Synonymous with “inept”: “Prometric”

Prometric, the testing-and-certification-delivery company that, through their testing, controls thousands of careers in business, IT, and medicine, is one of the worst operations I’ve come across.  This outfit ranks right up (down) there with Bank of America and United Airlines.

In March 2007, one of their local testing centers flooded on a Saturday night.  It wasn’t Prometric’s fault; the upstairs tenant had a plumbing issue and the staff walked in on Monday morning to find newly water-cooled PC’s covered by wet ceiling tile sitting on waterlogged carpet.  Shift happens and getting cranked up doesn’t solve the problem.  But I have deep sympathy for the single moms who took a day off, scheduled babysitters and fought with the bus schedules so they could test for a beautician’s license.  “Not fair” doesn’t say enough.

It is a problem walking into this facility on the following Thursday, expecting to take an exam, and seeing complete disarray.  WTF?  Over three days, Prometric couldn’t blast out an e-mail with a cancellation notice?  Apparently their IT department (probably not capable of passing any IT certification exam and certainly never passing the PMP exam) couldn’t figure this one out.  Even their east coast call center could have put in a little OT to call us west coast folks…if management had a clue.

Prometric’s corporate malfeasance in failing to have a contingency plan is inexcusable.  If my test had been scheduled for 8 AM Monday, two hours after the problem was discovered, I’d understand.  But this outfit had three full days to inform the scheduled test-takers that their tests were cancelled.  What do they do for bad weather, a power failure, a break-in, a landslide, an earthquake, or a network problem? 

“Air Prometric”…it has a nice ring to it. Like an airline, they failed to make any kind of apology.  Like an airline, they assume their operations will never be disrupted by an external event.  And, like an airline, their facilities were one step above dumpy (it’s hard to value a class “A” certification when you’re tested in a strip mall).  Unlike an airline, they didn’t offered compensation for a cancellation or delay caused by the airline’s failure.  Not even a bag of lousy peanuts!

In a surprising turn of events, the local Prometric staff was very helpful and extremely apologetic.  The Customer Service group was also helpful and very professional, even as they fought against the IT morons (who, five days later, still hadn’t removed the out-of-service location from the reservations system).  And in a first for me, one of the local people (Rhyon) called me up to advise me that I had been rescheduled in the dead facility: without asking, he checked, acted on his own, and provided professional service.

I believe employees want to do the best job they can.  And I believe they’re often Dilbert’ed.  I wonder if Prometric’s management wear red noses, makeup, and floppy shoes?  They don’t have to practice falling all over each other, that’s for sure.

No, this is not moonbounce.  Today has been a Prometric day: that means the Prometric web site doesn’t work, you can’t find the right contact telephone number, you wade through a thicket of voice-mail prompts, and you end up holding for ten minutes.  Then, the first couple of people you speak with give you the wrong answer (“There’s no such thing as a Prometric student ID”) until somebody mentions, “Oh, the PMI testing is on a different system from the IT tests.”  Since then web site isn’t working, you have to spent another 30 minutes working with Customer Service while they get you set up.

It’s hard to believe that Microsoft, the Project Management Institute, IBM, and others have been hornswoggled into using Prometric.  Apparently none of these sold-gold outfits bothered to review incident logs or run some black-box (anonymous) test cases through Prometric’s support system.  “Inspect what you expect“, right?

The only thing harder than passing some of the certifications I have planned will be holding my nose while paying Prometric for the privilege.