Prestige Music Studios

Do not take lessons from this company. Most of the teachers are great, but they are being severely mistreated by the owner who is horrid to customers and is rude. Prestige Music Studios is now The Music Lessons company because Prestige Music Studios got such a bad rap. The only customers that are happy in this company are the ones that don't come into contact with Sara Marie. However, she makes many mistakes on accounts and then you can't ignore her. Don't even go to the site for information, you are likely to get on an email list you can't get off of. Just ask anyone in Powell their opinion of Sara Marie and more than likely they will tell you she is awful. Stay away, she is crazy. more

They had to change their name (The Music Lessons Company) because of all the bad reviews! They have an F from Better Business Bureau! more

Unfortunately, after two years of watching our children grow as musicians and develop close relationships with their instructors, things ended poorly because of the actions of Prestige Music Studios management. The combination of receiving political solicitations from the owner and her husband and the discovery of several accounting errors resulted in our request for withdrawal from all services. The owner of the studio was extremely smug, dishonest and ignorant of the facts when we repeatedly asked for explanations regarding accounting errors, and she made no attempt to reconcile the discrepancies which included overcharging for services, assessing a bogus finance charge and falsely stating our credit card was denied (our bank confirmed this untruth.) After weeks of evasion and at our suggestion, she delegated the responsibility of investigating the matter to an assistant who validated our claims. Befitting the owner's lack of character, we have yet to receive an apology for our frustration and disregard. I could go on about how unprofessionally we were treated by the owner from the moment we requested withdrawal forms to when we finally received a refund check five weeks later, but I will end by saying this stressful experience is why we recommend seeking music instruction elsewhere. more

The lady who owns the studio, Sara Marie Brenner is very unprofessional individual who will use every opportunity to rip you off. My daughter was enrolled for a class that Sara Marie Brenner cancelled few days before it started. She pursuaded me to try one of the private lessons, and I enrolled my daughter for guitar classes and she told me the tuition was $85(for a month-4 classes). My credit was $150. After two classes my daughter didn't like the teacher, and I decided to cancel. It took me long time to get in touch with her to try to get my money back. Finally she send me a check for a $53. She was quoting me different tuition fee this time, which was much higher. I couldn't believe that somebody could be so bold to lie and rip you off. After this I research online and of course found ton of bad reviews. The Central Ohio BBB has rated her business a consistent ""F"" over the years, and now it comes out that she tried to play games with IRS as well. Go to 'Columbus Dispatch' and search for the article. more

The owner of the studio, Sara Brenner, is certainly the most rudest, unprofessional business owner that we have ever come into contact with. more

I have been an adult student at Prestige Music Studios for over a year and I love it !! My instructor Rita is wonderful and is helping me achieve a life long dream of becoming a cellist. Office staff has been very helpful and professional. I think their lesson fees are more than fair and I would recommend Prestige to anyone needing private musice lessons! more

I never took a lesson at Prestige but I did pay the ridiculously overpriced $40 fee to ""get me in the system"". I ended up not being able to take lessons because I found out I was moving. When I called to tell them that I had to move, they criticized me, called me immature, and literally yelled at me for wasting their time. Mrs. Brenner is one of the most unprofessional and immature owners i have ever come in contact with. I suggest you turn the other way. Pros: Zero Cons: Immature and rude ownership more

The teachers are not truly Suzuki trained. To become a certified Suzuki teacher, you must endure weeks of intense training. Prestige claims to train their teachers in the Suzuki method, but in actuality they just hand the teachers one of Suzuki's books to read. As an instructor for Prestige, they had me teaching Suzuki lesssons even before I received their so called ""training."" They also require the teachers sign over their teaching rights exclusively to Prestige. That means the teacher cannot accept new students in their own private studio if the teacher needed more of an income outside or Prestige, placing a glass ceiling on the instructor's career. Prestige pays the instructors HALF of what the instructors would make teaching on their own. Prestiqe also had me teaching beginning piano lessons when I had little piano experience and told them I was uncomfortable teaching piano. The establishment is fraudulent to both the students and its employees. I believe its only a matter of months until their doors our closed. I am now teaching on my own and am extremely happy and successful, and I am passionate about my students. Please go with an individual private instructor, and save yourself money and heartache. Cons: Lies about credentials, unfair to music teachers/students more

I called this business to inquire about lessons and they charged me a fee on the first phone call. Since I live in the neighborhood I heard some terrible reviews and decided to cancel. The owner refused to issue refund even though we never stepped our foot into this studio. From this point on it just went even further downhill. After we canceled one of the music teachers called to tell us that she will be late for the first lesson (nobody even bothered to tell her that we canceled). What is even worse, we started getting spammed by unsolicited e-mails from the owner in regards to her political involvements (some even asking for money). Tried to resolve the refund issue and spamming of my email in civilized way, but got nothing but arrogance and terrible rudeness from the owner. When I complained about email issue, she even went out of her way to look into my voter registration record. I have never had such a horrible experience in dealing with business. Please take my advice and stay away from it. It was a nightmare. more

Being a musician myself, and having taken Suzuki lessons for several years as a youngster, I was very excited to enroll my 5 year old son in Suzuki Piano lessons. I was looking forward to a great experience that we could bond over. Thanks to Prestige Music Studios, this first experience was MORE THAN A DISAPPOINTMENT. The first teacher we had (only 2 lessons) was 15 minutes late each time. The lessons are only 30 minutes long, so you can see how this poses a problem. We were then abruptly assigned another teacher who again was always late. He canceled several times, and then would promise a make up lesson, and never schedule it. I don?t even know how many lessons I paid for that we didn?t actually get due to the teacher either being very late or canceling. All the while, Prestige Music Studios is more than happy to bill you, but makes it difficult to pay because you can?t pay by phone or online. They email you a million invoices a month, but then make it a huge hassle to pay them. They also charge you for group lessons whether you attend them or not, and make them difficult to attend because they are inflexible with the time slots. A few months the only group time slot was scheduled at the same time as my son?s private lesson, so he would have had to skip his private lesson in order to attend the group lesson, but we would be charged for both! The final straw was when my son and I showed up for our lesson, waited 45 minutes and no one showed up. We received no call saying that the teacher was canceling. We sat in the lobby for 45 minutes and no one tried to help us or ask us what was going on. It made me furious!The worst part of the whole thing is that my 5 year old son practiced very hard throughout the week, only to be disappointed that his lesson was canceled over and over again.This establishment is POORLY managed, and I would not recommend it to anyone. Find yourself a nice private lessons teacher and save yourself the headache! Cons: Terrible Management, Teachers who are not dependable, expensive more

We couldn't be happier. Our teacher has our children practicing, which they have never done. The owners are very helpful and have worked with us to find fun music and good things for our kids to enjoy - they actually practice now! The teacher has a degree and a lot of training from the school. We highly recommend Prestige Studios to our friends - we have enjoyed the lessons and the people! more

After enrolling our daughter in piano lessons we were bombarded with multiple emails from Prestige Music Studios (PMS) advertising their services. Apparently we were automatically enrolled in multiple mail lists without our knowledge. Then the nightmare of petty fees began. My favorite are the late fees for books that we never received. In addition, group lesson fees were mandatory even though we never planned on attending and they were cancelled frequently. The worst of all is the unpleasant exchanges that we had to endure with the owner to end the lessons and settle the billings. For four months now, I have repeatedly tried to remove myself from their multiple mail list without success. Instead of working on improving their customer service by listening to their customers, PMS is more interested in collecting petty fees and sending mass emails. The worst experience in music lessons that we have ever endured. Avoid PMS, the middleman and work directly with the music instructor. Pros: convenient Cons: petty fees, mandatory group lesson fees, rude owner more