Academy Of Driving Unipol

Best driving school in the area (Stoney Creek, Hamilton) I really recommend to get Arif as your instructor he is a great instructor who taught me very well and helped me pass my G2 road test. Best instructor ever.
Mar 11th, 2022

I took driving lessons with Mark before my G drivers license examination. He is patient, considerate and knowledgeable. He will tailor your driving lessons to help you become an expert driver. I passed my G test, and I am grateful to Mark for his valuable insight.
Dec 31st, 2021

Positive: Value
Apr 1st, 2021

To put it briefly, don't go to this school. I took a class in July and was immediately subjected to a week of rushed PowerPoints and minimal amounts of time where I could process some of the things I was taught. The actual in-car driving is far worse. My instructor was constantly on the phone talking to people and listening to music, making me very nervous when driving for my first time on main roads (prior to this, I was only familiar with driving around my neighbourhood so this was a drastic shift). While he commented on how we would work on my turning for the next time, my next session was more of the same. He constantly takes phone calls and points out how stop signs are dangerous like a broken record and quite frankly distracts my concentration. Just recently, I was approaching a 4 way stop and and he asked me if I noticed it (of course I did) leading me to be confused and missing the stop. He then continued to insult me for the rest of the session for not stopping and when I tried to explain myself he told me (I'm paraphrasing) "THIS IS MY CAR. I'M NOT GOING TO LISTEN TO YOU". This lack of communication and ignorance is something I cannot recommend to people looking for a driving school. Also after my second session, I did not receive any call backs for my next driving for FIVE MONTHS only after emailing the Academy, calling the office and then eventually having my instructor notify me of the next session. The office told me that he was out of the country but did not notify me for the FIVE MONTHS between the two sessions. And don't even bother trying to contact the Academy. If you try to email the company, it goes directly to Mark's (the founder) phone and his replies are rather uninformative albeit he likes to respond to emails in the same way he would receive a text (sending things like "thx") which says something about the companies professionalism. Just because they have multiple readers choice awards and various seasonal promotions should NOT persuade you in any means to consider attending this school. I have six more in class hours of driving lessons and I ultimately regret spending $500 for such an experience.
May 4th, 2019

My in class lesson were for the most part fine, however the organization was awful. I had missed 2 classes due to illness and these classes were 3 hours long twice a week, my class happened to be ahead of schedule. When I had to come in for my rescheduled classes I was told to come in for two 6 hour classes. This was an absolute waste of my time as I only needed to be there for 1 hour in order to catch up on the lessons I had missed. The teacher was boring and monotone and was yelling at the make up classes every few minutes simply because they didnt answer questions they didnt know the response too. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. My in car experience was even worse if that is possible. My driving instructor was Arif and he did not listen to a thing I said I needed, he didnt answer any questions I had, and he wasted so much of my time. Upon first meeting him he did not have the unipol sign on the top of his car and I was very hesitant to speak to him which is something that definitely needs to be fixed for safety reasons. He also continuously called me pretty girl, and sweetheart and other names I was extremely uncomfortable being called, and repeatedly told him this. He would constantly swear either at me, at people we would pass on the road, or about his coworkers/family. He would constantly be on his phone either taking phone calls or texting and so I felt as though when I needed help it wouldnt be provided to me, and it wasnt on more than one occasion. When I asked for certain areas to be focused on he told me that because I did it fine one time we did not have to worry about it. Instead he spent the majority of my lessons buying groceries, making me drive through residential so he could look at nice houses, and yelling at me for doing something he did not like. My last two lessons with him I asked if we could focus on parking and go on the expressway and he told me he only does that for people who are nice to him even though it is part of the curriculum - meaning that some students dont get their moneys worth which makes my thoughts of this company even worse. He also would always try to make me take my focus off the road so that I would look at him or dance to his music etc etc. He wasted so much of my time running personal errands. For example he once made me pick up his son and take him to a doctors appointment, he made me park in the grocery store parking lot for well over 30 minutes on more than one occasion so he could get groceries, and he also make me waste an entire afternoon, past my booked time to be driving at the Stoney creek unipol location so he could sort out another student. His car was very unclean as he hand used floss in the car door, open candy wrappers everyone and a duster taking up arm space so that he could dust the car while I was driving. These are only a few examples of the absolutely awful experience I had here not even including all of the wrong driving advice he gave me (if youre at a stop sign and you cant see you cant roll up because the pigs [aka the people who test you] wont listen to you. Telling me I had to just go and hope for the best. That you have to go 20 in a residential area, and that the speed limit should never be followed you always either go above or below as well as many other things.) As you can probably tell I did not learn much, if anything, from this company. Since I was so displeased with this experience I emailed the manager Mark. He replied to my email that contained pretty much exactly the same content by offering me another 2 lessons with the same driving instructor, but I had already taken my driving test and so this was not needed nor wanted. When I told him this he, very unprofessionally replied with Great thats actually awesome thx. As you can tell I was very disappointed and upset I had wasted my $465 for absolutely nothing. Do not come here!!!!
Feb 4th, 2020