My experience with Rijschool Kwaliteit was negative, and I want to lay out exactly why so other students can judge for themselves.
Ask for the contract in advance. They hand it to you during your first paid lesson time, which is not the moment to be reading terms you have never seen in small Dutch text. The website advertises packages that include a free re-exam, and nowhere does it say what conditions apply to it. Those conditions sit in the contract: to actually use the “free” re-exam, you first have to buy a separate re-exam package. In my opinion that is deceptive marketing, because the word “free” is doing work on the website that the contract quietly takes back.
For that “re-exam” package I was quoted a minimum of €600 for six 90-minute lessons, and the re-exam would only be booked once my instructor and the administration both agreed I was ready. There is no cap on how many lessons that can take, and the people deciding when you are ready are the same people selling you those lessons.
The CBR waiting time makes it worse. The wait was seven to eight weeks. Even if they had declared me ready on the spot, I was still expected to take a lesson every week until the exam date so I would not lose form. Six package lessons plus a weekly lesson across the waiting period is roughly thirteen 90-minute lessons before I can sit a re-exam. That is not a re-exam package. That is a second course, forced to me if I want to have the “free” re-exam, alongside the message that I was the problem.
So I booked my re-exam directly with the CBR, which any candidate is entitled to do, and bought a few lessons to prepare. During those lessons the second-opinion instructor from the very least told me things like “where did you learn to drive like this”, “you have less than a 5% chance of passing”, “there is no point going to your re-exam, see for yourself”, and “if you were ready, your re-exam would have been booked through us”. That last sentence is the one I would pay attention to if I were choosing a school. Readiness was presented as something only the administration could certify, even though my first instructor told me that I was ready explicitly saying “you are really ready, I’m telling you from the bottom of my heart”.
The tone from the administration matched the general tone I was getting. I was told I was a difficult student who does not listen, and that I had failed my first exam because I wanted to do thing “too fast”. By that point I was desperate and had accepted every recommendation they made and paid for ten extra 90-minute lessons on top of my original package before my first exam, so that they could book it for me. Being told you are the obstacle while you are doing everything asked of you felt like gaslighting to me, and it was discouraging rather than constructive.
I passed the re-exam I booked myself with zero faults, and the CBR examiner described the drive as perfect. Two lessons earlier I had been told I had less than a 5% chance of passing, how about that? Draw your own conclusions from that.
My advice: do not choose a school for the perks in the advertisement, they may be deceptive. Before you sign anything, ask in advance in writing what conditions apply to these perks. And do your due diligence about instructor competence. This is my own experience; do your own research.
