DS Driving School West

Fantastic experience: Awesome instructor very Chetty hype and chill!! Very good at singing songs to help you remember what you learn!

Negative experience: I share the other comments about scheduling challenges. You must be on exactly when the schedule opens to have a fighting chance. Overall so so experience with school, but today turned so so to just ugh! I had a rather disappointing interaction this evening with DJ (owner and instructor from my understanding) in the parking lot when testing with my daughter for her test in 2 days at 8:00 PM. I didn’t know it was DJ until I got out of the car to ask for patience - what a disappointment. I recognized him as my daughter took her last behind the wheel with him. DJ shows up to test with his daughter and shortly after they arrived I see a hand fly out of passenger side in frustration. Confused if directed at us, we proceeded parallel parking, the car approaches and we move to do 90 backup parking. Shortly after moving to that station the car is back and honked at us, then followed from station to station very closely which made my daughter very nervous and unfocused. I get out of the car to ask for some patience and state we’d like to try each thing a time or two and can swap. He replies “it’s a circle, go in a circle” and I realize it’s the owner (DJ) at that time. I shared my disappointment in him rudely rushing us at ever station and proceeded to leave. There are no signs about a circle, we’ve been there before with others and had no issues and other families seemed to want to try something more than once as well. It doesn’t make sense to me to finally master something than go do something else without trying it immediately after mastering it. I understand if it’s busy, but it was just our two cars on a Monday evening. I might suggest you DS that you include this in some instructions for using the parking lot cones if it’s that serious. While your family won’t experience this exact situation, it is a character reference for me and would have caused me pause. Everyone learns different and rushing and showing aggression seemed uncalled for.

Negative experience: at this point I have to give a lower rating because it is almost impossible to schedule behind the wheel hours. You have to get your slots the first day of the month at 8am on line and they fill up incredibly fast! My son had his drivers ed in-class portion in July 2023 and he has only had 1 behind the wheel session since. It is March 5, 2024. It is incredibly frustrating!

Negative experience: so much issue with appointment for behind the wheels and bad communication. Won't recommend this company

Negative experience: TL;DR horrendous issues with scheduling, knowingly use unreliable cars that break down, poor customer service, when you can't schedule in time - because scheduling is near impossible - they charge you $150. Classroom instruction and sign up went well (taking my money they're good at). Everything else has been abysmal. Trying to get signed up for behind the wheel lessons has proven nearly impossible like so many other reviews have said. You only get a couple of hours once a month and then slots are filled until next month. When you can't get lessons because they're near impossible, they charge you $150 MORE dollars on top of the $400 I already paid. It hasn't been 13 months but the website was still trying to charge me when attempting to take over a cancelation. The slot was of course filled by the time I got everything figured out. Finally my daughter gets 1 BTW that they offered to us "on the backend". The car breaks down. They never made it out of the parking lot. Somehow this still counts as one hour done but she didn't really learn anything. I understand cars break down, but the instructor then says "it usually only does this in the winter". So they know this early 2000s Malibu is unreliable but they continue to use it for lessons anyway. When calling to get this figured out they can't reschedule us only the instructor can (despite the office making the original appointment so I don't feel that's accurate) I have no way to reach her