Cactus Language Courses www.cactuslanguage.com

They have the worst customer service in the world. Really bad at communicating with you except of course at the beginning when you book your course and until you pay them the money and when they do email you they get your name wrong! After that the dissapear. They cancel courses and do not let you know. I emailed them and called them repeatedly only to have confirmation that my course would be definitely going ahead (and therefore planning around that). Only to be told the the day before the course and after they had confirmed on the phone that the cpurse was going ahead that the course was cancelled - but of course I could pay another £720 and upgrade to private tuition! Absolutely dreadful!

All depends on a Teacher. I attended 7 of 10 lessons before I understand, that it is wasting of time. And really expensive one. My teacher was boring and NOT inspiring, as promised on a website. The lessons were unbearably slow, boring and dull. We made exercises based on the book only, we spend a lot of time for the interactive whiteboard problems (set up, erase-rewrite) - up to 5% of the lesson. There is no clear lesson's structure- sometimes it seems to me that the teacher is just reading the topic before the lesson, but she come up with what exactly will we do during the lesson. On the last lesson we spent an hour doing the exercises quietly with the other guys from group, there was no teacher's activity and involvement in the process, the second hour was simply wasted. The lesson was at a very slow pace and completely uninteresting, unproductive and certainly not inspiring, as you promised on the site.

I do not agree to pay money for bad quality service. I believe that it is unfair that someone gets really clever and talented teachers for the same money, and someone not.

I'm not the kind of person who will remain silent, my money should work and benefit me.

I wish your school "a speedy recovery."

Firstly I want this review to be balanced so I would rate my first 4 courses with Cactus (French Brighton) good value for money as the teacher was the same and so professional. The reason for my poor review is clearly if things don't go well Cactus refer to their T&C's and don't seem to be too interested in resolving the issue. So new class commences but the teacher does not arrive, in fact all students allocated a room and attended, only after we made enquiries were we told that there had been some confusion with the course and teacher. Second class was ok but pretty basic stuff but the teacher asked if we could all attend at 6pm for the next 4 lessons to make up for the one we missed, so the next class we all arrived ready for the requested start time but the teacher arrived 15 minutes late, we had to run over some basic information as filling time whilst the teacher prepared for the class. The lesson proceeded but at a what I could only describe as low quility.

As a regular student my request was to not continue with this tutor and wait until the next course commenced, Cactus as a business said I needed to review their T&C's and that this wasn't an option even though they had broken their own terms by not informing students of a class not running.

So my point is you may get a good class or maybe a bad class, if it's bad then clearly you'll be the one who is out of pocket!

I have never dealt with such an unprofessional organisation and urge anyone think in general of enrolling in there courses to book alternatives.

I enrolled onto a Spanish Lessons for beginners back in may with the course starting in September, I received an e-mail from them 2 weeks before the course start date advising they have pulled the course. Due to the late notice I have missed the opp to join another course until March 2017.

When phoned up to voice my concern no appogises from anyone.

I then requested a full refund and stated that the card I paid with was no longer valid and sent all the new card details to them via E-Mail as instructed, I received a reply no problem they will update the accounts team.

Guess what they sent my refund to my old card which has been cancelled which I advised them. I then called them and challenged this and no joy they said nothing they could do and I need to contact my card provider which I did and they confirmed it could take 35 days to find payment and re allocate.

I requested twice for the MD to contact me and was assured she would but no reply at all and if this is the standard that she sets her staff then no wandering the service is so bad.

AVOID - customer service appalling and to not value customers at all.

NB: I haven't reviewed a Cactus language course itself here, because due to the appalling communication and organisation, I never made it to one. My full story is below, mostly in the hope that Cactus themselves see it as my emails to their complaints dep. have been ignored, so for potential customers, if you don't want to read it all, just a warning - I would absolutely encourage anyone looking to quickly and easily book a language course to seek out a different company and course.

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Although the prices are hardly competitive in my area (Liverpool) and I found plenty of courses that were cheaper, those courses' websites seemed to me amateur/slapdash and I decided that I felt more comfortable going for the more expensive but (seemingly, judging by their international business and slick website) more professional and prestigious company.

The first failing was in the initial communication (surely key to making conversions?). I enquired several times, through both their 'Chat with us' portal and the email address listed, about their advertised 12-week Spanish Beginner 1 course, beginning at the end of April. I was informed that this was not going ahead (I've no idea why it was on the site in that case), but was directed to a 5-week intensive course instead. Upon looking on the website for this one instead, I found a 5 week intensive Spanish 1 course advertised at a reduced price due to a trainee teacher. I emailed Cactus stating that I wished to embark upon this course, and was told that this too was not ACTUALLY happening.

I was redirected to another 5 week Spanish Beginner 1 course, which I selected and paid for. I first received a confirmation of my 5 week course, but was then (AFTER payment) informed that the course would actually be shortened to 4 weeks as there was only 3 students. Although I think this is a fairly cheeky way to get more money for less teaching hours, I agreed as it had been communicated in their terms and conditions. This course was stated to begin on 27th April.

At this point, there was a few small mistakes, for instance the email which attempted to inform me that the course would be 4 weeks and not 5 mistakenly said 8 weeks rather than 10, and a corrected email was only sent after I pointed this out.

These communication errors should have served as warnings to me but I took them as simple forgiveable human errors rather than evidence of inherent mismanagement and poor organisation, as perhaps I should have.

The confirmation of my course purchase, which confirmation of the course starting on 27th April, stated "You don't need to do anything. We will contact you by Friday by 3PM with further details of your course."

Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday came and went with no communication. The course was due to start that week, so on the Monday I sent several emails to different Cactus information addresses to ask what was going on. I have no idea when Cactus would have contacted me at this point had I not chased them.

I finally received a reply stating that the course had been postponed 'due to teacher availability' and would now start the following week (4th May). There was no apology, and no further explanation.

I replied stating that this was late notice was a huge inconvenience, that I had moved work commitments to ensure that I could attend the course, and that I wanted to make a complaint about this, as well as (slightly, as this point) poor communication so far. I received a flimsy apology and an assurance that I would receive a new confirmation email.

I received this new confirmation email of new course dates, and noticed that there were only two weeks of classes noted. This would summise of 8 hours of lessons in total, when the 5 week courses' Terms & Conditions promise 20 hours. (Even with the reduced course length mentioned above, there should have been at least 16 hours).

In a seperate note, it was here that I was told for the first time that I would need to purchase my own course materials at over £20. I had not been informed of this at any point and yet was expected to have purchased and received it by the next week. I was was surprised to learn of it considering the high price of the course - it seemed another attempt to fleece us some more.

Having pointed out that I had paid for more than a two week course, I received days later (another, on to around 4 now in one week, all with different information) new course confirmation email, detailing 4 weeks...and that it would start on the 27th April. (Becoming laughable now - this was the original date that had been postponed to the following week in the first place).

Another amended email followed once the employee had noticed their (yet another) mistake, stating that the 4 week course would begin on the 4th May.

I complained about the changes, constant mistake-ridden communication and lack of reply for days. They repeated the same apologies and MISTAKEN information - again referring to 10 week courses being reduced to 8 rather than my 5 week course being reduced to 4. I was offered as a gesture of goodwill a free 10-week course in July; however I have little confidence that this would be organised any better.

I genuinely think that this would not have been noticed had I not flagged it, and that the students for this course would have been mugged out of 8+ hours of lessons.

3 days after this palava, I recieved a muddled, confusing email stating that the course had been postponed again. Due to the promises I had been made regarding the course definitely going ahead the next week and high customer service, I assumed this was a mistake and related to a prior query of mine. It turns out even them making this mistake was estimated them too highly; the course had AGAIN been postponed, now to the end of May, with no explanation and no actual confirmation of this being the case until the Tuesday of this week (3rd May) with the course due to start tomorrow, on the 4th. I genuinely can't believe that it's been postponed again, and this time for weeks.

The further this course gets pushed, the less likely it is I will be able to attend due to other commitments this summer. Surely Cactus realise that this is the exact reason people want to be able to book and then attend the course dates AS ADVERTISED?!

Most of the integral communication I have received throughout the entire experience has, I believe, only been sent to me because I chased it, pointed out the organisation's mistakes and errors to them, and called them out on their poor practice. On the three occasions that I responded to emails with misinformation with complaints, they promised to ensure high customer service in the future.

I estimate that only around 30% of email replies I got from Cactus actually contained correct information with regard to my course or what I had asked/commented on. Those sending them are either sorely ill-informed, or did not bother to check my query/complaint properly.

I paid up for a 10 week (20 hour) beginner 2 European Portuguese language course. As I was the only student enrolled I was offered a 4 hour one-to-one course for the same price!I reluctantly accepted, thinking that it could be a plus.

A Brazilian Portuguese speaker was allocated. She did not have the recommended textbook and admitted to not knowing much European Portuguese. She basically advised me to get a native Portuguese speaker! A waste of 80 pounds. Very badly organised and mis-selling on the website of the course.

Avoid Cactus at all costs.

Let me first point out that I have previously studied intermediate Spanish and beginner Arabic with Cactus, a couple of years ago, and both courses were absolutely fantastic. 5 stars. Couldn't have asked for more. So when I signed up for a beginner's Portuguese class I felt confident I was in safe hands. Sadly not.

The course was cut from 10 to 8 weeks due to the small number of students and after 4 lessons the teacher asked me not to continue in class because my prior knowledge of Spanish was helping me zoom through the material much faster than my classmates. She suggested she teach me separately so that everyone could benefit as much as possible from the opportunity.

So far so good. However Cactus were having none of this and merely offered me a special 5% reduction on booking a new course with them. This equates to an £8 discount.

My problem with Cactus is this - I learned very little in the 4 lessons due to the slow progress of the others. Cactus ignored this point. I was deliberately excluded from lessons so the other students could have a more intensive experience at their level even though I hadn't done anything wrong and we all paid the same. Cactus ignored this. Cactus also deliberately refused to honour the suggested/offered alternative lessons with the teacher. Cactus took 2 weeks to respond to the problem and appear to have been telling the teacher different things to me about how this was proposed to be resolved.

I should also add that, far from providing the expected immersive language experience as they had done previously, when the whole lesson was in the target language, this time the lessons were conducted almost entirely in English.

Additionally, the course materials have to be bought independently. Cactus no longer provide the course book, CD and exercises as they did for the previous 2 courses.

Additionally, the course is advertised as European Portuguese and the course material is European Portuguese, but the teacher provided was Brazilian which made pronunciation in class rather confused.

Finally the classroom was tiny and very hot. The open windows were directly above the entrance to the school where students congregate after class and chat. As a result it was very noisy and difficult to hear/concentrate.

All in all I cannot recommend Cactus to anyone and feel very let down by my experience. They are not a cheap school but their professionalism and administration has clearly declined rapidly in the last 2 years and I would warn any potential students to investigate very carefully before committing to them in the future. There are much better alternatives out there.

I did a 2 week Italian course in Florence – I was there for 3 weeks but if you can go for longer I could really recommend it. Florence was beautiful and I managed to practise my Italian with the locals as well as at the school. I booked my course with Cactus Language and I would really recommend it. I really enjoyed learning Italian but also learn how to cook Italian kitchen. It is not just only a great experience but also life changing, I learned so much about me and that I really like to learn different languages and to get familiar with various cultures. I'm planning my next trip with them next year, too maybe learning French and Surfing in Biarritz - who knows.

Totally shambles in terms of organization. I had a limited amount of time, so I signed up for the intensive 5 week French course. The first lesson was cancelled due to the teacher dropping out, and rescheduled to the end of the course, I was refunded for this cancellation. The 2nd and 3rd lessons we had a replacement teacher who had never taught in English before, there was no structure to the course and we had no course texts or anything to work from. Totally waste of time, with lots of us just sitting there in silence.

The class all complained about this and to be fair they did change the teacher to a native French speaker, we got the texts and had another scheduled another class added to the end.

However I was not able to attend either of the rescheduled classes, meaning that a lot of my time was wasted, as I've effectively missed 1/5 of the course. I asked they if i start in a class in the new year instead, and they were unhelpful, pointing towards the small print about changing classes during the first 3 lessons only, and refused to take into consideration all the circumstances surrounding the class.

Not recommended. Not only did they waste my time with a un-vetted teacher but refused to reschedule to make up for the mess that was of their making.

In the first six weeks of my French Level one course, we had four teachers. It was totally confusing and although each teacher was fine, it was impossible to learn anything without any continuity so I certainly wouldn't recommend the course to a friend.