So far, my experience with K12 Inc. has been with admissions. Those people are stuck in the middle between the clients and the Document Processing Team (DPT) and seem to have little to no control over the situation, and most of the agents don't even seem to be able to get things resolved. Many of them admitted that they often get complaints about document rejections.
I've spent the past week talking to admissions agent after agent trying to get documents that had nothing wrong with them approved (times rounded).
Saturday, 8/17/19: 41 minutes
Monday, 8/19/19: 30 minutes, 40 minutes, 25 minutes
Tuesday, 8/20/19: 21 minutes,
Thursday, 8/23/19: 32 minutes
Sunday, 8/26/19: 1 hour and 11 minutes, 22 minutes
I also spent some time talking to the Ohio Virtual Academy, one of K12's partner schools.
Some of the phone calls listed above involved more than one person and most of them couldn't get anything accomplished. All told, I think at least 12 people were directly (on the phone with me) or indirectly (asked to help) involved.
The inane fools in the DPT declared things like:
- "The document is not signed by the student's legal guardian as it was listed on the application."
I signed it, but because the form is not explicit on how I fill in my name next to my signature, they couldn't accept it. It wasn't even about the signature itself (which I would've blown a gasket about because no one tells someone how to sign their name). This happened with almost every form I had to fill out - even when my name matched my name on the application, and even when I completed it per agent instructions.
"The information provided on the document does not match the information on the student's application."
Apparently, they are so fussy that they don't allow for any variation, so I had things rejected for such trivial matters as (according to various agents) using an initial for my child's middle name, or not using anything at all, excluding the suffix of my last name, and including my middle initial.
This happened even when I followed the instructions on the family income form where the instructions tell you to list only the children who will be attending, so I did that. The form was rejected for listing both of my kids.
What's possibly more vexing than have forms rejected for petty reasons is the forms that were accepted for one child and rejected for the other - despite being virtually identical and completed as per agent instructions. I had this happen for both proof of residency, the language survey and one or two others.
In addition, you have to submit the same document for each child, even if it's identical. I'd just moved and the list includes letters from governmental agency, so I submitted two letters from different government agencies as proof of residence. The proof of residency has nothing about my kids on it, but I had to submit them for each. Despite these letters complying with their requirements, they were rejected for one of my kids and, despite various agents saying that they'd asked someone to correct it, it remained a problem until 8/26.
The incompetence of the DPT combined with vague/inaccurate explanations for the rejection, plus the admission team's general lack of ability to do anything really served to frustrate. Some said they'd flag it for review, or have their supervisor look at it, but most of the time that did not help much, if at all. It was only on the last day that the two agents I spoke to (plus the supervisors they were speaking to) managed to get everything approved. Thanks to Tricia and Jacob, and the very first lady I spoke to.
The admissions agents were patient, understanding and apologetic but the fact of the matter is that they get a lot of calls because of the DPT doing stupid stuff. On top of that, the DPT does NOT talk to the clients that they are frustrating.
Finally, the agent, Ketisha, who completed the intake at the start (8/17) said she'd be calling to complete the initial intake with me on 8/21. She never called. When someone says, I'm going to call on this date, and it's an important call, I figure that's what will happen. She was supposed to call back because the person who does the initial intake has to follow up is responsible for the client.
One agent, perhaps Ketisha, even told me that they do overtime after their shift to return calls.
In fact, I got disconnected from a previous agent and was initially told she'd call me back but, hours later, she hadn't called back. I called up and Ketisha said they were constantly taking calls and the first agent wouldn't be able to call me back for a few hours because of the heavy volume of calls. She explained that she could help me, but I'd have to start from the beginning again (I was almost done). Rather than waiting for however many days/hours, I had Ketisha help me complete it.
Hey, DPT, I don't know if you just don't get any training or y'all are too busy partying, but you sure do make clients eager to abandon K12!
The only happy news about this whole farce was that it pushed my son's start-date back past the end of our family reunion!
I also find it irksome that they make it difficult to identify where they are located. There are no addresses that I could find located on their corporate or admissions sites, but an agent told me their HQ is in Virginia. Why the name comes up as Keystone & On Line School on the BBB's website is a mystery to me. K12.com is K12 Inc.
I sure hope the rest of our experience is better than this!
If you appreciate this article, please 🏅upvote/like👍
, 🤩resteem/share
and share it to Facebook
, Twitter
, Reddit
, LinkedIn
and wherever else
you can!