Hey Joe Guitar

We had a terrible experience with Hey Joe Guitar.
After some individual lessons with a young guitar teacher, we signed up for a monthly service which we had to pay a month in advance. But soon, the teacher started missing lessons, coming late and canceling at the last minute. My son would constantly ask us «why is the teacher late?» or «why is he not coming?’ It was very sad.
After we complained about the situation, Hey Joe sent us a different teacher, but he too started to have erratic schedule because of his music gigs and other group classes he taught. Ultimately, he told us that he could not make the date/​time that we initially agreed on at all.
When we finally told Hey Joe we had to cancel, they told us we were making a mistake, our son was doing great and that we should continue. When I sent another e-​mail asking for a cancellation with clear reasons why, I was met with dead silence.
Until a few weeks later, we noticed another charge on our credit card for the service. When we contacted Hey Joe, they said they were not sure we were canceling (even though I could not have been clearer in my earlier e-​mail, and the teacher had stopped coming weeks ago). Not only would they not give us back any money for the lessons that were missed in the past, they wouldn’t reverse the charges for the month after the teacher stopped coming. We ultimately had to dispute the charges through the credit company. That was the only way we could cancel.
We have since asked our friends for music teacher recommendations and quickly found a few great teachers. It really isn’t too difficult to find qualified, responsible music teachers in NYC — ask your friends, school, music class teachers, and you will quickly find a few.
Looking back, I should have taken that approach from the beginning. It would have saved us a lot of heartache and disappointment of working with Hey Joe.