Re: Is It Just Me...Or Does Prometric Really Stink?

I've almost lost track of the issues I've been seeing for the last 6-9 months with Prometric certification exams, including...

• Lost appointments
• Score reports not printing
• Test machine issues (slowness, freezing)

However, the worst issue has to be the Prometric website. It ranges from insanely slow to completely unavailable nearly every time I use it. Admittedly, this is worst when a beta exam code is released. But not even that can take into account how often and how badly Prometric's website is borked. 

I'm interested to find out what the Prometric experience has been like for other people.

Perhaps the delicate way of expressing an opinion might be to suggest that it would not take a significant leap of imagination to intuit ways in which the experience might be enhanced to an acceptable level of adequacy.

Chris, are you seeing these issues personally, or just hearing/reading about them?

Both Ken. Experienced them personally, and also heard similar stories from other folks I know.

I've had one issue with Prometric where the server at a local testing center had an issue and my score report did not get printed. I had to stay on top of Prometric to make sure I recieved it. Finally they e-mailed me a copy, and later mailed me a hard copy. I go to a local testing center in my area (and have checked them out prior to scheduling my exam -- sure a little above and beyond but in the end it paid off).

The biggest problem for me is that Prometric's web site is extremely slow and even crashes sometimes. Right now I'm trying to schedule my beta exams, but I simply cannot get through (I get a Page timeout error).

nordine - you can always call them to schedule exams. the few times i have encountered issues with their website, i call and am able to register without any issues and obtain a confirmation code / recieve an e-mail before we get off the phone.

I have to say that Prometric has *improved*, but that couldn't be that hard (I'm sorry to say).  

In the first year (2008) that MS started to only use Prometric, I had more exam crashes that year than I had for the 4 years previously with Vue (with Vue I had none, with Prometric it was about 3 or 4).  Saying that the staff at the testing centre were very helpful, but there wasn't much they could do when I arrived for one of the exams and it didn't download the exam the night before.  I had to wait a couple of hours for it to download (considering it was a couple of hours to get to the testing centre, I wasn't best pleased - it was a long day...).

Added to that, their website is still very slow at times and there is a lack of Prometric testing centres in the UK.

Why did Microsoft have to go with one exam provider?  For Security or integrity of the exam?  I don't buy it, imo it was because Cisco announced that they were going to only use Vue :(

If you guys are listening from MS, please bring back Vue...

-Ken

Sorry to chime in late here, but I would like to share some of my past experiences.

Let me start by saying I have taken 20+ MS exams (along with Comptia, Cisco, and EC-Council, not a plug but just for reference). I have tested in multiple centers around the states. I have even sat for MS exams when Vue was an option.

A good blanket statement is that ALL of my experiences with Prometric have been a pain where every one with Vue has been ok. Taking it one step further, if it is a Microsoft based exam you can expect issues. I am not bad mouthing anyone here, just relaying the facts as I have experienced.

My 70-294 alone crashed 3 times during the test with one at the end before my report could print. It did come back up to where I left off and thankfully I did pass, but it is rather stressful to be sitting at the testing center alone in the room for 6 hours (no exaggeration here) while they sort the issues out.

Another very stressful point was during the final test of my MCSE: Security was when I walked into the testing center and the gentleman told me of the issues they were having across the board with tests locking up and having to restart computers.

Also as the gentleman above stated, it is not fun to wait in the testing center lobby while they take 4 hours to download your exam.

I have filed formal complaints with both Prometric and Microsoft to no avail. I am sure if MS did make the change to allow choice of testing provider, that the more stable would win out…

I too have had issues with Prometric but I think it was site related at this point rather than a reflection of Prometric as a whole. I have been to some bad Vue sites as well, the closest one to me is essentially a closet in a computer parts store where I was told to put my coat on the floor in the corner in the lobby. The closest Prometric sites to me currently though are colleges and they are much bigger and more professional in operation. In the situation that I had a bad experience, I wrote a detailed letter to both Prometric and Microsoft with the issues I encountered, dates and reservation numbers. I got an apology from Prometric and I got an apology from MS along with some vouchers. So I would suggest to anyone having problems to do the same, write a detailed letter about your experience and send it to both parties, it is hard to make corrections to issues when all you get is a generic "it sucks".

I'm glad I found this thread all be it a little bit after the event. I was really disappointed when Microsoft moved over to only using Prometric. Vue's website was and still is far better then Prometric's for booking exams. Vue allows you to enter your postcode and it lists the available and nearest centres. Prometric after clicking through a few pages just give you a list and you have to trawl through it and then click on the centre to find out if they have any exams spaces. Most of the centres around me don't even update their availability. Their locate a test site is only based on Country not region. A search for availability is again only the sheet, not a date search.

I have emailed and complained to Prometric with site improvements each time I have had to book an exam and never had a response.

I recently sat the 070-680 exam (a very easy exam if you have any clue) and it took 20-30 seconds of the ubiquotous "white screen" between every question (that's about 25mins of exam time wasted!). There was literally 10mins of white screen between finishing the exam and the comments section. I then waited 20+mins of white screen after the comments section for my results which never appeared. I then had to wait around for over 2hrs while the testing centre staff tried to deal with the Malaysian support staff who have very limited english comprehension skills and who obviously had no idea what they were doing with the local test centre staff getting very frustrated.

The end result? No results, but I did get an email the next day indicating that I had failed which I find highly suspect given the unguided hacking and botching that went on. Apparently I may get an email in a week or so with my score card.

I also notice that the testing feedback page has been removed from the Prometric website. This is unacceptable Microsoft!

So far my experience has been good, the prometric site is a pain to set tests i agree with that i used vue in the past (long ago) and it was a better site. but the test centre i use is Part of a Large Scottish University and the Promestric centre is bolted on the the computing facility. after completing the test we get full feedback options on the exam and the site. longest white screen i had as about 20 secs after the test completed and my score came up.

what i agree with is that the prometric site needs a major overhaul.

On 28 Feb, tried to register on 70-271, 70-272 exams trhru prometric site, filled up all needed forms, used voucher from MS site that gave me price of two exams $85 instead $100, everithing seemed to be great, but when i fiiled billing informaiton and clicked confirmation button prometric website hanged for a minute or two and than showed me page that consisted of somthin like "sorry blablalba we cant proceed your request now".... and thats it! I've checked my bank and recived report that they charged my card in $85, and no letter about successfull registartion! I wrote to support and guess what they said? "Dear candidate we have information that we DIDN'T charge you card" Next day went directly to to learning center and paid by cash for voucher! how can i get back my money, when they say that they didnt charged them?

I've only had one exam so far (70-646). The test centre was alright. Staff were very good. The speed of the machine was quite slow at reacting, though.

Time between screens varied from about 2 seconds to 10 seconds. The screens at those bloody comments and questionaire screens took about 20 seconds each.

Booking the test was a complete pain. I've never come across a site as slow as prometric's, and that includes sites and BBSs from back in the early 90s. Having to input all the details and go through the screens to book a test just in order to register as a test taker?!

Well, after an hour and a half, I finally managed to book for the test, above.

Now I want to book my 70-640 and 70-642 on the same day using one of those second chance vouchers. I booked the 640, but it won't let me book the 642, saying that there's an exam pending. "Voucher [my voucher number] is currently unavailable due to pending results. The test has either not been taken or results are not available. Please try again in 24 hours.". Great! Now I have to clear my schedule for some other day also. Thanks MS and Prometric for not letting us know this problem ahead of booking.

Well I ended up resitting my 70-680 exam (for free) since they couldn't manually score my exam even though they still sent me an email stating that I had failed! Got 98%. Result wouldn't have been any different if it had worked the first time except that I wasted a whole week and $35 in parking fees. Almost a week later I still haven't received my confirmation email from Microsoft...

If I can add a word of advice: Dont bother with the Comments questionaire! It is extremely slow and that's where my first exam bailed - I only entered it by mistake in any case. Actually, in my resit the exam crashed after a few questions but thankfully managed to resume properly afterwards. About to sit 70-640 - let's hope the experience is a little better this time!

Wow, sorry to hear of all the hassle and extra cost, but congrats on the high score.

Too right about the comments, etc. Not worth risking your exam time over.

All the best now with your 640. Hope the gremlins stay away.

I completely agree that Prometric has proverbially "screwed the pooch" on many things. Their site is unstable at best. I've been to several testing centers, with one giving "No-Show" (still, after many emails to MS and Prometric), the other is extremely slow, and the last one is fantastic. I've decided it's best to drive a little further and spend the extra money in travel costs to go to the better one.

When I've tested with Vue, I've used the same great center as above, plus two other great ones. That, and their website works 100x better than Prometric. Will this matter to Microsoft? I doubt it. They probably have a contract to allow exclusive rights for 10 years or so... Regardless of quality. Will I still take Microsoft exams? Of course. Although Prometric is horrible, it is still worth it to go through the process (sometimes multiple times to actually get it to work), and take the exam.

I've had a mix of experience with various sites, but its the website that makes my eyes bleed. trying to find a site is tedious and hardwork; Whats wrong with the postcode/map approach that actually shows you the 10 nearest sites? But instead, its scroll through a list.. I find it extraordinary that there's only a single site in Manchester, UK but seems thats all there is...

Not just you.

Prometric Services has proven to be inept and proficient at giving me the run-around.

Consider the following:

1/28/11: Tested w/ Prometric.  After 19 weeks, have not yet received my score report.

4/15/11: Had not yet received score report.  

5/05/11: I called Prometric.  I had not yet received score report.  Prometric had my current address and contact information.  Me, in summary: “wtf?”  Prometric: “you should have received it already.  We’ll mail it to you again.”  

5/15/11: I called Prometric.  I had not yet received score report.  “wtf?”  Prometric: “our system says it was mailed to you on 5/09/11.”

5/25/11: I called Prometric.  I had not yet received score report.  I spoke w/ Supervisor of call center agents in order to determine what was going on re my score report and to schedule testing date for 6/25/11.  Supervisor: “we can’t reschedule you.  The problem regarding your score report is being forwarded to Program Manager.” [the Program manager is the person presumably responsible for assuring the system that’s generating the delivery of the score reports.]

5/26/11: I called Prometric.  I had not yet received score report.  Supervisor: “Program manager is taking steps to assure that you receive the score report.”

5/27/11: I called Prometric.  I had not yet received score report.  Supervisor: “Program manager printed the score and mailed it herself to your current address.”

6/03/11, Friday: I called Prometric.  I had not yet received score report.  Supervisor: “Program manager will mail score report to you 2nd-day FedEx or UPS with a tracking number, and will do this on Monday [6/5/11] to be sure that you receive score report by Wednesday 6/07/11.  I will have the tracking number on Monday 6/06/11.”

6/06/11, Monday: I called Prometric.  I had not yet received score report.  Supervisor: “I think she’ll [Program manager]  actually mail score report out tomorrow, Tuesday.  She [program manager] guarantees that you’ll receive report by Wednesday.”

6/07/11, Tuesday:  I called Prometric.  I had not yet received score report.  Call center agent: “Supervisor is in a meeting.  Score report was sent out next day air.  Supervisor will have the tracking number tomorrow.”  Me: “what is Program manager’s phone number or email?”  Agent: “Can’t give that out.  But what is your number so that she may contact you about this issue?”

6/08/11, Wednesday. …?... stay tuned.

I'm having the same kind of problem with exam 70-680 I took at a test center from Prometric. First off, the test won't load, so they had to resend it. When I finish the test, got my result, and hit finish, it stale on the upload screen and won't print, and that since October 5, 2011. I keep calling Prometric; they keep saying they are working on it. Very frustrating when it is the second time I took the exam, I just want to move on to the next one. Is there is a way I can see my result on the Microsoft site? Please assist!

Hello,

- during the test the software blocked

- at the end the report print did not appeared

Yours,

Stelian, .NET developer

From my experience, it tends to vary from site to site. I've done exams 70-640, 70-642, 70-643,  70-680 and 70-647, on 4 different exam centers (I did 70-680 and 70-647 on the same exam site). On all but the site I did 680 and 647, I received the "your session has disconnected" message, and needed to have the exam restarted. On the exam center I did 70-642, the exam hanged for about 5 minutes just when it was processing the final score! (I was biting my nails). The one i did 70-643 was a pure disaster: It hanged, it crashed because an "illegal program was running", and it took it like 10 minutes to print the report!

However, the site I did 70-680 and 70-647 was all smooth sailing from start to end, so I think it has more to do with the hardware and network quality of the exam center rather than prometric software itself.

My suggestion: Find a GOOD examination center near you, and try to stick with it.

Hi,

I understand your point of view. Sounds resonable.

There is no such thing as a GOOD examination centre.  Both Prometric and VUE will inspect a prospective centre before permitting that centre to conduct exams.  The problem is with the testing systems, especially that of Prometric. I owned a training and testing centre for 13 years and had both testing systems in my company.  The experiences of everyone contributing on this site are very true and for a private training company, it is frustrating and a nightmare.  A business depends on the good will and experience of the general public for their.  So when someone taking a test is having a bad experience, it affect the company even though there is very little or nothing that company can do to resolve the  problem.  As a business, income generated is less than £6 per candidate and it can take anythging from 30 minutes to 3 hours to resolve one candidate's issue just for the price of less than £6. And dont forget that Prometric and VUE are the ONLY TESTING SYSTEMS IN THE WHOLE WORLD

Well, what ctcll says is... discouraging to say the least :( From what you said, and also re-reading my own post, I realize instead of a good examination center, well have to settle for "the examination center that sucks less". It's also quite shocking that the benefit for each exam is not even 10€ when you are charged 140€ for the exam...

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to share a horrible experience I had at a Prometric Test Centre located at 4900 Sheppard Avenue East, Suite 208, Scarborough, Ontario Canada. The following is their contact information:

Canadian College of Business Science andTechnology
Toronto, Ontario M1S 4A7
Phone: 416 850 6028 Site Code: on222

The following is a list of issues I experienced there:

1. The exam room itself was small and besides having only 4 computers for the tests, it had a lot of computer junk (old PC's, boxes, etc) stashed away in a corner collecting dust and making for an unsafe environment.

2. They didn't have enough lighting in the room.

3. The blinds on the windows were such that the test centre staff couldn't close them since the stick (that would do such things and that's attached to the blinds) was up too high

4. While I was actually writing the exam there and the clock was ticking, the test centre staff came in and interrupted me for petty and unnecessary things such as the following. It almost looked like they did that on purpose, maybe trying to discriminate against me and to make me fail the exam by trying to waste my time and trying to engage me in a conversation:

a. It's snowing out there.
b. How am I doing so far?
c. Am I almost done with the exam?
d. Come see me in so and so room when you're done with the exam.

Regarding the interruptions, I talked to them during and after the exam and they told me that before I started writing the exam, I should have told them that I wouldn't like to be interrupted/disturbed.

From that response, it seemed to me that perhaps they might not have ever written or passed any exams in their entire life !! The whole concept of an exam is that the examinee (the person writing the exam) needs to pay full uninterrupted attention to the exam without any disturbances. This is an obvious. Asking the examinee to tell the exam centre not to disturb him during the exam is ridiculous.

I also filed a complaint about this on www.prometric.com website and received an email from Prometric saying that I should call their toll free number to complain. So far, I haven’t been able to find the time to do that considering the hold/wait time on such phone calls. And they might dismiss this whole thing as hear say since I don’t actually have real hard recorded evidence or any signed incident report about this.

It's ironic that a testing system that certifies IT professionals (among other professionals) can't get a simple task of printing a page of paper right...and very frustrating.

Also, the testing center's facilitator came into the testing room right after I gave the testing experience a good review on the survey after my exam (which I passed) to just take over my computer and reboot the machine without telling me what was going on. I asked why is the test machine being rebooted, and the person said, your score report didn't print. I waited for about 45 minutes while the person called Prometric and tried a few things, but nothing worked. At the end the person and the Prometric rep on the phone gave up and told me to call a number to ask to have my score report emailed to me.

Ok, so maybe there can be some errors from time to time... that's understandable...

But, what really gets me is that, when I called Prometric to have them email me my score report, they said that it will take them 7 to 10 days! 7 to 10 days to email me a one page document. How inefficient does your system or internal processes have to be for you to need 7 to 10 days to email a one pager document? I need to submit the score report to my employer for record keeping among other things, and that's going to be delayed for over a week just because apparently it's such a huge task to send out an email.

This is especially ridiculous, considering that normally, the score report prints right after you are done with the exam session, which means the system generates the score report immediately. Which means that the 7-10 days that they say it will take to email me the score report boils down to just pure laziness or inefficiency in their internal processes. I'd say that's a total failure. It's not like they are trying to get me the score report through snail mail...

BTW, I didn't feel like there was any performance issue on the Prometric website...

I understand that it's probably not the testing center's fault, so I won't say anything about the center itself. Just want to make it clear, my grunt and terrible review is about Prometric's system...

I guess it could be worse that my testing result just disappeared and I have to retake the exam that I just passed. But from now on, every time I study my bottom off to take an exam, I'll be afraid that it may happen...

LOL be afraid indeed.

I was amused last week when I got a call out of the blue from the EMEA Manager for Prometric.  She wanted to check a few things on my recent Prometric survey response which I scored Prometric as sub optimal....

One of the points I raised was regarding the Prometric Website (www.prometric.com/default.htm) and how very hard it is for a new test taker to find the "Hey sign me up - I am a new test taker and want a lasting pleasurable experience with Prometric and Microsoft" - strangely that nirvana does not exist.  Prometric have no concept of customer care/service, and sadly Microsoft offload this service to Prometric, who from conversations I have had with them, treat Microsoft as "just one of dozens of partners whom we offer testing for"...

She completely agreed that the website was on their "to do list" but she would not commit to which FY it would fall into.

Some aspects of Prometric have improved over the last couple of years, but sadly despite the color changes to the website, this aspect still really sucks.

<<She completely agreed that the website was on their "to do list" but she would not commit to which FY it would fall into.

Must be a very long to do list as their site has been shocking for as long as I can remember.