Beyond BookSmartReviews of beyondbooksmart.com

Unprofessional company. They do not show up to intake appointments.

The 1st appointment we booked they coach was a complete no show. When I asked for a refund they said their policy was "No Refunds" I get that if the coach shows up, and we have a session but since they just didn't show up to the zoom meeting and said they missed it on the calendar, they don't refund that? Really disappointed.

We had an incompetent EF coach. I called and spoke to a team member who seemed very receptive. I was told that we would be contacted for a rematch. We were never contacted.

Why I Canceled Within The First 2 Sessions - No systematic method: never seemed to be a plan for how the coach would assess where I am now, specific achievable goals, or how BBS could help me get there - Not personalized: The coach worked from assumptions rather than understanding my unique challenges through dialogue or people who know me. - Overpriced: Not willing to pay $156/ hour (session) for what was a weekly accountability session. It is tantamount to profiteering from people who are vulnerably approaching the company for help. Why I would not recommend (Bad business practices) - I was promised that the first session would be a 15-min discovery call with my coach. The coach went over that time w/o consent and charged me $156 anyway. - It became impossible to get someone on the phone once I requested a cancellation. - I was reimbursed less than logically expected with 0 explanations or opportunity to consent. Ultimately, I was charged $182/ hour (session). For those looking for help: I recommend trying out some of the many more affordable options. Worst-case scenario, you end up with a similar service while saving yourself a few thousand dollars. Back story if you are interested: I was recently diagnosed with ADHD as an adult after soliciting the test from my doctor upon realization that the challenges I was facing in my academic and professional roles throughout my entire life revolved around Executive Functioning. I hated the idea of relying on solely or permanently on medication so I immediately began searching for a therapist/ coach. After viewing several options that were much more affordable (Shimmer, TalkSpace, etc.) I settled on BBS/ Smart Work Coaching.

By improving role model skills, sharing results if not follow the method

they matched me with someone they knew had performance issues and was not a quality coach (as described by them!) and won’t refund the money for that session specifically. how is this an ethical business practice? there’s nothing this business offers that you can’t find yourself in a good resource about time management and working with someone skilled in nervous system regulation. that’s all you need. everything else here is fluff to make you feel they are doing something great and deep and worth being charged 100s of dollars a week for. it’s truly not. i was going to let this go but they didn’t offer me a refund for even the wasted first session or intake. atleast one should have been refunded. instead they waived the $300 fee to cancel - that’s not really a credit given as the condition is you don’t need to pay this as long as you tell customer success why you are leaving. which I did! so why won’t this company refund my money for matching me with a coach with known performance problems? buyer beware. don’t do it, not worth it. there is a reason this place has the most intense documentation for you to sign your life away when you get started with the program. $300 to cancel coaching. cost for intake. can’t cancel before 16 weeks. it goes on and on, make sure you have a lawyer to review it before you sign. the problems started with the pre form. i was given a form for children that parents are meant to fill out. i was signing up for their adult coaching for myself. i pointed this out and was not sent the right form. next, the intake coordinator was more interested in talking about herself than anything else. spending that money was so pointless, she learned nothing about me and passed on wholly incorrect information about me to the coach. then they matched me with a coach that was horrible and when i connected with “customer success”, she shared that coach had known problems. so why are they still a coach? why were they matched with someone new? i did SO MUCH due diligence before joining. there’s only one person in this organization who is good at what she does (client coordinator) and she was a joy to speak with, i wish i could have continued with her. everyone else, especially the (somehow) director of “customer success” has no idea which way is up. Defensive and dismissive. in a way i feel fortunate i only wasted a few hundred dollars here instead of 1000s as i’m sure other poor people do. my heart goes out to them. in a time of inflation and raised costs, do you really want to spend your hard earned money at a business like this? the positive reviews here are so lopsided and suspicious. i’m out 100s of dollars. buyer beware. don’t do it, not worth it.

Spent a lot of money & time but my child’s grades & skills didn’t improve. 1. This business might normally rate a 2, since my child felt the sessions were useful even if his grades did not improve, but their service is more expensive than other similar ones, so I rated it a 1 for poor value. Also we didn’t get to use all parts of our contract (ie, work sessions) since our coach wasn’t familiar with it & did not incorporate it into skill learning or assist our child in learning to use it. 2. BBS promised a team of experts ensuring our child’s progress but we did not see evidence of this. When we communicated with our coach, nothing changed. When we communicated with his supervisor, nothing changed. When I sent emails to the team of people who had helped intake my child, I was told to communicate only with our coach. Besides our intake appointment, no one interacted with our child or provided input to us on goals, progress or skills assessments. No evidence of monitoring of progress or grades compared to coaching sessions content. No evidence of oversight to indicate a team of professionals ready to help our child. Same with administrative staff. 3. Coaching sessions were sometimes cancelled/rescheduled yet our credit card was still charged for them until we asked for a refund. We were not told by our coach when meeting times were changed or cancelled. Not really effective to expect our child who needs executive coaching to remember to tell us these things especially when no coaching was provided on rescheduling or communicating schedule changes. Not a great way to manage a schedule and extra insult that we were still charged for sessions that didn’t happen. Again lack of oversight, poor accounting of time cards/billable hours & lack of internal coordination. 4. There were no automated email messages or reminders about sessions or results, which would have been helpful since the only way to get them was via a portal we had to log in to. Nice to have a record of the session notes in one place in the portal but it would be helpful to be able to read notes and session reminders via email so we could respond & ask questions. Other tutoring services provide these notices & updates via email. 5. There is no guarantee of results, so if your child’s skills or grades (like ours) did not improve, there is no recourse. There is also no evaluation of results or monitoring skills or goals addressed during coaching sessions to provide any guide or updates to parents. Other tutoring/coaching services offer this, whether it is free extra classes or a refund. Other tutoring businesses also have results or data (grades, internal evaluations) to show that their coaches and methods are effective for their customers, but not BBS. One thing that did happen like clockwork was automatic billing of my credit card though. They did not listen to my concerns or provide proper oversight to ensure my child’s skills & grades improved or that coaches consistently attended sessions, but they didn’t fail to bill my card $600+ per month. I didn’t even see evidence of a plan to ensure that holidays, school breaks or vacation time for coaches was addressed properly in terms of not billing for sessions that didn’t happen. We had to continually ask & we are still uncertain that our child got all sessions we paid for. 6. It appeared that coaches were not informed of new policies or contract features..training, software, documentation and coordination issue. When we asked our coach why we were billed for sessions that didn’t happen, he said it was due to the new business model. In past, families were only billed for sessions they attended. Same with work sessions we paid for but didn’t use: coach wasn’t familiar with them, so he didn’t incorporate them into my child’s plan for learning new skills. There was no plan except take my $ and pass the buck without addressing our concerns. 7. First satisfaction survey? 9 months into contract.