All Star Driver Education

You may think you’re a good driver and à la George Costanza boast about how you could make a living parallel parking, but odds are you’re nothing special. So there’s no shame in failing a road test, even as an adult. Where there is shame is in a driving school misleading consumers about the accessibility of the online courses it offers.

All Star Driver Education is one of seven driving schools listed on the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles website to offer abbreviated online courses for adults. (Quickly, in Ohio, anyone 18 years of age or older applying for a driver’s license for the first time who fails the road test on the first attempt must complete an abbreviated adult driver training course before a second attempt at the road portion of the driving test.)

On its own site, All Star advertises that online students can log in “anywhere, anytime.” And upon registering for the Ohio Abbreviated Adult Driver Education course, at a cost of $64.99, a TINA.org reader was told she would have “24:00 hours per day to study the materials and complete review questions for this class.” That was important, the reader said, because her schedule only allowed her to study late at night.

But when she attempted to access her course materials one night, she found herself locked out. Apparently, the site was down. She reached out to All Star, which she said informed her:

That is due to nightly maintenance. You will not be able to work on your course from 12-4am EST. Please try again outside those hours and reply if you still encounter the issue.

But if the nightly maintenance work is in fact routine and All Star knows in advance that the site will be down for four hours every night, how can it simultaneously advertise access to course materials as available 24/7?

We asked All Star precisely that. No answer yet.

For what it’s worth, the site’s terms and conditions notes that “system, site or connectivity failure” may result in students not being able to access course materials, even as it claims availability “24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”

Find more of our coverage on autos here.