Can the Video Professor teach you anything
Created on 2008-04-11 01:01:47
Nearly everyone who has stayed up past the Letterman and Leno shows, should have seen at least one infomercial for the Video Professor. The enticing free CD lesson is sent to you for just postage and packaging, seems like a deal, doesn’t it?
The Video Professor Infomercials started back in the early 1990’s when the Video Professor’s founder, John W. Scherer, appeared on television and offered computer lessons on VHS tapes with titles on the Windows operating system, Microsoft Word and Excel. The Video Professor Computer training titles were marketed to the hundreds of thousands of new computer users who were buying their first machines, but had little or no computer knowledge.
In the mid-90’s Video Professor started producing courses on CD-ROM as well as VHS tapes as new computers began shipping with CD-ROM drives installed as standard equipment. Around this time, the Video Professor started offering a free course in their infomercial.
As the new computer users became more familiar with the basic operations, the Video Professor expanded the number of titles they offered. The new courses included personal finance software such as Quicken and Microsoft Money as well as courses like web design, including Microsoft FrontPage, and graphics software like Adobe Photoshop.
The Video Professor now offers their fifty or so courses through streaming video from their website as well as the traditional CD. The streaming video allows students to view the lessons without waiting for the CD to arrive in the mail.
Despite Video Professor’s claim to have over eight million clients, there has been some criticism of the sales method used by the Video Professor. This sales method, called the continuity sales model, starts when the purchaser receives the free lesson, as advertised on the infomercial. A subscription is then created where Video Professor sends more courses periodically, either by CD or streaming video, until the subscription is cancelled by the customer.
The courses offered by Video Professor can cost upward of $60 for CD courses and $30 for the streaming video option. Complaints have generally been directed towards the difficulty in canceling these subscriptions rather than the quality of the courses provided.
So can Video Professor teach you anything? Well that depends on your level of computer skills and expertise. The average computer user may be familiar with most of the software that they use everyday, but a Video Professor course may be useful for unfamiliar products such as Adobe Photoshop. Of course for the novice computer user, the Video Professor courses would be of benefit. However, when you sign up for the Video Professor subscription, it is advisable to monitor your payments and what products you receive.
