HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. — Brandin Trucios wanted to learn the rules of the road from a professional rather than from his mother, Karen Trucios, who appeared nervous when he was behind the wheel. Karen and Brandin agreed that private lessons would give them both peace of mind.
Karen, a single working mom, said she gave All Florida Safety Institute her money and her trust.
“I wanted him to have lessons so that he could show me what he was being taught, and then we could practice that on the road," she said, signing up for five two-hour lessons and paying $690 dollars in advance.
The family said Brandin took two of the lessons, but the school started shuttering offices around Tampa Bay late in 2022.
Karen said she called the school repeatedly but could not get anyone to schedule Brandin’s last three lessons. Four months later, she’s yet to receive a refund for the unused drive time.
Kimya Parker, who signed up her 16-year-old daughter with the driving school in November, told a similar story.
“I called to try to reach them and schedule the services and could never reach them,” Parker says. She told ABC Action News that she paid $283 dollars for four lessons but has nothing to show for it.
The Better Business Bureau has issued an alert for the business, saying, "All Florida safety institute, LLC has a pattern of disputes where consumers are not receiving their lessons that are being paid for in full." The BBB lists 76 complaints in the last 12 months.
The I-Team found the school has shuttered all its Tampa Bay locations except for one in Pinellas Park, and All Florida Safety Institute filed for Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy in September. According to the petition filed with the court, the company is $1.7 million in debt.
The company's manager, Mark Allen, responded to our questions via email. He wrote that the company is restructuring and attributed the company's situation to current economic conditions, ineffective government programs and the state's back-to-back natural disasters this fall.
He said the organization "is working fast and hard to take care of all of its students. If they have not heard from us yet, they will soon. Messages will be going out by email and through the customer portals ..."
Parker and Karen told ABC Action News they are still waiting to hear from the school.
Allen's entire email response to our inquiries is below.
“I appreciate your inquiry, our organization has provided outstanding customer service and the best in driver education for over eight years. Our mission is to reduce deaths and major accidents in teens and young adults by 5 % in the state of Florida over 10 years. We lose far too many of our kids to driving tragedies which could have been avoided or at least mitigated. Our program combines the standard training of car control and defensive driving with our custom predictive driving experience. This training we have found can avoid or mitigate up to 85% of major incidents.
We are very concerned with the lapse in quality of our customer service in several of the regional markets. We made a commitment to a full course correction in September after the overflow of students/parents ordering driver training programs that exceeded our expectations and our ability to provide the best in service. This again was isolated to only a couple region areas while the rest of our operation statewide remained on pace. With the transition to our typical off-season we expected to recover and get the remaining students through the program. This plan was derailed by the two back to back storms which decimated our scheduling promoting not one but two to three complete reschedules nearly statewide. This also came at the time we expected our state funding which has been delayed. We had already suffered incredible expenses with rampant gas prices and ridiculous costs for the fleet to serve the demands. With the delayed funding of over one-million dollars by the federal government and the economic devastation of the two back to back storms we filed for Chapter 7 (sic) reorganization protection and immediately enacted a restructuring plan.
Our overall plan which has been posted on our Facebook page and submitted with our reorganization includes major leadership changes along with the suspension of some satellite locations and expenses. The abrupt downsizing was the only way to ensure that we would be able to reorganize and still serve every student. We are not closing, and we will be making sure every student does not lose any of their money. Students registered from August through December will be rescheduled or will be able to submit a claim for compensation which will be evaluated and paid out once the federal government has funded all of our claims. It is likely most students will be rescheduled prior to that time; however, anyone that cannot wait for the training will still be assured they will get their full value in return. Existing students that are being rescheduled which will start some time near typical spring breaks in March will have immediate choices of initial scheduled instruction of priority slots. Seasonally new students will be given the remaining slots. This is the same format used when reopening from COVID closure of two months with a backlog of 700 students statewide and went off without complaint and had everyone caught up in less than two months. This will clear all students remaining and new through the program before the end of the school year. Seniors graduating early will be given priority as well to make sure no student goes to college without their license. Our special needs students with cognitive and physical disabilities will again have a dedicated team to manage their schedules.
Our major hubs in all five major areas are and have been open for testing. While it might be an inconvenience for the tests, we still provide evening and weekend testing at these locations and most are not more than 45 min or less from any of our suspended regional offices. There is no excuse for anyone not to get their road test, prior to our expansion these locations served 60% of the state and people drove where they needed to get their tests after work and weekends while the DMV was closed. Our instruction team is still providing instruction. In order to maintain our plan the seasonal staff is covering as much as possible while our downsized regional teams are contacting every customer to keep them aware of the plan. We understand this is a significant inconvenience to everyone and is unexpected even though situations like this year's acts of God and economic issues and the resulting need to reschedule are addressed in our student agreement. In eight years of growth to cover the needs of driver training we have not had to overcome the multiple rescheduling efforts that had to be redone at thousands of hours of wasted time trying to overcome the communication issues. Too many people calling in does not allow our team to call out and fix anything, and we have to do it fairly in some order that makes sense. We understand its not what every customer wants, but this is the only way that everyone can be served. If all the parents and students could recognize the complexity of the issue to serve them all we have to work with each of them the same.
Our organization functions as close to a non-profit as it can. We recycle all of our additional resources into programs for special needs and training for underprivileged and underserved. We serve 5000-7500 items purchased monthly at rates far below anyone else. This year's economic situation and cost increases and the federal government ate away at our hurricane fund and several lenders have not been very friendly. It has been to the point of some lenders threatening our families rather than being understanding and patient. The real story is how our government has failed in its programs and processes with ridiculous delays and red tape to collect on the programs, credits, overpayments and money due to small businesses. Their excuses and terrible customer service delaying payments that are confirmed and due have created a perfect storm to an organization that exists only to save lives. The story is these short term lenders that prey on organizations like ours that can't qualify for low interest/ low payment loans that our government should be providing while the SBA turns down good credit and solid equity applications that create jobs and save lives. These lenders act nice, but based out of NY and Penn they prey on organizations as soon as it gets tough, threatening them and their families into serious fear with tactics that no one should have to endure.
This is the real story: a total failure to support and protect organizations like ours that provide services to our community and save lives. We have been doing our part, we have trained 1000's of students and have neary 10,000 if not more 5-star reviews over the last eight years. Hype and victiveness have created a wave of underserved drama, this just makes it harder to get the plan in place and get everyone satisfied. No one is going to be happy right now, we have over 150 less employees today, many of which believe in the mission and want to work. We have parents with fear of losing and not getting training. This makes us very sad, and we want to get them all the message that we didn't give up, we have not abandoned them and they will not lose. It will take patience, and if the Lord continues to bless us we will get everyone satisfied and return to focusing on our mission of reducing deaths and saving lives. We ask everyone to pray for us as we pray for each and every one of our parents and students that we can get to them quickly and put in place the training that may save a life.
I hope this not only answers your questions, provides some confidence in our commitment to our parents/students and helps everyone recognize that the hype and drama created by our short term correction is not a call to arms but would hopefully be considered with compassion and understanding. I am available to anyone most anytime, and I have responded to you on the assumption that the facts are accurate and verifiable and do not warrant intentionally creating further damage to an organization that is working fast and hard to take care of all of its students. If they have not heard from us yet they will soon. Messages will be going out by email and through the customer portals with further follow up from each region.”
