Short story: Don't trust this company with your credit card! They made unauthorized charges!
Long story:
I found South of the River Music online and signed my mother up for piano lessons. I was told over the phone I had to pay a one-time registration fee plus the first month of lessons right away. I used my credit card. I asked for a female teacher who preferably spoke Spanish. We had a lady scheduled, then a few days before the lesson I was informed the original teacher wasn't available so we were assigned another teacher (who didn't speak Spanish). It wasn't a big deal at first. I met this young woman during my mother's first lesson, and she seemed nice. But then during the next lessons I found out she charged my mom for some music books, which I was told I wouldn't have to buy anything. My poor 55-year-old mother felt obligated to buy the books. Then I noticed they were used! Many pages were written on. I didn't like that my mom felt pressured to pay for these books. The teacher also canceled a lesson one week and said she'd make it up later. I called the company to remove my mom as a student so they wouldn't charge me the next month (it was automatically withdrawn from my credit card each month). The teacher wasn't going to give my mom the one lesson she canceled because we canceled the lessons! But we got the lesson she owed after asking her for it. First of all, good luck trying to get a hold of anyone at South of the River Music if you're not calling to sign up! I called several times for days and left messages. No one responded. Then I called the number to sign up as a new customer and someone answered. I told him I wanted to cancel my mom's lessons. He suggested I put it "on hold" so in case we wanted to sign up again we wouldn't be charged the supposed one-time registration fee. So I said okay, but wasn't told about a FEE to do this. Then I get an email a week later stating I'll get charged $49 to keep my mother active as a student until we start lessons again, then the $49 would be credited to the next lesson. I called to get this charge removed and got the run around. I disputed this charge through my credit card company Chase, which was a much more pleasant experience. This happened in October. Now I noticed I was charged $140 on Dec 30 by South of the River Music on my same credit card. I can't believe they had the nerve to charge my card again! I thought I was done with this company! I had to dispute the charge again. Don't bother with this company. They're overpriced, the service is not worth it, and they're sneaky!!!
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