Yes, that's exactly what I'm doing. How'd you know?

Because of your ignorance, and because you are an idiot, I will no longer honor my offer to refund you $5 USD nor will I waste time replying to you any further.

Best of luck to you.

You have valid reasons to stop however no valid reason for a refund. The fact you have months remaining is because YOU refuse to take a MANDATORY exam. The course provider has not broken any agreement or rules. You try to change those yourself and by doing so you are at the mercy of the course provider.

I don't know where you are from and don't want to judge you on that. Maybe your country has less formal rules. However where I am from (Europe) you can not simply request a refund when you have signed up for a course and find some aspects in the course you not like. This is why you have to accept the user agreement before signing up and after that you are bound to it.

This is the last time I will reply here as you seem to have made up your mind and will not do anything with comments that differ from it. Good luck.

Wow.

I got through as much of this thread as I could take.

The bottom line is this:


- Yes, you are absolutely, 100%, allowed to ask for/request a refund for whatever you want, regardless of what your reasons are.

- No, you will not always be given a refund


My opinion is this: I do not think you are entitled to a refund and I support the decision already made by Thomas/HackingDojo.

However, I will refund you $5 USD if you stop posting (in this thread/about this topic)

You're quite correct: but there is a difference between you asking for a refund (for whatever reason) and you publicly stating that HackingDojo ripped you off.

If that's all there is to it, I'm going to go with yes. It was YOUR decision to sign-up to the course, and YOUR decision not to take the exam. As others have stated, the criteria for moving through the ranks is well publicised and available prior to sign-up.

From my perspective (like yours, purely anecdotal) I'm working through the Shodan material (slower than I'd like) but have had all the support I've requested from the HD team.

Well I'm sorry to say but I have to agree with ajohnson and can not see how you are entitled to a refund.

The course clearly stated that an exam is mandatory to progress to the next level. If you refuse to take it and as such can not progress to another level, how would that entitle you to a refund? Yes, you do not use other material but you are occuping a seat that other students could have had. Furthermore, if you do the exam and pass you simply progress as you want. If you have the skills than a report would not be hard to write it only costs you some time.

Valid reasons for a refund would be:
- Company ends training activities before your subscription expires
- No reliable access to labs and study material where it would involve HackingDojo his hosting, not your own internet connection
Usually a course like this will test connectivity when you start to make sure you can access the material.

You posted your opinion, and not everyone agrees with you. There's no need to be hostile.

This is asinine. There is no other training provider that will give you a partial refund just because. You think OffSec will refund 60 of your 90 lab days because you find the course too hard, or because you think it's unfair you have to write a report to earn the CPEs? How about SANS after you're one month into the four months of On-Demand? No way. Do you expect discounts at restaurants when you get full and only end up eating a portion of the food?

Training, software, music, movies, etc.; when you buy it, it's yours. You can likely get a replacement if something is defective or goes horribly wrong, such as damaged media, an instructor not showing up, content being offline for extended periods of time, and so on, but it's extremely rare to get a refund with no questions asked. This is professional training, not a lamp at Walmart.

This thread seems to be unfairly misleading and negative. There's a significant difference between "he doesn't respond to emails" and "he stopped responding to my repeated emails asking for a refund after he told me there wouldn't be one." You've done nothing to show the course was offered in any manner other than exactly as its described on the website. Unless there was some legitimate negligence on his part, no, I don't think you're entitled to a refund just because you want one.

Did I say it was wrong to ask for what you feel entitled to?  I believe I've repeatedly said, work it out with Thomas.   

Also, this is totally unrelated...  Why do you keep posting in italics?  For highlighting / emphasizing a word, it's useful.  But to continually have to read it, it's giving me a headache...

I guess I don't understand why you didn't just take the exam or blow through the material you already know. Had this been a bait-and-switch, like you're making it out to be, I'd side with you completely. Instead, it seems like you've just decided not to follow the well-publicized progression through the program and are requesting a refund because he won't make an exception for you. That's a bit different than the "He ran off with my money" scenario that the title is suggesting. I would personally also be unlikely to refund someone's money just because he arbitrarily disagreed with the approach.

The reason the annual subscription is so much cheaper (nearly 50%, I believe) is exactly because you're paying for it all up-front. It's ridiculous to expect a 75% refund because you only used 25% of the time. That would get abused to no end. Additionally, the money might get immediately reinvested in marketing, hardware, etc. and no longer be available. The reason these discounts/plans exist is often to spur growth in exchange for less profit overall. If you were unsure that this was going to be a good fit, you should have bought a single month and tested the water prior to making such a commitment.

I don't think anyone explicitly said you don't have that right. They've just pointed out cases where people don't get a refund.

No Refund: car, house, University class,...the list goes on.
Refund/Credit: Amazon.com, book stores, insurance policy, magazine subscription,...the list goes on.

Again, stay cool. While I've never had any personal dealings with Thomas, from his posts, he seems like an okay guy and someone who's generally interested in building his course. Remember, try to find out what HackingDojo's refund policy is. I wouldn't mind seeing it posted here if it exists.

I have spent a lot of time in colleges and universities, including one of the biggest names out there. Over the years, I had to drop some classes. If I dropped them before they began, I got a refund (if I had paid). The only time I ever got a refund after paying, when I dropped any classes after the start of the term, was the one semester I was ran over by a drunk driver.

I'm sure he does want it resolved. But it may not be resolved to your satisfaction.