Kim
mesa,#2Consumer Comment
Tue, June 18, 2002
I think a better term for them is " self improvement schools" not modelling schools. All the schooling in the world usually does not make somebody a model. These schools will take anybody's money and give them the false hope that any girl can be a model. NOT true. Most girls that graduate from these schools probably do not find any legitimate work. What you weren't born with, $5000.00 won't get you.
#30
Sat, September 30, 2000
From: [email protected] Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 21:28:22 EDT I am very distressed that Mrs. Laurie Hawn has been able to post this with many inaccurate facts. As the President of this company for over 15 years I would first like to state that our company has a spotless record with the BBB in San Diego. Ms. Hawn brought her daughter to Barbizon for an interview on December 4, 1999. At that time her daughter wrote things on an application that indicated she wanted to loose weight, take better care of her skin, have better self confidence, etc. These are typically things teenage girls come to Barbizon for. I have no personal knowledge if my counselor Ms. Lindsey told Ms. Hawn if the class her daughter was starting on was session 2 or not, but it is COMMON practice to have girls start class up to session 3 (there are 22 sessions offered). Ms. Hawn''''s daughter had missed only 3 hours out of a total of 66 hours when she started class with us. I can only speculate that perhaps since Ms. Hawn''''s daughter needed to loose a great deal of weight and the session she started on was a diet and exercise class that perhaps she became discouraged since the other girls in her class were thinner. As to the ages of girls in the class I have NO idea why Ms. Hawn had a problem. There were 11 girls in class. Three girls were over the age of 18--two were 19 and one was 21. Of the remaining 8 girls (including Kate Hawn who was 15) one was 13, two were 14, four were 15, and one was 17. Mrs Hawn never expressed a problem with the ages of the girls and why she had a problem with her daughter starting on session #2 I have no idea but we told her that we would move her daughter into a new class after January 1, 2000. When we advised her of a new class we received the following fax dated 1/4/00 sent on 1/5/00 "UNFORTUNATELY KATE WILL BE UNABLE TO START HER BARBIZON MODELING COURSE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP, HOPEFULLY SHE WILL BE ABLE TO PARTICIPATE AT A FUTURE DATE." Ms. Hawn made it seem that her daughter had never started the class. Again I feel that her daughter had started the classes felt either out of place, or decided that it was something she didn''''t want to do and her mother is making up excuses to get her money back. Teenage girls occasional sign up for modeling classes and then decide they don''''t want to continue attending which is probably just part of being a teenager. We at Barbizon understand this, and that is why we offer partial refunds up until a certain period of course time to attendance time. This was the case for this mother. We issued a credit of $55.50 to her credit card. We are sorry that we lost Kate will give her credit for the money that has been paid in. This is something we legally don''''t have to do but feel that is only a fair business practice.