Professional Driving School In Philadelphia, INC

I called Professional Driving school at noon on a snowy Saturday and asked for a same day 2 hour lesson with a Spanish speaker and they actually found one! Salem was very helpful on the phone and Laila gave great driving tips. I give them top marks for responsiveness… Also the lessons are affordably priced.

Sheesh its been a good 6 years or so since they helped me get my license but when I saw their listing I knew I HAD to review them. I had tried a few other driving schools with no luck (my biggest issue was parking) My instructor Salem really broke down the basics of parking for me, I was able to pass my exam with only 3 lessons from him. I had to deduct a star because Salem can be quite the flirt… I don’t wanna marry just wanna pass my exam: O lol

What I experienced was pretty comparable to a lot of the other reviews I read about this school around the web. The bottom line is: it is unprofessional and you will have to put up with BS, but it is the cheapest, you will learn how to drive, and you will get your license.
Prices: 2 hour lesson for $ 70 (includes pick up and drop off); 2 hour lesson + driver’s test for $ 125 (includes pick up and drop off, going to PennDOT and use of the car for the test)
The instructors are: Simon (the owner), Salem (Simon’s brother), Zeek, Raymond, and maybe two guys named Muhammad and Eddie. Simon is the guy who answers the phone and who sets up the lesson. He is rather awkward on the phone, seems disorganized and disoriented, and doesn’t have a lot of people skills. For example after my first lesson, I called Simon and told him I wanted to do another 2 hour lesson followed by the driving test. He tells me that he will call my instructor (Salem) and ask him if I was ready and that he would call me right back. He calls me back after several hours (and after 10pm) and says that he saw that I had called him earlier (as if he completely forgot the previous conversation). Anyway, he was able to schedule me in for the next morning (though at 6am) followed by a driving test at 8:45. I asked him who my instructor would be, but he wasn’t able to tell me.
The next morning a man named Zeek shows up at my door and I jump in. I wanted to take my fiancé with me who just got back into the country, but wasn’t allowed because it was «against the school’s rules.» I don’t think this school has any official rules. But anyway I don’t think that Zeek would have minded, but he called Simon to make sure if there would be enough room in the car for everyone (which there would have been because we only had to pick up one other person who needed to rent the car and take the test at the same time as me).
So in total I only had two lessons from this school. The first time was with Salem. I thought that Salem was a very good and precise instructor, almost a perfectionist with his exactitude. The only criticism about him I had was that he was a little strange. For example it was unclear to me what the lesson plan was, and often times even where we were driving to, unless I pressed him for answers. He just had no intention of telling me what was going on. Like when he showed up, there was another student in the car (who was driving). I’m thinking «This is my lesson, what is going on? Who is this other person?» Only after I questioned him did I learn that her lesson was just finished up and the first part of my lesson was to drive her home. If you don’t press him for clarity, he will just sit there and say «right turn here, left turn here. etc» to whoever is in the driver’s seat. He also asked me in the middle of my lesson what my name was (which he should have learned from Simon or from my Learner’s Permit which he demanded from me when I first stepped into the car and that he was in possession of throughout the lesson). On the plus side, the lesson ran overtime and he wouldn’t let me tip him and said it was a gift from him to me.
My second lesson was from Zeek, who I found was an ok instructor, he made me rather nervous and I found that his criticisms were sometimes rudely and/​or ineffectually delivered (for example, he screamed at me that I was going to fail because I over gauged a turn). His car was also rather filthy and not in such great shape mechanically. I also had to bear witness to his a** crack twice when he got out of the car.

Another problem I had with the school was that they taught parallel parking with «dry steering», which is when you rotate the wheels of a car while it is stationary. Dry steering is not uncommon and you see people do it all the time, but it wears on the tires and is possibly damaging to the steering column. In the UK, you will actually be penalized for dry steering during your driving test.
So in summary, you will learn to drive and pass your driving test for pretty cheap (I only did two, 2-​hour lessons with them and 2 hours with my sister and was able to pass the test on my first try; in total I paid Professional Driving School $ 205). The down side is that you will have to deal with bad customer service, dry steering, ghettoness, and unprofessionalism.