of which he cancelled 9 times with average notice of 2.89h and 1 time with a 2 day notice and me cancelled 4 times with average 2.92h. So now I’ve only done 11 lessons (5.5h) with him.
I started to realise he just won’t give me enough time to practice so I asked him for refund. At first he agreed to pay me back but said his record was different from mine (on his record I’ve done 8.25h) so I went back to chat history to check and the result was my record missed 1 lessons and he overcounted 4 lessons (which he cancelled) that didn’t happen. After I pointed out the mistakes, he started to argue I also cancelled 4 lessons and 2 of them were within 24h (actually all 4 were within 24h if using the timestamp of the actual message but 2 times was when I was really ill and had given him heads up might not able to make it and I’ll let him know on the day and he agreed) and it’s industry standard to charge cancellation within 24h bcos driving instructor can’t fill in the slot in such a short time that’s basically them losing money. He never told me that and we don’t have a contract so no written T&Cs that I could’ve known from.
I’ve seen posts talking about the effect of last minute cancellation on driving instructors and I fully understand. But in my case, I feel like this rule is abused as the intention of this rule should be to prevent learners casually cancelling lessons so the instructors time can be protected, however, when driving instructor randomly cancelling lesson without giving enough notice how’s it fair to learners who also need to move around other commitments and potentially push away some paid jobs to do the lesson. This should be a two-way commitment, I can’t accept the fact that he cancelled me 10 times (even with one time he just didn’t show up bcos he said somehow it wasn’t in his calendar and quite a few times 30 mins before the lesson) and then wanted to charge me for 4 lessons I cancelled which I’ve given him heads up for 2 of them and I didn’t even say I couldn’t make it I was only asking him if he’d like to reschedule as I was still ill and his son just had Covid a few days ago and he said yes let’s reschedule. HE DIDNT MENTION ABOUT 24H CANCELLATION POLICY AT ALL AT THE TIME. If he said I would be charged if I can’t make it I would do it anyway. He only brought this up when I pointed out the incorrectly recorded lessons.
I’ve already made a spreadsheet of all the lessons happened/cancelled and was thinking about taking this to court. I couldn’t find precedence of a similar case so wasn’t too sure if I have a chance of getting money back.
My situation is bit different as
- I’m in Guernsey, we do have a DVLA equivalent body but I didn’t find a page that I can make a complaint about the instructor.
- As I mentioned we never have a contract, and he is the only one in the driving school owned by himself (most driving instructors in Guernsey is like this). I’ve seen posts saying people won’t get their money back bcos they’ve signed the contract so agreed T&Cs but I was never given any T&Cs or verbally informed about cancellation policy until now, would that make the “industry standard” not apply to me