Top Driver Driving School

Fantastic experience: My daughter completed her driving classes here and we had a great experience. The online classes had no glitches and the driving went seamlessly with her instructor Dan. Highly recommend!

Positive experience: Overall had a good time instructors all had different views and strengths that helped me become a better driver!

Negative experience: I DO NOT RECOMMEND. I repeat… I DO NOT RECOMMEND! They release dates for in car sessions every first Wednesday of the month. If you miss out you have to keep checking daily for cancellations or wait until the first Wednesday of the next month. Terrible. SMH I regret spending my money with them.

Negative experience: Avoid at all costs if you actually want to receive behind the wheel lessons. On September 4, there are zero lessons available to schedule for all of September and October!

Negative experience: I HATE YOU TOP DRIVER

Negative experience: My daughter went there for the two weeks in classroom training, took her test and passed it, and I could not schedule her driving hours because the teacher did not report her attendance or her test. Their seems to be a lack of communication within the company. Every day that goes by, she’s falling behind and getting her in car driving time scheduled. This is extremely frustrating and I’ve been calling for days and emailing with no result. I did not look at their reviews until after I paid I would’ve gone to the other nearby school.

Negative experience: Top Driver uses malicious incompetence and miscommunication as business to take advantage of its customers to charge ridiculous additional fees and avoid having to make things right. Bottom Line: When my daughter becomes of driving age we will be going anywhere else. I cannot address the actual skill of instruction because the inability of their staff to be on the same page has stopped my son from being able to complete an in car session. Their instructors will give your child different information and then you will be told by a customer service agent that is your fault. For example, the instructor will tell your son that they are cancelling his future sessions because he is not ready and should get some driving time with you. That is fair and valid. Except you will then get a notification that they have not cancelled the session. This notification will come after the cancellation window instead of prior to it so when you call customer service to cancel they will tell you you are being charged an exorbitant late fee. The customer service agent has no authority to make things right or discuss the matter or pretty much anything else. They will tell you a manager will call you and then this will fail to happen. Top Driver, however, has the right to cancel on you whenever they choose (multiple times now). I now believe they do this in hopes that you will accidentally need to cancel the rescheduled date so that they may once again collect on the late fee Their instructor will also tell your son not to come into the facility and instead to wait outside. So, when your son arrives early to the next session and waits outside a different instructor can claim he was instead 14 minutes late and is unable to have the session. Can the instructor resolve this? Or can they immediately get a hold of a manager to resolve it? Of course not. Instead you get a vague promise, are told a manager will contact you, but in case they don't to call the instructor back in 2 days. Will that occur? I do not currently believe it will. If State law did not require driving instruction I would cut our losses immediately. As is, I will be making all of the parents of both my children's friends aware to avoid Top Driver.

Fantastic experience: We had nothing but a good experience with Top Driver in Stow. Everything ran just as expected and my son learned well from the instructors. I will definitely use them for my daughter when she is eligible later this year.

Negative experience: If you have another option..take it! Horrible business model. The online program Is glitchy and does not always capture completion of the coarse. Cannot schedule in cars easily as they literally are released and fill up in minutes for the month. They also do not allow you to schedule classes within a few days of each other. The final certificate takes over 10 business days to arrive via email, once last in car session is complete. Will not be using them for our other daughter. Would give zero stars if I could

Negative experience: My daughter had problems with online schooling and never got any help. We eventually made it to where she went in person in stead. The website used for the online classes are terrible and kept restarting her lessons. When she finished the program, three weeks went by that we weren't able to schedule driving sessions and after I called 4 times and e-mailed plenty they finally told me that she needed to upload her permit. Which ok, that's on our end, but why did the first 3 people not tell me that when I asked why? Terrible place. I'd save you're money and go somewhere else. They really need to do some training on programs, customer service, and have someone work on their website.

Fantastic experience: My daughter had the most amazing experience with Roger! Dan was also wonderful to work with. Highly recommend!

Negative experience: Update on the update. The enture response from them below is untrue. They won'tupdate the acct. and refunded the money. They may have more availability because people have dropped them. It is a shame they still chose to defend and deflect instead of making it right. Instead they went on here and didn't bother contacting me. Buyer beware. Updated: They did not make things right. I had to request a refund and fill out a Better Business Bureau form. They couId not even schedule an 18 year old who had all the availability during the day for months. We provided the permit and uploaded it into the system. But to cover themselves, they said we didn't. However I have screen shots. Lastly, She said that my 18 year old had to do the online class. He does not. He's 18 and already graduated from high school. So you know, you don't have to buy that service even if they tell you that. It's Ohio law. The other excuse "Diana" stated was that they Pandemic caused a back up. They didn't even own Allstar until this year and didn't operate in Olmsted Township until 2024. They can't blame the pandemic anymore. I will be happy to update this google review, if Top Driver makes it right. But right now they have just taken my money and not provided one ounce of service. I have one kid who is over 18 and doesn't need the online precursor course. I call to get it lifted, they say they lift it, but then they don't. This has been going on for at least 8 weeks. They promised they'd get him right in but now he will have to go back to the BMV because his birthday is Friday and his permit expired. He has a lot of flexibility because he was sick and had to come home from college. He won't have flexibility in January as he is going back to college. Top Driver waisted 8 weeks this way. But even if this scheduling restriction has been lifted, there are no appointments available in Nov, Dec, Jan. They say they will add appts. but the never do. My other student is also a Nov birthday and needs to do the online class. They have completely messed her registration up by saying she is not enrolled in Olmsted Falls City schools and is a resident of Illinois. Nope. I can see there are 5 Top Driver cars parked in their office in Olmsted Township shopping center and I NEVER see them moved or used. Which means they must not have enough instructors. So they take your money. They never schedule your students and register them inappropriately, and they don't fix those mistakes. They now have taken money and provided no service.

Negative experience: Top Driver is an extremely unprofessional and incompetent company. I cannot stress enough how much you must take your business elsewhere. Starting off softly, their schooling is sufficient. It was clear that the teacher that I had cared about teaching us, though definitely left many things unclear about scheduling your in-car lessons. I will get into that now. The only way scheduling your in-car lessons can be described as is being a living nightmare. Trying to get hours scheduled is a long, frustrating, and arduous process. They, strangely, offer in-car lessons during school hours, which is definitely an interesting decision. After you've completed your in-car lessons, you would sure hope that would be the end of having to deal with this company, but unfortunately, that is not the case. You are supposed to receive, via e-mail, an "in-car lessons completion certificate" or something of the like. Of course, it wouldn't be that simple. I, personally, have yet to receive my certificate after a long time. Objectively, it does not take that long to send an e-mail. I was unable to take my driver's test because of this. At the BMV, two anonymous employees, after hearing that we gave our business to Top Driver, looked at each other and chuckled. One of them described how they always, without fail, have a problem with Top Driver. They are supposed to send their customer's information to the BMV, but supposedly do not. If the Bureau of Motor Vehicles doesn't trust Top Driver to do their job, then how can you? I do not want a people-pleasing "We're sorry for your experience with us, please contact us if you have any problems" response. I want you to do better, and to improve your company. $400 for this.

Negative experience: My three older children went through this driving school pre-pandemic and we had no issues. Based on those experiences, I had no qualms about signing my fourth child up for this program. Unfortunately, our experience this time could not have been more different. I don't know what happened between 2018 and now, but this was nothing like the quality experience that we received in the past Navigating through two different websites with different logins and passwords was annoying but not a total dealbreaker. The online program content seemed similar to what one of my other children had experienced. But when it came time to complete in-car lessons, this program was chaotic, unorganized, and plainly unprofessional. It ruined what might have otherwise been a tolerable experience. My son completed the online portion of the program in June. The first in-car lesson was not available until August, and then it was only one date. The next three lessons could not be scheduled until September; and in order to schedule those, I had to sit with the website open on the first Wednesday of the month at noon when they opened the schedule. Most of the available times were during the school day. We finally made it to his September in-car lessons, only to have the first one cancelled hours before it was due to start. Although I received a text saying the office would reach out to reschedule, that did not happen. I called customer service and was told that I had to once again wait until the first Wednesday of the following month when the schedule would open. We had to wait until October for him to complete his fourth in-car, FOUR MONTHS from when he completed the didactic portion of the course. AND I had to schedule it during the school day and take him out of school early, just to get it done, or it would have taken another month. With my other three kids, their in-cars were scheduled and completed within 2-3 weeks of finishing the material. This would all be unacceptable enough, but the behavior of one of the driving instructors was absolutely appalling. I absolutely want my child to be instructed and corrected if he is in the wrong. But telling your student to do something, having them follow your instructions, and then telling them that what you had told them to do was wrong and they should have known better and not done it, is such a fundamentally twisted teaching "method" that I cannot believe this instructor still has a job, as I am sure my child is not the first one he has done this to. This "instructor" continued to "teach" in this way throughout my child's driving lesson, leaving my child frustrated, upset, and less confident in his driving skills than he had ever been. The power dynamic between an older man in a position of authority and a nervous teenager who wants to do well should be respected by the older party. We were told that it would take a week to 10 days to receive the completion certificate. A full two weeks after completing his in-cars, we still did not have it. I called customer service, who said they would "send an email to find out what was going on." Less than an hour later, I had the completion certificate in my inbox. If it was that easily found, why the delay in the first place, and why did I have to make the phone call? The only bright spot in this entire experience was Sue, who was a kind instructor who gave constructive feedback. This program was not worth anything close to what I paid for it. Save your money and months worth of your and your child's time, and go elsewhere.

Negative experience: My psychotic driving instructor would hit THC carts during my lessons and forget their lefts and rights. One time I missed a turn and they screamed Goddamnit and grabbed my arm. I was never encouraged to improve my driving skills, just constantly shamed for what I couldn't do. What kind of driving instructor says "I don't think you're ever going to improve" ???

Negative experience: Had made me lose progress 10 times on the online portion. I lost time and progress.

Negative experience: The online portion was confusing at first because, though we paid up front for that and the driving portion, we didn’t know that there was a portal for each, rather than an all-in-one profile. It took months to schedule in person driving, and we could only schedule for a couple weeks and had to wait until the first Wed. of the following month to schedule the final two lessons. Then came the in person “lessons,” during which my daughter was told we needed to have already taught her to drive before Driver’s Ed. They also told her we need to squeeze in ten ours in our car THIS WEEK or reschedule her next lesson because “the next instructor might feel uncomfortable.” I’m sorry. It is the instructor’s job to make my daughter feel comfortable in a car, not the other way around. REPEAT: Top Driver does NOT teach how to drive. They “teach for the test.” That is NOT what we paid for. Hopefully you won’t pay for it at all.

Negative experience: Do not give your money to this company.

Negative experience: Horrible, waste of money pretty sure it’s a scam for money. They refuse to let you do in care for months after the in class is complete. They tame your money though

Negative experience: Horrible. Rigid/Unfair Policies. The instructors can end driving sessions early at their discretion ( even though you paid in full). Yet, if you are late, you pay a fee with no exceptions. Exploitative. They know you have to fully complete their course in order to take your state driving test, therefore they can set all types of unfair policies, and shake you down for more money in fees., otherwise you forfeit $500 and would have to start over with another company. Inaccessible. You can’t speak directly to a Supervisor. There is no local phone number to contact , everything is centralized to the corporate office. If I have an issue, can’t go to the physical site. Hassle to schedule in-car sessions. You have to schedule a month in advance. Slots are rarely available. Slots fill up within minutes of opening up for the entire month.

Negative experience: Used a different driving school for my son. My daughter's friends were using this one so we switched and it has been one headache after another. She completed her online, but we can't access the scheduling calendar and it doesn't seem there are any open in car sessions until May anyways. This is not a great way to run a business. Still should either automatically update or have a different feature built in. Manual entry for anything this day in age is too 1990. And, if by personal email from the Regional Manager, you mean the auto generated ListServe email... then I reassert that your customer service skills are truly lacking. A personalized email, instead of a Google shout out, would have been a much more tactful way to address the situation and may have lead to a different review on Google.

Negative experience: This place sucks. It costs an absurd amount of money, I learned nothing, and they failed to send the certificate of completion. Also, scheduling lessons was a nightmare.

Fantastic experience: Roger was the absolute best. I was super nervous at first, but he was extremely nice and helped me correct what I needed to fix without being mean. I 10/10 recommend coming here for your drivers Ed/in cars

Negative experience: Thought most of the classes were pretty helpful for understanding more in depth content about learning how to saftley manuver a car. Yet it was very repetitive, and alot of the questions and lessons felt like easy standardized things that everyone should know, of course I do not blame the company for that, what I do blame the company for however was the astronamical amount of glitches and other mishaps that made my experience miserable, I had to re take easy simple courses that took hours just because of technical malfunctions, like, if you scroll back on a quetion slide you can no longer sumbit the anwser, the check mark feature disappeers completly, and the only way to fix this is to re start the course. Another example, if you reload the page while your test anwsers are loading, you have to retake THE WHOLE COURSE. However my bad expireicnes so far have only been the result of the re occuing technical issues that make it so frustrating to keep doing lessons that I've already learned and losing focus and not staying on track to start a new one. If you get frustrated easily, I would personally not reccomend this software, but like I said, I have not seen any other errors or problems.

Fantastic experience: Best place ever, I learned from the best aka Kendell!!

Fantastic experience: Had Gary for most of my lessons and absolutely no complaints!

Negative experience: Impossible to schedule in car sessions with this company. I check everyday and have been since early August. If you want your teen to be able to get things scheduled in a timely manner, avoid this driving school. Edit: I emailed Christina on Aug 9 and 24 trying to get in cars scheduled and you can see from the picture below all my documentation as I tried to schedule. The site locks you out of seeing any availability so if in cars open up you must cancel in order to see them. I was scared to risk it since it took so long to even schedule the ones I had. We have been waiting since early August to get these completed. I had an alarm set on my phone to check everyday.

Negative experience: DO NOT give your money to this company!!!!!!!!! I can't warn you enough! You cannot schedule in person driving lessons until you complete the class. Problem, the computer system locks up mid way through every program and restarts the class. It took my daughter 5 months of 2-3 hours a day 4-5 days a week to try to do the class. Once she got her certificate, the soonest classes are 2 months out, all in the middle of the school day and you can only book 2 at a time. It is a complete utter train wreck. DO NOT use this company!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Fantastic experience: My daughter had Alisha Eagle and she was amazing!

Negative experience: DO NOT RECOMMEND. The online Driver's Ed. classes were a genuine nightmare. The website used to administer said Driver's Ed. almost never worked. Horrible customer service; a waste of time and money.

Fantastic experience: I like this older gentleman. He was very detailed and stated what areas they worked on, etc ... He gave a few things for my son to work on. I'm not happy with their online courses due to software issues, but happy with the in-car instructors.

Negative experience: I attended this driving school in late August and was told I would receive an email to schedule in car lessons in a week or two. I still have not received said email, and when I contacted my instructor and my mom contacted the business no one responded. Recently we received an email telling us that we need to schedule said lessons soon or I would have to pay to retake the class. When my mom responded we were told the email address was not found. Edit: we finally managed to schedule one lesson, but the day it was scheduled for ended up having a snowstorm so we called the office and the automated message said they were closed, only for us to get a message 15 minutes after the scheduled time informing us we would be charged a no-show fee. We went there to try to see what could be done, and were told we could reschedule and get the fee waived, but when we tried to do so they went back to not responding. I will now be going to a different driving school, and we will be getting our money back from top driver.

Fantastic experience: Dan and the teaching crew here were great to work with. The teaching staff were all very responsive and helpful to my son. Dan was very responsive to questions. The corporate software and online learning system could be updated, but that isn't the fault of the local team.

Negative experience: One of the worst experiences ever. They charge you $48 if you cancel less then 48 hours in advance bit they will call and cancel 2 hours before your lesson, several times and in text message. Once we got the text saying that all the cars were going out for maintenance at the same time and they needed to cancel. When we went in for our next in car lesson, we were trying to reschedule the one they canceled and the guy helping us seemed very surprised that we were canceled the weekend before because all the cars were getting oil changes and tires. I would not recommend this school to anyone.

Fantastic experience: Alisha Eagle conformable behind the wheel and I really really enjoyed working with her today. I wish all my appointments were with her.

Fantastic experience: Top Driver -Stow is amazing! Our experience from beginning to end was flawless! Dan, Alisha, and Roger were so kind in super helpful and made the whole process when getting my daughter's in-car hours in stress and worry free! I highly recommend the Stow Top Driver team to anyone who is needing to start the driving journey!!!

Fantastic experience: Dan Kramer and Alisha Eagle were amazing driving instructors. They made me feel comfortable and confident inside of the car. I feel so much better with my abilities after I have driven with the both of them. I can't wait to have my last drive with Dan in September. He is very understanding on the road and is very nice. Alisha was very kind, I felt calm and relaxed when I was driving. Thank you so much Top Driver for having such amazing instructors!

Fantastic experience: Drove with Alisha Eagle and it was a fun and great learning experience!

Fantastic experience: Working with Dan and Alisha was absolutely great. Their customer service was second to none, I had a moment where I had to text Dan after hours, I had a text response within minutes and the needed email response shortly after. Really phenomenal experience. Highly recommended.

Fantastic experience: Alisha is literally the coolest driving instructor ever. she’s so fun and so funny. Passed my driving test on the first try because she taught me so well

Fantastic experience: Everything was great. My instructor Alicia was amazing, and very friendly!

Fantastic experience: Super positive and great constructive criticism. Always willing to schedule around my work and school.

Fantastic experience: Dan Kramer and Alisha Eagle took such good care of my daughter. They are both engaging in conversation, patient and genuinely care about their students. Drivers education is worth every penny. Dan and Alisha make sure your driver is safe, confident and prepared. Thanks for taking such good care of my baby girl.

Fantastic experience: Love this team

Fantastic experience: My daughter's instructor, Dan Kramer, was great! He was on time, friendly, and most of all, was an excellent teacher! My daughter passed her exam with flying colors

Fantastic experience: Dan is amazing! He did an excellent job instructing my daughter with the in-car portion of her instruction. He also answered all my questions and got back to me in a timely fashion, as getting all the paperwork done electronically and in the proper order is a bit challenging in Ohio, at least compared to how I remember it used to be. Note that there will be two websites you log into (parents login to the Signals website and students login into the topdriveronline website). Both are listed on the Top Driver main website. Regards the negative review on here, I will say the corporate office can be a little out of touch with how things operate in Ohio for whatever reason. This seems to be true with a lot of businesses’ corporate customer service post pandemic unfortunately. Just make sure you deal with Dan - he will help directly. Thank you Dan!!

Fantastic experience: My daughter is a huge fan of both Dan her classroom teacher and Alisha her in car instructor. The calendar for in cars fills up fast but it’s not as bad as other places I’ve heard from friends and their kids. Nice little spot.

Negative experience: Terrible place, avoid at all cost they give you run around. Call them and they'll tell you that they will respond within 3 days