Why companies like CompTia, Micro$oft and others prefer to outsource their certification exams, beats me. I mean obviously the companies themselves know best their own technology; so they can choose the best sets of questions & answers. Then, they sure have in-house skills to create a lousy form-based website that could present those questions and ask for the answers in check boxes or radio buttons format, and a database to store the certified people (in fact they have this one already; Pearson Vue send them the names and scores after the exam).
Why have an intermediary when you can do it yourself, better? But, as companies prefer to pass the certifications to Pearson Vue, it is understandable Pearson Vue have become these days a true monopole and nothing one says can shake their dominant position. However my frustration demands to let out some steam...
So here is the story, as concise as possible:
I tried to register with Pearson Vue the day before the exam. I have already talked to the training centre and I have reserved the place; I just needed to pay them money.
The website
It is quite incredible. Starting from the fact that there is no single login for their website; they ask you first to choose what certification exam you need to take in order to be able to create your account. So if you certify in 5 areas, it means you'll have 5 logins?
Then, let's say something about the usability of the site. Have you seen in the last decade or more such HTML lists?
Even a more complicated one (you really have to use your brain to remember the choice you need):
Yet another one: look at the possible years when one could have registered for a VMWare exam (I should have asked my grandpa, maybe he was VMWare certified and I didn't know...) :
So, are your Pearson Vue's programers incredible stupid? They didn't understand the concept behind a HTML list and also about the sensible values you can put in it.
Or maybe they just don't care about these details as they're having the monopole anyway...
The registration
After finishing up the registration process I got an email saying that I'll receive a user/pass in the next 24h! One day for an automatically generated user and pass !
I thought that maybe it's a generic message and that things will happen in a matter of minutes. Seeing that nothing happen after 3 hours (it was already the night before the exam) I created another account using another email address. Same behaviour, no user/pass back.
The night passed and next morning at the training centre, I had no user/pass and no registration for the exam I intended to pass. Happily the guys there were very helpful and they connected me with Pearson Vue by phone.
The guy over the phone didn't see any accounts I created last night, however he saw an old account, more exactly 12 years old. He insisted to use that account and he started to ask me questions about my address back then, my telephone number, etc, all of them being changed several times since then. So, finally I cut the crap and asked him to create a new account and forget about the old one.
So he made yet another account over the phone, and he registered me for the exam and took the money from my credit card, so I was able to pass the exam that day.
The surprise came few days later, when I have received the registration successfully messages for the 2 accounts I have created myself but none for the one created over the phone. As it stands, I had a total of 4 accounts with them, from which 3 using the same email address (!!!).
So, next step was to write few emails to ask them to unify the accounts somehow and make the magic to see my latest results somewhere. All communication by email is taking few days, and then I received a paper form I need to fill in and sent to them scanned. Did it, then message came that they couldn't find my 4 accounts so they couldn't merge them!
The talk
Therefore I decided to talk to a human and after waiting in the queue about 45 minutes (by the clock!) in an international call, I got a lady that was not only not knowledgeable about their system but also extremely impertinent and not willing to actually do a thing. She said things like:
"Why did you create such a mess?"
I "created"? Because your system allowed me to...
"You should stop shouting and start to listen" - I was not shouting, I was calling using an internet phone that interrupts a lot and also speaking a foreign language; I was just trying to make sure she understands me. I told her that she probably has a volume up/down button somewhere.
Besides, for waiting 30 minutes to have my phone picked-up, I think I deserved to be listened not talked over.
When I asked her to pass me to her manager, she just laughed sarcastically and said there is no manager and she's the only one I can talk to.
In the end, she just sent me that paper form again and I was back to square one.
Very frustrating. (I actually sent an email to them to complain about her behaviour. Obviously no answer.)
How I solved it in the end? I didn't, I stepped back and rethought the "strategy". Then I have called them again and ask only to resend the user/pass for the newest account of mine, the one created over the phone, where actually my VCP results were.
As for the rest of the accounts, to hell with them! Let the great corporation live with the mess if they are unable to understand it, and have stupid people in their service that have no desire to clean it up.
Why didn't the site complain that the email address is in use when I tried to re-use it? How can it be that I have there 3 accounts, all of them created with the same email address and name? Mind numbing...
Update: These days I got the CompTIA Linux+ exam, again through Pearson Vue (I tried to use Prometric - you know why - but they stopped delivering CompTIA exams). The testing computer failed to start the exam (yes, it was Window$ on it) and the lady from the test centre spend 30 minutes on hold to get someone from Pearson Vue to get a needed authorization code.
So this is the level of service Pearson Vue offers, no matter if it's an end user or their own authorized testing centre.
I just hope we'll hear soon about their bankruptcy and the fact they massively laid off their incompetent and nincompoops employees. I'll have a glass of champagne for them by then :)