Educate Online
Catapult Online / is RIPPING KIDS OFF

Educate Online (formerly Catapult Online) is a division of E-Sylvan Learning. They have been running a program for several years now that uses government grants to furnish inner-city kids with computers (which they claim to be new), and provide these kids with free online tutoring. This is all meant to benefit those who struggle the most academically in poor, inner-city areas around the country.

The problem is that the whole thing is a scam. This company pockets the money and then purchases broken, half-dead, refurbished PCs and sends them to the kids. When I worked there, we were inundated everyday with complaints from irate parents whose children had received computers that wouldn't even power on, right out of the box.in most cases, the PCs had parts that would just fall off - broken keys on the keyboard, loose or missing power buttons, fried motherboards, to name a few issues. It was a mess! Once I took a call from a parent whose PC had smoke and sparks shooting out of it.

Then there was the so-called technical support group which was supposed to help fix these issues. This is all a front - a way to divert attention from the main issue - as most of the problems were beyond fixing. About 80% of the time, replacement PCs and parts had to sent to the children, as most of the PCs and peripherals were too far gone to troubleshoot.

One can then imagine the demoralizing effect this had on the kids, whose hopes and enthusiasm were crushed once their "new" PC was taken out of the box only to find that it does not work. The high drop-out rates we experienced were the natural consequence of this.

My hope is that after reading this, somebody out there will take it upon themselves to investigate this company and get to the root of this scam. Right now this company is getting away with cheating this nation's tax-payers and more importantly, its children. There are too many fragile lives at stake for us to just sit and do nothing.

Company: Educate Online
Country: USA
State: Maryland
City: Baltimore
Address: 506 S. Central Avenue

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