Vintage Remedies I cannot recommend them at all, they are a huge source of frustration. Franklin Tennessee

I hate to be so negative but I really want to share this information so others do not have to go through this huge source of stress by purchasing courses from Vintage Remedies. Sorry this is so long but I really want to give details so if you do proceed with them you will know what you are actually getting. As far as the Vintage Remedies courses go I cannot recommend them to anyone. My experience with them was with the Master Herbalist course (which also contains Family Herbalist) and their Aromatic Medicine course. The frustration of dealing with them is not worth any good information that you might uncover. There are many other good herbal, diet, and aromatherapy resources out there. The office staff ignores and does not return emails and rarely answers phone calls and when you are actually able to speak with a human being the information they give out is not necessarily accurate, meaning honest. For instance, I made a phone call to them on February 3rd first thing upon their opening (after MANY attempts of trying during office hours) inquiring about a book that I was supposed to have received just after the new year. Jessie Hawkins told me that the late books had been mailed "last Friday" and "some 2 weeks ago." After needing a refund from them we received an email stating that I "could just refuse the book mailed February 3rd". They were not honest about when my book did actually ship. Not to mention I paid for the book in November. The books are supposed to be shipped within 10 days. Other students have received an e-version of the materials I am missing either via email or within their course documents but they will not provide it to me.

The course work and books are not well proofed and are full of typos and the course support has not been there. Even if they DO reply to a question they don't answer it and appear to give a stock answer as if they didn't even read your question. When you approach them about an error they literally act like it doesn't exist. I have had multiple other students contact me via PM and some have said that the response to their question is that they don't have the proper training in scientific research in order to be able to understand the materials. How can you be call yourself a teaching course if you tell your students they are just too dumb to understand your materials? At least TEN other people in the short time I have been a part of VR have shared similar issues and concerns and many have said they had multiple friends that had the same treatment from them. Considering I am a stranger to these people and I did not ASK for this feedback, (these were just others who were very frustrated as well and felt alone or noticed I was being treated similarly to them and noticed my questions were sound and the VR answers were not) I can assume there are MANY others in the same boat. I cannot even tell you how many questions/comments of mine were deleted from the FB group and the forums, not because they were in anyway offensive, one was asking where they got the recommendation for the 130 gram carb minimum per day> I also cannot count the amount of my questions that have been left unanswered. I can't even imagine the wealth of info that must be missing from the FB group right now because it was deleted. Also the forums are basically dead ( I cannot speak for Family Herbalist because while the materials are the same the forums are separate).

My Aromatic Medicine course is missing many videos and was completely changed and they made me go back and retake tests I had already passed. I was told the videos were to be loaded a couple weeks ago and they are still not in the course. This course had some worthwhile monographs but some have very unclear information and myself and another student tried to ask for clarification but we were given runaround answer as if they didn't even read our questions. I tried to get further clarification but my posts were deleted and the threads were closed. The webinars that were supposed to be offered once per month (and actually when I first signed up it was 2-4 times per month supposedly) haven't been offered, they did recently do a free one to everyone that was pushing a sale to get more students. It WAS good information but it was free to everyone so why pay the high price tag for poor service? When I first signed up for Master Herbalist I was supposed to have 2 years and 2 weeks in my course and I was shorted about 100 days. When I let the staff know it was immediately fixed but other students said they had the same issue. So if you do choose to work with them pay close attention the details because they will not.

They claim to be evidence based but no references to where they are drawing the information from is given in the course materials. In the more advanced course such as Family Herbalist or Master Herbalist (the references are given in Aromatic Medicine and their bread book that you can buy separately) it states in the back of the book that you can contact them and they have a database of such information so I did contact them and received no response (I have still received none and it has been weeks), I did talk to Jessie on the phone about it and she basically said ask for it as you need it because the information is constantly changing and they want to provide the most up to date information. If this was the case wouldn't they also need to update the course materials and thereby update the references that should be in the materials? As far as VR's Master Herbalist/Family Herbalist being evidence based I have been unable to obtain the information to back that up. The only thing I can recommend is their bread book, I think this is their only unique source of information, although it has some things in it that you will just need to figure out on your own too.

If you are just interested in making sourdough take the GNOWFGLINS course, they are AWESOME. The Handbook of Vintage Remedies and The Vintage Remedies Guide to Real Food have information that is included in the pricier courses as well and is probably a good summation of what VR offers without buying a course. I would buy a used copy though so as not to fund Vintage Remedies. Perhaps their free webinars could be useful as well but they are VERY hard to hear. I was told to ask my instructor (Jessie said she could not help me with this since she is not my instructor) how to proceed without the book recently and my instructor gave me bits and pieces to read over from three separate lessons. I finished that information and told her I was frustrated that I could not seem to contact VR via email or phone and her response was to "work on finishing up Aromatic Medicine" (which I am done with just need to take the test, and I have MONTHS left to do so and shouldn't it be my choice which of my courses I should finish, especially since both of my courses are paid in full?) and "Unfortunately, we cannot control the postal system." I agree they cannot control the postal system but they do have access to the materials that students paid for in digital format. Also they did not ship the books when they said they would nor tell anyone of the delay which has nothing to do with the postal system.

I do have to say I did enjoy learning their opinions of the clinical research that has been done. I can glean from it but the communication is awful, there is a huge lack of communication. I wanted to continue to get the information but the communication is really stressful. My husband and I had discussed just quitting the FB groups and trying not to email the instructors and just getting what I can out of the material presented but that is so difficult for me because I see so many areas for improvement and that need clarification and have so many questions. VR sort of feels like entering the twilight zone! Also since I never received my last book I could not proceed with the course anyway. Recently they agreed to give me a refund for the Master Herbalist course (which I have not seen yet) and assumed I should pay for the shipping and the return shipping of the books. I paid for a service which I did not receive should I be out money on their behalf? Not to mention all the stress they added to our home. There is so many more details I could share but the bottom line, get their books from the library and stay far away from their paid classes or "enter" at your own risk! The books and blog and free webinars are good and probably crafted that way to get people to pay for a course but you will NOT get what you pay for.