Parkland International Music Academy — Local services in Parkland

HALF A STAR

This business supposedly claims to cater to children with scholarships... This business is not fully transparent about their requirements which can result in leaving parents in a tough financial position at no fault of their own, but at the expense of the schools mistake for failing to be completely transparent upon enrollment.

The membership agreement does not outline anything about the time length of classes students are “required” to have in order to have a seamless reimbursement process. Honestly, no school should dictate how long a student should attend. Forcing a student to attend classes longer than the parent wants is a scam to obtain more money from the program, and abuse of the scholarship funds. If you offer 30 min sessions, 45 min session, or 60 min sessions, each child should be treated equally in terms of having access to proper documentation for the reimbursement process. If you fail to outline and be transparent about your requirements upfront and take someone’s money. Don’t just apologize and leave them in an unfortunate situation at the expense of YOUR MISTAKE. Apologize and make it right by allowing them to move forward with their scholarship process rather than withholding it. Do you not see anything wrong with that? It’s the principal. But it seems that as owners, you are too hard headed or stubborn to admit you are wrong for that.

Lastly, it is illegal to entice people to write Google reviews for some kind of compensation. It is also stated that reviews written by someone affiliated with the business, such as an employee, family member, or friend is strictly prohibited. Google can also taken action against companies incentivizing reviews by means of giveaways and gifts. If getting banned from Google isn’t enough to warn you away from paid reviews, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) also has strict disclosure regulations. Not to mention “review gating” which is soliciting reviews only from customers who have had a positive experience and filtering out negative reviews. All of this will come to light soon.

As business owners, do better and treat people with fairness. All it takes is 1 person to make an impact and shed light on what really goes on in a business with poor ethics, poor practices, greed, and malicious behaviors. I pray you choose to do better not only as business owners, but as individuals, moving forward.

And before you write “we can’t find you in our system”. Don’t try to play that card. My child attends class here under my Ex husbands name who is the one who takes him there. And I am just glad one parent spoke out about this issue, and now so am I. Because I 100% agree with them on this matter. After discussing this with my ex husband. He did in fact say they were forced to attend 45 min classes in order to utilize their funds and found this story interesting. After speaking with Step Up on the matter. They clearly stated that if we wanted to switch to 30 min classes, we could. And we will still be reimbursed because time isn't a factor for them. The only thing that is a factor, is obtaining the proper documents needed for the reimbursement process. Which are the teacher credentials. Fortunately for us, since our child has already been attending 45 min sessions, so we have thankfully already obtained the credentials we needed. So technically we can move down to 30 min sessions and just continue to provide Step Up with the info we already have to submit our reimbursement and the school can’t do anything about it. They will still pay us back for our 30 min sessions once we switch. And this is absolutely golden information for others on scholarships to know. If your child is attending classes here for 45 min and you have your teachers info already, you can take 30 min classes moving forward as you already have all the documentation you need to continue submitting your reimbursements :) Don’t let the school scam you for your funds. Especially if you are trying to be smart and save your funds for other utilizing. Hope this tip helps...

They called themselves a family. Well, if they think their students are “family” why do they kick an 8 year old boy out of their academy just because his parents were concerned about his safety? Yes, it happened to us. After being in this academy for 3 years, we went to a performance in Disney Springs. According to the staff, the kids had to be taken from a McDonalds to the changing room in only 2 cars. They put 4 + kids on the back seat of a sedan (not sure why they did not take my offer of using our minivan and/or rent one), most of these kids legally need a booster and could not even use the seat belt. Once we brought this up to the owners in the McDonalds parking lot, they got upset and asked us to leave and said our son should not be playing on the performance. Again, this is in Orlando and we invested time and money to get there. At the end, we allowed them to take the kids like that, so our kid could play on his concert as he was expecting. We tried to follow the car to make sure the kids were safe but lost them on the road. Performance went well, but after we got home couple of days after, we received a call from the owner saying that they are a family and they are not problematic people and did not want to see my son in their academy again. The only thing my son kept asking us was: “What did I do wrong?”. We explained to him that he did not do ANYTHING wrong, but after that he quit playing the drums. We offered him to take him to other academies, but he just does not want to play drums anymore after the experience. So, should they be calling themselves a family when they kick the kids out their academy just because their parents are concern about their safety? Would I recommend this place?...

Since I can't reply to your previous answer, I'll reply with a different email.

Thank you for your response. However, I am surprised that details like the change of the recital date and my relocation plans are mentioned, as I consider them irrelevant to the nature of my complaint. I would like to clarify that my payments have always been up to date and I have provided advance notice of any changes.

My primary concern, and the reason for my communication, is the safety of minors. I consider the presence of adults in a backstage area shared with children to be an unacceptable practice. The implementation of a clear and defined separation between adult and child areas is a fundamental measure to ensure the peace of mind and safety of everyone involved.

Regarding my privacy, my personal decisions are not a matter of public concern and I request that they not be disclosed. I have always maintained respectful and professional communication, and I expect the same treatment in return. My comments are not defamation, but a description of a situation that exposes a security vulnerability that needs to be corrected.

Regarding your mention of a possible legal route, I will not hesitate to contact my own lawyers to protect my rights and those of...