Hi all,

Okay, I am beyond angry with Varsity College for numerous reasons. The main reason is that they make it so ridiculously difficult to get any money out of them.

I am looking for some advice in terms of my path of action as well as the new Consumer Protection Act.

My situation is as follows:

1. I registered at Varsity College at the beginning of the year for the whole year of study. I paid in full on date of registration.

2. I've subsequently tried to de-register from a particular subject. The reason for this was that the lecturer is, quite frankly, pathetic (I know from past experience) and I could achieve more on my own studying at home. I could not have known that he would be our lecturer for this subject before registration. If I had known, I wouldn't have registered for the subject in the first place.

When I found out that said lecturer was taking this particular subject, I promptly sent in a de-registration form on the first day of the semester. I have subsequently not attended a single lecture for this subject.

3. Varsity College have now only allowed a 50% refund for that subject, citing "a non-academic reason for de-registration" as their reason for not refunding 100%.

4. Furthermore, Varsity College refuses to pay out the credit my account. They say it needs to be used on a course at Varsity College and is against their policy to pay the money out. They do not pay interest on credit accounts either. If we don't return to Varsity College next year, we still won't be paid out.


Each time I talk about this situation and Varsity College, I become increasingly infuriated. There is a lot more to add to the above issues with Varsity College, but this is the most important and frustrating bit.

Does anybody have any input and/or suggestions?

I'm planning on writing a nice long letter and sending it to every major newspaper in the country. If I need to sit with a lawyer and the CPA just to see some justice here, I might just do that.

The way I see it, Varsity College is committing daylight robbery here. They also take a completely condescending tone with me in most of the communications between us. They seem to forget that I'm the one paying them R50k a year, not my parents.

Okay - Rant off now. Discuss.