I am getting thoroughly fed up with foreign organisations that set up for a few months in Melbourne and try to make a living out of PMI training, damage the local businesses then disappear.
I have no problems with competition and Mosaic has survived dozens of these ‘onslaughts’ since 1999 but it is made all the more difficult when these ‘out-of-towners’ appear to fragrantly breach Australian consumer law.
The law in Australia (unlike the USA) mandates consumer goods and services are advertised at their full price. Business to business quotes or advertisements need to clearly define if the advertised price includes GST or not.
Looking around the web today I came across this advertisement in a Google search for PMP courses in Melbourne:
Clicking through to the Melbourne course page, directly linked form the advertisement changes the story substantially:
Complete a registration and you are in for a nasty surprise when you get to the payment screen:
Your $1300 course is actually a $1600 course.
The only legitimate ‘extra’ between the Google advertisement and the final bill is the credit card fee; there was an option to pay by debit card for no fee.
For the record, the following two extracts are taken directly from the ACCC website summarise the law:
The Google advertisement appears to be in breach of the Australian consumer protection legislation and also appears to contravene the PMI R.E.P. policy which requires honesty in advertising. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for either authority to take action – they will undoubtedly be slower than 007!
In the meantime we have decided to take a direct commercial stand.
- We believe our advertised ‘all inclusive – no more to pay’ prices for PMP and CAPM classroom courses in Melbourne offer the best value ‘in-town’.
- If anyone finds a similar course that has a ‘real’ price lower than ours, we will beat that price by $50 every time.
To test our prices and check out the fine print (unfortunately we cannot avoid some) visit our new website dedicated to PMP and CAPM courses in Melbourne at: http://www.mosaicproject.com.au/
Pat Weaver
Lynda Bourne
Aavssitedev's Blog
Pat, what about the false and misleading advertising by PMI on their own website?
On the PMP Exam home page http://www.pmi.org/Certification/Project-Management-Professional-PMP.aspx PMI states in the first paragraph, second sentence “Globally recognized and demanded, the PMP® demonstrates that you have the experience, education and COMPETENCY to lead and direct projects” (emphasis on the word competency is mine)
This is a patently false and/or misleading statement. There is no way that taking a 4 hour long multiple choice exam with no assessment of the work the person did or their role on the project could POSSIBLY validate competency. Yet despite having posted complaints on this for over a year, PMI has yet to change it.
So before anyone starts complaining about what OTHERS are doing, maybe it would be better to start by cleaning up PMI’s own marketing materials?
BR,
Dr. PDG, Jakarta, Indonesia
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Hi Paul,
1. I agree knowledge is only a part of the KSA framework needed to assess competency, see: http://www.mosaicprojects.com.au/WhitePapers/WP1056_Competency.pdf In other areas PMI demonstrate they are fully aware of this.
2. I was not complaining about PMI and PMI were not responsible for the post – my complaint is directed to an advertisement that appears to be in breach of Australian consumer laws and is clobbering our marketing – the advertised price is substantially lower than our standard price, the actual cost charged by the firm is higher.