The College Board

BLUF: successful call to customer service.
I called (sounded like Philippines) to request the removal of the Essay portion (take SAT test only) for the March 2016 new test. It was more difficult than it should have to be on the phone. I tried the web site first and it did not contain a simple method to remove it; it seemed we had to reschedule the whole test and pay a $ 28 penalty. The CS agent was courteous and command of English was not bad. Took approx. 20 minutes total and the web site updated the scheduled test information within minutes. Just guessing, since this is a new test, they may not have much experience in my particular request.

Customer service is horrible but its the only game in town. I wish there was some competition. I don’t know if customer service reps are in America but they didn’t take advantage of college

These money grubbing bureaucrats really do have a racket running. I applied for testing accommodations for my disabled child and they couldn’t care less about his plight. And please don’t think the SSD (Services for Students with Disabilities) office is any more helpful than the rest of the group. I also agree with the other comments regarding wait times and disconnects over the phone. Our family is switching to the ACT and pray for the best. These people will not see another penny from me. What a scam. Our poor children.

Two hours on hold… hung up on, three times!

If your payment or registration gets lost and you find out the day prior to the test, you are screwed. They tell you to search schools by name to find a school with a later testing date. The search engine is horrible as you need to put in each high school name one by one. Can’t search by county or area. If you are lucky enough to find a few schools that have a later date you call them begging to let your child in and they say, «No. Only kids enrolled in our school can test here.» You would think they would at least allow you to pay extra to test at a testing center. So final words is because our registration got screwed up, we are screwed. If they cared about these kids there would be an option to test at a testing center. This would also help out the home schooled children.

What a racket! They should be sued. 45 minutes to register our son, missed deadline because their system couldn’t handle a password reset! Then they had the gall to still charge me a late fee. And OMG make sure you enter their name right, that is what I’m dealing with right now!

A bunch of dishonest money making Brooklyners raping students for huge amount of money by providing automatic services! Dishonest monopoly. Someone has to start a class action suite on them! I will join! Shame, shame, shame! Typical NY though.

Unfortunately the ratings don’t matter. College Board has a nice little monopoly going so they can do whatever they want.
My daughter is a high school senior this year so she had to take the SATs. Then she had to have her scores sent to the schools she was interested in. Not only do they charge quite a bit for the test each time you take it (most kids take it more than once) but they charge quite a lot more to send scores. Though they offer a small window to send scores for free, hers didn’t go out and there’s no record that we made the request.
They are very slow to respond if you have a problem. They are also very slow to send scores at $ 11.25/school. But for $ 30+/school they will send them in a timely fashion. I believe there’s a name for that kind of racket.
Lastly, of the three times I phoned them, twice I spoke to someone in the Philippines. While I have nothing against our island neighbors to the southwest I do have a problem with companies that outsource jobs.
To summarize my rant: they suck, they’re slow and they have a monopoly. This essay might not earn me a high score but I feel a little better having ranted.