QA's Reviews: 4.5 out of 5 BUT only represents 0.0117%* of Course Attendees! - Unethical business practice which GETS WORSE as you read / research!
4 December 2017
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Topics ADDED FREQUENTLY include: Agile | PRINCE2 | .NET / C# | SQL | Train the Trainer
500,000 Training Days per Year - Less than 20 Reviews per Year - 78 Reviews from 2013 to 2016, None for 2017!
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Summary of Article
We suggest that you read the entire article and as all of the material is public domain its easy to review it for yourself:
QA and Focus On Training*1 review ratings are entirely unrepresentative and are hand-selected
Their advertised training room is sub-standard and not Fire Safety compliant
QA, owners of Focus On Training, use Focus to massively undercut their own pricing
In this Article
QA Limited Website Customer Ratings are Presented to give 4.5 out of 5 to Google
Focus On Training (wholly owned by QA) Ratings are Presented to give 4.9 (actually 4.5 - see below) out of 5.0 to Google
QA use Focus on Training to increase market reach - same owners, same product, much lower prices
Background to this Article
We'd noticed over the year a large number of Pay Per Click adverts showing a very poor quality classroom promoted by Focus On Training (entirely QA owned). Following the links through showed higher ratings than would be expected. The conclusions are:
- Reviews are real but only a tiny fraction are hand-picked for their wording and rating
- The reviews published give the impression of very high customer satisfaction AND are promoted to Google for ratings
- 'Microdata' on both websites is used to promote the ratings to Google
- The Focus on Training ratings are lower (around 4.55) than the displayed value of 4.9 - again these are 'hand selected' in any case
Focus on Training Pay Per Click Advert Image - Classroom has Multiple Issues
The classroom has multiple issues including:
- The fire exit is obstructed - this is a serious concern
- Insufficient room - learner's books overhanging desk
Example (Below) of Focus on Training Advert Placement
The ads are showing on practically any page visited - even Hello! Magazine:
QA Limited Website Customer Ratings are Presented to give 4.5 out of 5 to Google
The information is directly from www.qa.com. Here are the main links:
- https://www.qa.com/about-qa#why-qa - information on numbers of learners - 95% say our training will improve job performance etc.
- https://www.qa.com/about-qa/customer-reviews - 78 customer reviews
These are the key ideas behind the concerns:
- 500,000 training days per year - approximately 166,000 individual learners (Average course - 3 days)
- Just 78 published course reviews over 4 years - YET 95% 'say our training will improve job performance' - indicates a much higher percentage of customer reviews exist
- *Only approximately 0.0117% learner reviews published (78 Reviews / 166,000 learner attendances * 4 years)
- Published review average approximately 4.5 out of 5
- No constraints are given such as 85% of attendees provided a review, of these 90% scored us at 4.5 out of 5.0
- The numbers are so low that the reviews are statistically irrelevant
- They will also be deliberately misleading unless they represent the actual rating values of ALL the reviews (a figure in the hundreds of thousands) that were taken
- Behind the scenes code to attempt to publish 4.5 out of 5 to Google using 'Microdata' - see screen captures below
- Google ratings for QA's actual training centres vary widely
Code Sample from QA's Website Showing Schema.Org Markup
Marking up the reviews is perfectly valid and good web marketing practice as long as they are truthful and importantly, complete - cherry picking distorts the results.
Focus On Training (wholly owned by QA) Ratings are Presented to give 4.9 (actually 4.5 - see below) out of 5.0 to Google
Focus On Training are completely owned by QA and sell on QA courses. A key difference is that the prices are generally much lower - See below for details
Again, only a subset of the reviews (all favourable) are available - 10,000s would be expected.
'Microdata' has been used in the website's markup to attempt promote the ratings to Google.
Focus on Training's Customer Reviews Graphic
The graphic below is on the main page of their site. The actual number of reviews and the ratings values are as:
| Data Source | Rating out of 5 | Number of Reviews |
|---|---|---|
| Focus on Training | 4.9 | 367 |
| Actual Analysis* | 4.55 | 367 - source formatting inconsistent |
* We captured the webpage using a C# program referencing Microsoft's HTMLAgility Pack. The data was then loaded into SQL to allow easy inspection. The reviews appear genuine, though no dates are provided, the average of the ratings is lower (4.55 approx.) than the 4.9 given.
Note: TrainX provide C# and SQL courses - the equivalents to QA's are much lower in price, limited to 6 Attendees and in comfortable rooms with space for your elbows:
QA use Focus on Training to increase market reach - same owners, same product, much lower prices
The information for this section comes from www.focus-on-training.co.uk and from www.qa.com.
QA and Focus On Training are within the same 'company group' and have the same directors.
Focus sell the same product albeit at widely varying prices - for example the PRINCE2 30th April event is amazingly double through QA even though its the same company!
| Provider | Course Title | Date | Location | Fee |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus on Training | SQL Language | 28 Mar 18 | London - City | £1395.00 |
| QA | SQL Language | 28 Mar 18 | London - City | £1658.00 |
| Focus on Training | PRINCE2:2017 Foundation and Practitioner | 30 Apr 18 | Manchester | £1089.00 |
| QA | PRINCE2:2017 Foundation and Practitioner | 30 Apr 18 | Manchester | £2141.00 |
Why Sell at Two Different Prices?
Same product (PRINCE2) - nearly 100% Inflated Price
QA own Focus On Training entirely so you'd expect parity in pricing etc. and even that they'd combine the two operations.
Training has been historically over-priced in the UK and is seen as a cash-cow by many investors.
Premium Pricing is a common marketing strategy and with carefully managed branding customers will assume the product is superior and this appears to work for QA.
In practice training prices are similar to air fare prices and vary, this is at odds with a Premium Pricing strategy as it undermines the branding and the very substantial profits that go with it.
QA have Focus On Training to allow two bites at the cherry and have lower prices and vary them at short notice. Its very hard to find that Focus belong to QA from the Focus site at least - it appears to be a separate company.
Best of Three Quotes - Multiple 'Goes' At Government Quotes?
Although part of the same 'Company Group', there's a possibility that both QA and Focus On Training could be asked to provide quotes under the 'three quotes rule'. This increase their chances of providing to government department.
Note: For comparison, TrainX SQL Language (equivalent 2 day event) is £595 and PRINCE2 is £1095. Data from QA, Focus On Training websites 5/12/2017.
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