Big Classroom Avaliações 

Free trial then suck you into hundreds of pounds worth of contractual cost. They accept orders from any staff member so be wary of letting your staff sign up to their free trial. It wasn't useful and now we're stuck with a year subscription. AVOID!

Subscription trap Company, or genuine ICT software provider?

The headteacher recieved an email about expression an interest. There was an email that was then sent to school (that we never opened! Im guessing it went to our junk box) to say we would recieve an invoice for £300 unless we opted out of the subscription. Never used the website and no plans to.

Very dubious selling tactics.
The company obviously know they are being very dubious in the way that they deal with schools. It allows anyone (including staff who have no buying authority) to sign-up for a trial. After this trial they will then send you a "reminder" email. Then comes a £300 invoice.

I looked at this online and registered for a trial. I have not used it or shared it with staff, which would be seen I should think by the owners. As an extremely busy head of a school, I did not receive the email regarding the trial running out as it went to junk mail.

If it were my own money, I would be upset enough, but to think that I will have to pay £300 using public money is appalling. This money is being taken out of children's hands and put into the pockets of a company who say that they act in a transparent way. Yes, they do. You are told you will be informed, you are informed and then charged. If their system was more honest, they would check that I have RECEIVED and READ the message that went into my junk mail. It seems to be a ploy which is damaging to schools' budgets, which are already strained. I am totally disgusted by this blatantly punitive approach for not reading my junk mails in time.

I am a Business Manager at Hindhayes Infant School in Street, Somerset. I am happy to be contacted about our experience of the Big Classroom if helpful to other schools.

The following is our experience of this company. In this review I aim to be factual, balanced and unemotional in comments and adhere to GDPR expectations.

Firstly, I have worked in Business Support for over 25 years and have a lot of experience of contracts for services, dealing with companies regarding disputes and never in that time have experienced a situation where a Company has taken us to Court to seek payment for their services where, they haven’t been used.

Earlier in 2019 a colleague did sign up for the free trial with the Big Classroom but unlike some of the reviews on here we were aware of the T&C's regarding cancellation. This member of the Team did attempt to email The BC and when they were unsuccessful, called them to inform that that our school didn't want to continue with the free trial. From this point we didn’t envisage that we would need to do anymore. For us this is where the fundamental difference came.

When I received an invoice for the yearly subscription of £300 + VAT I contacted the BC and was informed what it related to. I contacted the member of staff who is senior and long standing who I obtained a statement from and informed the BC of when she had contacted them to cancel.

At this point I said that the school wouldn't pay the invoice because we had cancelled and not used or intended to use their service.
Our school were unable to detail by telephone number the outgoing calls made and therefore in the BC's view we could not evidence the cancellation.

Despite many emails, telephone calls and attempted discussions, the BC took the decision not to believe that we had cancelled and took us to the Small Claims Court. We took the decision to submit written evidence to the Court and didn't attend in person due to it being a 10 hour round trip of 500 miles. We also obtained Legal advice from our Local Authority. The ruling went against the school and we will honour that decision and will be paying the BC, to include late payment fees and court costs.

Despite the Court ruling against the School we recognise that this is because legally the BC are doing nothing wrong but our view solidly remains that for a company to charge for services not delivered when a sensible conversation has taken place, that to enforce payment would not be a company we would recommend or respect. Our school work extremely hard to maximise its resources, so you can appreciate we cannot advocate using this company without other schools being fully aware of their stance for situations like this.

No doubt, they'll be a response to this review and it will be pleasantly worded, firm and seemingly fair. I'll leave that to your judgement.
As stated this is Hindhayes School experience. Yours maybe different, but you have been given information to help make a decision.

There are other review sites you may wish to search via Google of the BC and having spent some time looking for information there is quite a bit (in my view). Of course the BC will say that there are many positive reviews, which are not posted.

Thank you for reading this review.

Further to the BC follow up to this Trustpilot review (see below), their response, tone and style were envisaged and clearly (again in our opinion) doesn't reflect our understanding of events. With over 30 reviewers saying similar things to ourselves, the monetary impact on these settings alone could/would be in the region of £9k (30 * £300) of `unused' service. These are just the poor experiences where schools have left a review. For information Somerset Schools have been contacted by our Local Authority specifically making them aware of the T&C's for The Big Classroom.

TOOK US TO COURT!!!
A staff member (who wasn’t authorised to make a purchase for the school), signed for the free trial. Didn’t realise there was a cost involved and the ‘so called’ reminder email went into junk. Tried to explain this to them but they wouldn’t listen to reason. We have never even used it, but they would not be reasonable about it and tried to bully us with threats of court action. We held firm on principle and refused to pay. Unbelievably (I have worked in education for 20 years and never had a company treat us like this), they did take us to small claims court. We travelled up to Lancashire to defend the case, even though it would cost way more than the £300 claim. Ridiculously we lost the case and had to pay almost £500 to include the court fees and additional costs. The judge basically said it is all covered on their website and in their terms and conditions, so we had formed a contract and had to abide by it’s terms. Take my advice and have nothing to do with this company.

79% GAVE IT ONE STAR AND MANY OF THESE SAID IT WOULD HAVE BEEN 0 HAD THEY HAD THAT OPTION....WHAT THIS DOESN'T TELL YOU IS HOW MUCH STRESS AND ANXIETY BIG CLASSROOM HAVE CAUSED (THE IRONY!) LET ALONE HOW MUCH OF THE TAX PAYERS MONEY HAS BEEN WASTED BY TRAPPING SCHOOLS INTO AUTOMATIC RENEWALS.

The whole process is designed to trap you into an automatic subscription renewal costing £360!

The official company responses on this website state that the company believes itself to be operating within industry norms when the reverse is true as I'll explain below and hopefully save you the pain of going through this yourself.

Big Classroom use several tactics to trap you into an agreement. Of course this is barely legal or they would have been shut down and you are responsible for checking T&Cs but how many school suppliers do you know that would take an order for an annual subscription for a school without a purchase order? I regularly purchase online services from several companies and all of these companies operate in the same way without exception. Individual teachers need to get approval from a budget holder or finance to get a purchase order or a subscription cannot be purchased without using a school credit card. Big Classroom operate with the policy that they do not require a purchase order and any teacher signing up for the free trial is liable for the full annual cost despite not providing any payment details or purchase order. Doesn't sound like a particularly good business model? Let's consider for a moment though why a company might want to do this? Does it downplay the apparent financial risk? Of course it does! Can you rely on the busy teacher not to have the time to read the T&C's - of course you can. You can't even get a free trial with a phone app free without putting your credit card details in or payment details in up front. But wait, once you sign up you get e-mails from several different email addresses and this is where things get a bit 'messy'. Several people have reported mail going into junk files. Clearly Big Classroom are aware of this (by reading the complaints on this website alone) and yet there is no warning or concern about this lack of transparency. Most legitimate companies with any regard for customer service would warn their trialist about this, especially since it contains important information regarding the trial end date which is then critical for liability of the hefty renewal fee. If you miss the crucial e-mail reminder which appears 2 weeks before the end of the trial you are well and truly roasted as you are then liable for the full cost of an annual membership according to the company. Now this is where Big Classrooms claims to operate at industry norms seem to be inaccurate. Let's use the example of insurance companies as provided by Big Classroom in an earlier response. An insurance company gives you at least 4 weeks notice of renewal in WRITING! (like every company I have ever dealt with) not via e-mail which can go into junk files never to see the light of day. Additionally, insurance companies are required to give you the option to opt-out of auto-renewal - Again this is not offered by Big classroom. Plus, have you ever heard of an insurance company not taking payment up front?

So why don't Big Classroom send anything in writing regarding the renewal? Why don't they take payment details upfront? Why don't they want transparency? WHY? because quite simply they want you to miss the renewal date....in their own words, they are very strict once this deadline has passed suggesting they think they have operated in an honest and transparent manner up to this point. The complaints on this site suggest otherwise. The only reason some of these complaints are so emotional is because hardworking people feel awful about being trapped into an agreement where cash resources are scarce and tax payers money wasted on a service which will not be used. These people feel awful because they are not used to being duped or dealing with suppliers who operate in this way. Big Classrooms response to their reviews alone is enough to show you what type of company you are dealing with.

Lets try and look at it another way, if the service being offered was as good as they claimed it to be more people would be happy to pay - they could post the renewal document and budget would be used to pay for a valuable resource. Clearly this is not the case. They rely on a lack of transparency, e-mails going into junk/lost in the 100's received by teachers every week and their barely legal tactics to trap you. Big Classroom need to believe in the service they provide and therefore use more transparent methods of communication with time strapped teachers who do not have hours to review every email they receive OR continue as they are, eventually being black listed by every teacher who encounters them and dwindling annual sales as word of mouth (inc Twitter and Facebook) is likely to have a detrimental impact on this business.

Disgusted with this ‘educational support’ company. Offered nothing of any value, terrible website and after 3 months of being an unknown ‘guest member’ they charged my school over £300 for membership. This was apparently in some small print that I eventually found in a spam email. Avoid under all circumstances.

I signed up for this not knowing that our school will be charged. I didn't receive any emails to cancel the subscription. So now I have to pay out of my own pocket for something with are not going to use. Schools need to be made aware of this company.

Our experience of this company was appalling. Don't take out their free trial. If you have and you've not cancelled in time, and then get billed £360 for this "free trial" get your school to contact their LA solicitor. They are legal bully boys, but much less powerful than a well oiled local authority legal department. This company needs shut down and out of business, as it is draining money from education by conning schools.
I am also so disappointed that Trustpilot has not removed the positive reviews from this site that I have reported, as some of them are OBVIOUSLY false, and I strongly suspect all of them are. Why has no-one given it a middling review? Because they are 1 Star / 0 Star bad news, and who lie to try and keep their con alive.

AWFUL. A COMPLETE WASTE OF MONEY!!!
I agree with all the other negative comments completely. I found them rude, unhelpful and condescending.
Obviously, at first, the idea seemed interesting and I was drawn in. What a terrible MISTAKE!!!
The email reminding you to cancel is from Lee and went straight into 'junk'. They don't care about that, only that they get their money. In reality, I don't see the point of them as Twitter, specialised 'Facebook' groups etc, are much more realistic and helpful- written by real teachers, from real schools.
Don't waste your precious MONEY.

Try to silence me all you like Big Classroom. I've edited what I think your GDPR complaint is about. Interesting tack from a reputable company with nothing to hide??? Aahhhh well ....all the reviews below say everything you need to know.

Technically and legally, they are not a scam, but I had the phone call recording and the hard sell is clear. They talk and talk and talk (it was lunch time too) and you say no. Then they go on about the no obligation free trial. And yes they do say you have to cancel, briefly - but they trade in the hope you will forget - unfortunately many of us had. We are in the same boat.

As for the positive comments on how easy it was to cancel.... Come on! Really????

So, legally not a scam. Ethically and morally horrific. They know exactly what they are doing and they just don't care in my opinion. If they did they would see all the negativity here and say they will change their practice.

Its dead simple Big Classroom - take out the auto renew feature from your pressure sell phone call. Do it. Change that one thing. If you have such belief in your product take that feature out.

The product itself is a message board. That's it. I contacted all the schools on my "connected" list. None of them got in contact with me. Also, they heavily moderate the content - if the Big Classroom don't like it they delete it and block you from using the service you have paid for. My ICT dept have rightly blocked this from the entire county as they are an untrusted site.

These reviews have put a little pep in my step this cold October morn - seeing the net close round them so that more people won't get wrangled in on this. Hopefully your revenue stream has dried up. Your product is awful.

EDIT: Hilarious. My name is Tim and I am HT at Ysgol Esgob Morgan. I am not afraid of putting my name to this if it stops more people signing up with you. You tried to hide my review based on a GDPR claim...it's easy to find the people behind this on companies house. Why hide? You offered for me to visit anytime? Why the hesitance now? I did not post addresses. So I will accept an apology from you about this false accusation.

Look at all these people you have upset. One would be enough for me to apologise and change my practise.

You didn't delete my account. I paid in full and immediately cancelled. I was not abusive on the message board. And that's all this is by the way. A message board. I sought out each individual school and contacted them directly and asked them what experience they were having. Not one responded.

Keep trying to justify what you do.

P.s. Where has the review from the guy from Kirkham gone?

Over priced and very sharp practice to sell a free trial and then drag you in on the small print into a vastly overpriced product.
To me this seems like a business opportunity dressed up as an educational product rather than anything truly with education at its core.
Avoid.

A completely pointless forum, similar to Facebook, where schools who have signed up can share what they've been doing. like twitter, but £360. Use tactics like a waiting period to confirm cancellation after you ask to cancel to hope you forget and end up tied in for a year. Avoid at all costs!

AVOID ........ AVOID ........ AVOID ....... AVOID ......... AVOID ......
We received an invoice to pay for an annual subscription. None of us on the Leadership Team were aware of it so we contacted the office to see what was going on. They supplied us with the name of our DHT and said she had signed up for it, missed the "de-register" date and now the invoice was payable in full; they would not even entertain any sort of reduction even though we had clearly never used the system and had not even created a user. Here's the thing - my DHT never deletes ANY emails - nothing there. I again contacted the office appealing to their good nature to try and negotiate a reduction at least. Nada. Nothing doing. Patronising tone too. We now have to waste £300.00+ to clear this invoice and cancel the subscription. Because schools have that sort of money to waste these days. I agree with all previous negative reviews - a company playing on the fact that school employees are extremely busy and could easily overlook cancelling a "free trial."

Shame you are unable to give no stars.

In this day and age it says a lot about a company who has an opt out process for subscription so that busy schools end up subscribing without knowing they are doing so.

The only reason for this review is to hopefully stop any further educational providers from having to waste their time and money at a time when every penny is so precious.

Awful product and arrogant administration - avoid avoid avoid!
The office manager is an arrogant twerp who frankly has no place being in business. I sincerely hope that eventually the slew of negative feedback will either encourage them to change their practices or at least stop duping people.
Having sent reminders and invoices to completely the wrong school tried threatening legal action despite our attempts to sort out their errors.Start citing GDPR even though THEY HAD MADE THE ERROR RELATING TO THE WRONG SCHOOL.
Can't agree more with the rest of the reviews.

Most of the negative reviews on here mirror exactly what I would say about this company. The positive reviews aren’t even that positive when you read into them.

I find it unconscionable that a company would dupe schools out of money. I also didn’t like the tone the office manager used with me and have found the exchange of emails over the summer holiday very stressful.

Thank you to the reviewer who suggested to get in touch with the local authority. That’s exactly what I’ll be doing next week.

I’m not shocked by the way the reviews have been replied to by The Big Classroom. I just hope other schools will search this forum up before they have the same experience I’ve had.

We agree wholeheartedly with the other poor reviews on this site. We also realise by their response to the many poor reviews that this company is only interested in making money out of cash-strapped, busy schools. Whilst we will have to pay, we warn everybody about this 'con' of a company. Please avoid at all costs. Please do not bother with a perfunctory response.