U S Career Institute Weston Distant Learning Center Scam like no other totally unprofessional Ft Collins, Colorado

Dear Leslie,
I do not understand how you can say that customer service is your priority there at USCI. There were so many instances that contradict that statement just in my dealings with USCI.  

And I cannot believe that you are not going to address the fact that a student who is representing your Institution made such a flagrant error by telling me that I could not talk to an instructor or anyone nor would she take a message.  This is not priority customer service this is without a doubt the worst possible exhibit of customer service I have been a victim of. 30 year in customer service and I have never treated a customer in that fashion. This little mistake alone could potentially cost a business damaging results. I personally think that the founder and the President of USCI need to take a look at the training or lack there of that your staff gets with regards to customer service. Somewhere they have lost it. One of the very first rules is Know who is boss, or the customer is always right. even if they are not. It is a shame that an Institution  the size of USCI does not hire better people or software or what ever training materials you use.

Let me say this because of her bad judgement I received a "D" the only one bringing my over all grade to a 90. Now I don't know about you but the money I spent to better my  skills and further my career was not taken seriously it was taken for granted. Remember I am paying for an education and my money says I deserve to speak to a counselor or instructor with in a reasonable amount of time if left a message and promptly if available. Not being told No or not taking a message or 3 days later when it is a mute point.

Leslie I am by far not a stupid or ignorant person and I have a tremendous amount of respect for customer service reps they are the first person a consumer has contact with and if given a bad vibe that will stay with the customer for ever.  Had this been the only issue I might have chalked it up to poor training skills and little or no experience, But it just keeps s****.> Then we have the issue with the software that by the way i have yet to receive a replacement. Jeff Fagerman may think he worked at length with me to resolve the issue but I also have proof that was not entirely the truth before it was all said and done one of he the  Vice President and a Tech of Microsoft helped me or I would still be without a computer, plus My time and my sisters time 2 full days 13 hr each and my time and inconvenience.  And to set the record straight I was the one who said to Jeff Fagerman it might be a virus not the other way around, it did end up being a problem due to a bad disk and download. I am not saying that it was done purposely I am just telling you that it happened.

The issue of Working from home is so far from the truth. anyone who does a little research online will see that it is out there but requires 2 to 5 yrs on job experience minimum, ( have not found one single opening that will take you on without it ) also you don't technically need to be certified in Medical Billing however recruits won't even consider it if you are not certified or you have little or no experience and are working on becoming certified. I know I have 18 years experience with great references to prove it and a wonderful work record and ethics but no certificate. Further more every Office Manager or Physician was able to speak to told me without lots of  hands on experience and the trust of the person they would not out source there billing. That is how they get paid if it is not done properly then they lose money, patients, and spend an enormous about of time and money trying to recoup they'er loses and business. That alone would deter alot of business from sending there lively off to someone else to manage.

 I come from a self employed family we owned two businesses until my father retired. So I am well versed in what it takes to be self employed and owning your business. But my question to Tracey was more on the how to find companies who do outsourcing but I was given nothing she simply said read the Jobfinder and then call me as if I were 16 yrs old, never even tried to answer the question at hand, again, another fine example of priority customer service. Then there are the two graduates she gave to me one who was to scared I was going to take her clients away she was reluctant to give me a single word of advise. From the sounds of her voice I honestly doubt she was making such a great living working from home, I don't know that for a fact just and observation of mine, the other one didn't even return my calls. Now that is good priority customer service there isn't Leslie.
to summarize that last paragraph: you do need experience 2 to 5 yrs min, you must be certified if you intend to work in this field ( although not required), and to have your own business you need to know how to treat customers first the rest falls into place and lets not forget you will need capitol to start and in this economy that is hard to find.

Now I could go on and on but I am going to stop here as I am beginning to become angry all over again. I am not however going away why because I want my refund that is due me simply because I am returning a product that does not work properly and will give me a lifetime of problems, and should have a lifetime return policy on it. LIfetime to me is anytime before I die.  I am due this refund for the reasons I have shown you  above and out of sheer respect for selling me a product that was not entirely what you said it was. Period. You have my number and address on file I think that we can be adult about this and stop airing dirty laundry don't you. I will expect to hear from you by mid week unless you would rather hear from me. I am not busy working so I have all the time in the world. Funny right not!, I look forward to your call.    

Leslie,

It took me a bit to get back to you because i wanted to go over my records and notes on my correspondence with USCI and I wanted to look at  my copy of the Enrollment Agreement and at the top of this form it clearly says Medical Coding Course  600 clock hours, 31 quizzes. signed and dated by me. I only have a copy that's all USCI sent back to me. Also all the other paperwork I have says medical coding on it as well..

 When I said it took days to get in touch with some one at USCI I was not joking. I to take customer service very serious. I have records of every time i ever called emailed or faxed to USCI and I am very certain that it was long before 11/17/10, as a matter of fact I have in front of me as i am typing this to you, emails from Teri Oberleitner  dated 4/9/2010 thanking me for my interest int the Medical Coding course and again on 4/13/2010 to follow up on my medical coding decision,on 5/17/10 I had left 2 messages for Annie to call me back but I had to make a third call before I was able to speak with her., at that point we spoke for sometime regarding my upgrade and she was supposed to send my books out the following morning only I had to call back on 5/24/10 because I had not received them yet and I could not go on with my studies without them, thats when I spoke with Heidi. Heidi set up my payments for the upgrade what was and additional $260.00 which I made in three payments.

On 5/26/10 I had a questions about becoming certified and I had faxed that to you with some other issues to which i never got a response. Then again on 6/11/10 I requested information again in regards to being certified yet again no response. I can go on if you wish. I am a bit shocked that you have only  records of me contacting you in Nov 2010 when I had contacted or tried to contact USCI on numerous occasions.

Lets fast forward for a moment shall we. to Aug 30 2010 when I had contacted student services with issues about lesson 20, and was told in a very rude tone that I could not speak to an instructor or anyone because i was late with my payment. I would like you to explain to me what reason on this green earth would you not allow a student to speak with an instructor with regards to a lesson they were having problems with. I have never in my whole life heard of such nonsense ever! For cryin out loud I have a letter that says and I will quote " Your tuition is $1539. For most students that is one down payment of $ 5.00 and 23 payments of $69. Since you will probably finish the course in just a few months, it is important that you know that you have a full 23 months to pay for the course." Now let me see if I understand this policy of yours. If I am late on a payment I can not speak with my instructor at all. Yet if i finish the course in just a few months your going to let me leave prior to completing my payments.  I don't know about you but  I have a problem with that policy. You say that customer service is one of your highest priorities I would have to disagree. The customer service I was given on 8/30/10 was nothing short of idiotic and ridiculous. Whoever told your staff that keeping someone from obtaining the information to complete there assignment was a good call. Do you realize that I am paying you for your service how dare anyone keep a student for  speaking to an instructor for any reason let alone a late payment. What happened to me was a direct result of the extremely poor judgement that student blantenly took upon herself to tell me no I could not speak to anyone with the issues I had and because of that I received my only "D" bring my grade down to a 90. Had I been able to speak to MY instructor I very well may have gotten an "A" but we will never know that now will we. You have no idea how I felt and it was just to bad for me that was the policy and nothing I could do to change it. I felt so betrayed to put it mildly.  This is just one of the many things I find disheartening about this whole experience.

Moving on to speaking with Kinsey that conversation lasted all of 7 mins at the very most. I knew no more then I did when I called. Leslie, I am by far not a stupid or ignorant woman I have not made it his far in life with my head in the sand, the only thing Kinsey to me was to read the Job finder and if I had any questions to let her know. She did not explain anything that was not text book and I had already been told this before. I gave up on answering  What I thought was that was going to be a new start for me was turning out to be this horrible nightmare.

Yes I did finally speak with Kinsey  and she did give me 2 names of recent graduates when i called them for some pointers one girl never called me back and the other one was so reluctant to talk to me that i finally just said thank you for your time and hung up. I explained that to Kinsey but she just said humm that is strange. At that point I had taken enough. 

As for speaking with Tracy yes I, did I explained my situation to Tracy about Medlook and speaking with Jeff Fagerman. I have his emials as well. I first spoke with Jeff on Feb 3 2010 and explained my issue to Jeff with regards to the DVD from MedLook  I was given and how the case was all cracked as if someone had driven over it But he didn't seen to think to much of it and how when i installed the disk and I began to have problems. I was the one who told Jeff it could be a virus so something was not and still am not compuer He gave me me so pointers on how to fix what he thought at this point was the problem. He stated the thought it was a registration issue. Then when that didn't work he said  it was a password issue and possible still a virus. I then to ld Jeff that I had been working with microsoft as well and Microsoft said I didn't have a virus it was a corrupt disk and every time i tried to use it my system would begin to shut down. We went back and forth for a few days, I uninstalled it and re-installed it like he said, we change the configurations we did several things until finally he said he would replace the disk and I have yet to get a new one and I refuse to  put the old one on It took me from Feb 3 2011 until July 2011 before I had  a computer so. All those months with out my computer all because there was a problem with the disk from the get go.

As far as getting this voicemail I was supposed to have gotten from Tracey I never got that information I don't know why or what happened but I have had nothing but grief from this course. 

Leslie, something else you should know I am a very honest person and I would not be telling you this stuff if it didn't happen this way, I don't need to make up stories for any reason. I have had experience in the medical field for 18 yrs I worked in the clinical blood lab at St Mary's Hospital St Louis Mo until I relocated back to California. All I want to do is go back to work in a field I love and enjoy. But I have spent money I don't have to get a better education and further my career only to have less then I had when I started if that is possible. I have applied almost daily for work since graduating in Nov 2010. I assure you I have done my research and every where I have applied wants at least 2 to three years experience and to be certified weather it be a CPC or CCS or a certification from AMBA. I know what i signed up for I know what I did and I am totally dissatisfied with this whole mess. All I want is to get my certification and go to work, I am sure that if you were in my shoes you would want the same. I do not think I am being unreasonable asking for a refund it is my right as a consumer if I am not happy with a product then I return it. This is the same I have been misled I would not have taken just a billing course when I already been a biller I was going for he coding Certificate to have a more lucrative career. Now I have nothing.
Getting a job where I work from my home is next to impossible everyone I have talked to in the industry has assure me that with out at least 5 yrs on job experience and certifications I would be hard pressed to find that kind of job. I have worked all my life and that is all i want to do now. I feel that the information I was given and led to believe from USCI was not entirely true and I want my money back so I can get what i started out to get almost 3 years ago. I feel that I was told what I wanted to hear to sell your package but having one dissatisfied customer is something I would want to have if I were in your shoes. Just stop and think if this were you honestly how would you feel, would you want to be righted so you could go forward with your career. I almost 56 years old I just want to get my job and be done with life is hard enough these days don't make it harder for to save face. It was wrong what happened here plain and simply. Please refund me my money so I to can have a job.  

Dear Debbie,
 
We are sorry to hear that you are so dissatisfied with U.S. Career Institute and that you have not  found a position as a Medical Claims and Billing Specialist. We have been  providing quality training for over 30 years and our school is nationally  accredited by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). As a graduate  of our Medical Claims and Billing Specialist course, I want to assure you that  you are prepared to work from home as a medical biller. We have many graduates  who are currently working from home in the medical billing field. You mentioned  that it took days to receive a call back from both the Instruction and Graduate Services Departments. We make customer service one of our highest priorities so  taking days to receive a return phone call is concerning. We strive to return  all instructor and graduate services phone messages within one hour of receiving  them. We show that you first contacted the Graduate Services Department on  11/17/10 and spoke with Kinsey, one of our graduate counselors. She gave you  suggestions regarding starting your business. Since you had not had a chance to  read the Medical Claims and Billing Jobs Finder Booklet yet, she recommended you  review that prior to beginning your search. The Jobs Finder outlines how to  prepare marketing materials and identifies medical offices to target in your job  search. She also gave you the names of two graduate referrals to contact who  were successfully working in the medical billing field and could give you tips  and suggestions regarding getting started. On 3/28/11, you spoke with another  graduate counselor, Tracey, who addressed the Medlook software concerns you  mentioned on your graduate survey. She let you know that we would be  investigating this further and would get back to you once we had more  information. We have never had this software cause a students computer to  crash, so we contacted the owner of Medlook to get his input on your situation.  He said they spent extensive time trying to help you resolve the problem, but  the issue was most likely due to viruses that were already on your computer. On  3/31/11, Tracey left a message for you letting you know that Medlook advised you  to remove all of the viruses on your computer and reinstall the Medlook software by downloading it directly from the Medlook website. If you didnt still have  the case with the registration number on it, Tracey let you know that we would  send you another Medlook disk at no charge. Tracey also gave you the contact  information for four additional graduate referrals who were working from home. Grad Services never heard back from you after leaving you this voice message, so we were not aware that you were still having any difficulties.

You mentioned needing  to become certified through the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) or obtain the CCS credential through the American Health Information Management  Association (AHIMA). We did not discuss these certifications with you because  you were not enrolled in our Medical Coding Specialist course. You completed our  Medical Claims and Billing Specialist course and certification is not required  to work in the field. Our Medical Coding Specialist course has been reviewed by  the AAPC and counts as one of the two years of coding experience needed to sit  for the Certified Professional Coder (CPC) exam. Some of our coding graduates do  decide to sit for the CPC-Apprentice certification after graduation and then  have the A removed, once they document having completed the additional one  year of coding employment needed.