A community of 30,000 US Transcriptionist serving Medical Transcription Industry

The VLC - are they still in business?! - Caliblue

Posted: Dec 22, 2009

I'm a student with The VLC online school. I sent in 2 assignments 9 days ago and haven't heard back from them. They've never been particularly swift reviewing assignments but this is getting ridiculous. I emailed both the instructor and the general contact address and got Mail Delivery System messages to say that "delivery has been delayed. Error: unable to reach nameserver on any valid IP." Their forum site is down although the main web site is still up and, apparently, running. Has anybody heard anything? Are they still in business?

Call them - Oswald

[ In Reply To ..]
Have you tried calling them?find out the address from the website,if you know some body who lives there,ask that person to visit their office.

I tried - goes to voicemail all the time. - caliblue

[ In Reply To ..]
nm

Me too!!! - Maemoo

[ In Reply To ..]
I'm in the same boat as you Caliblue.
I've sent emails to both instructors and got the same undelivered message about "permanent fatal addresses". I sent reports the first week of December and have not gotten any feedback since. I was assuming it was a problem on my end but found it odd that the VLC website is still up and running but I'm unable to access my marks and the forums to get any available info as to why I'm not able to access anything other than the website itself. I haven't called them yet but I'm hoping that this is just temporary cause I'm nearing the end of my course and would be very upset if they just went belly-up without informing the students.
Thanks for letting me know that I'm not the only one.
Please let me know if you find out anything further. I'm gonna wait it out and see if it's just a network problem.
*** NO EMAIL ADDRESSES ***
Thanks for posting this.

closed - trish

[ In Reply To ..]
They're definitely closed. Flew the coop. Their parent company, mindsplore, is gone. Independent homeworkers alliance is gone. Stephen B. St. Louis, Bill Redford, Pat Filice, Ken Mack, Carol Simpson, Linda Najar either disappeared or won't answer emails. Better Business Bureau says they can't or won't help as "it appears this company is out of business". However-their website hawking their wares is still up. The associations that they claim to be affiliated with (AHIMA, BBB, etc.) say they aren't affiliated at all. I've found out quite a bit of information so far and am proceeding to file complaints and send emails everywhere that I can find.

On that note--anybody know of a good REAL school? I'm debating between Career Step and Andrews. Cost is kind of an issue but I have wasted a lot of time with VLC and don't want to make another mistake.

Choosing 2nd school - justme

[ In Reply To ..]
I'm sorry to hear of your situation. It's tough spending the money and time only to learn it was a "fly by night" company.

Choosing between CS and Andrews---as someone who has worked with newbies fresh out of both schools, I can truthfully say that the Andrews grads were kept on while numerous CS grads were let go. No need to re-teach the Andrews grads how to research or how to follow instructions to complete the job per account specs. Andrews grads had a better baseline of knowledge and basic skills to produce a finished product. Just my professional experience to date.

Good luck to you.

Another question - trish

[ In Reply To ..]
Thanks for your input. At this time, I need all of the opinions I can get!
Here's another question: I have all of my grades (in email) and my average is a 96%. I only had some dictation to go, then would have been finished. In the meantime, since my full-time job as a computer tech (8 years) has ended and I'm not holding my breath to get any of the VLC money back, I need to make at least a little bit of money toward tuition. I would work my behind off if only given a chance in this field, but I fear that because I don't have experience I wouldn't be considered. Does anyone know of any companies that I might test with? And if I tested and did not do well, would that preclude me from testing in the future with the same company?

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