Drive Dynamics

After my big moan about price cutting someone suggested a franchise to which I replied after Drive Dynamics no way. Here’s the story, in the time I was with them so much went on I’m afraid this will have to be in chapters.

Last Christmas was the first holiday spent at home for a long, long time. It was cold and miserable so decided that in the New Year after 12 years of making a reasonable living, with two holidays and a couple of weekends away each year I was suddenly doing something wrong so looked into a franchise and unfortunately went to work for Drive Dynamics.

After a few conversations over the phone we drove up to Leeds to finalise things while they decaled out my car. Had to take my wife because as you all know she’s the computer person and part of working for them I was told I would have to keep an on-line diary, this way they could also keep check on how much work I had. As soon as we arrived we were offered a cup of tea, unfortunately like the on line diary and pupils it never arrived.

I signed up for six months, with the knowledge I would have to give them a further four weeks’ notice to quit, even got a pupil before we left the office and the wife started thinking about the Christmas holiday to come. The franchise was £99 per week but started off lower and slowly built up over a few weeks so that you had lots of work before you got to the £99.

The first mistake was allowing them to use my debit card for the first few payments as they would change each week, then it would be by standing order once the £99 per week kicked in. Paid the first two weeks then got texts the following week because they couldn’t access my debit card. We eventually discovered they were putting the incorrect number in, which they say was the number I’d given them. At this stage I hadn’t discovered that you don’t argue with them because they know what they are doing?

They have a system whereby they will only pay each instructor £200 per week, so if someone booked 20 hours at £289, the instructor would get £200 the first week but would have to wait for the second week for the £89.  Once you had done that first lesson, providing your text got in no later than Tuesday you would get paid on Friday. They also introduced, a few months later a system whereby, they text you a pupil, which you obviously book in as quickly as possible to get paid. But with the new system they would withhold the money for a further 14 days in case the pupil asked for their money back. I must have been good because no one asked for their money back!!!