"I had never had problems with the College Board in the past and, so, never had to call their customer support service.

My daughter was to take the SAT without the essay. On test day, her proctor told the students that they only had copies of the SAT with the essay. The students were told not to worry: the proctor had called the College Board and those who didn't opt for the essay should just skip it. All would be corrected by the College Board later.

About 16 days later, my credit card was billed $14 for the essay. I now needed to call the College Board and have them: 1) ensure that my daughter wouldn't get a '0' because she didn't write the essay; and 2) get a refund for the $14 I was charged for an essay my daughter was not supposed to write.

I called customer support but could not get through after multiple attempts during the workday. The holds were horrendously long and usually ended after 10 minutes or so with the message that the 'call volume was too high, call back later.' I tried their email options, but the automatic response told me to call their customer support line. I finally got through after holding 1 hour and 45 minutes in the evening. I was given a reference number and assurances that I would be called back or contacted via email within 3-5 business days.

13 days later, I got no response. I tried calling in during the day but had a similar experience. . By now, I had 3 problems: 1) the refund; 2) the reimbursement issue; and 3) my daughter's scores were not reported, likely held up because of the test version issue...

I tried again in the evening and got through after being placed on hold for over 20 minutes. At that point, the customer service rep acknowledged the previous complaint and reference number. He told me that he would 'escalate' the complaint and that they would get back to me in--you guessed it--3-5 business days. Oh, and by the way, he could only escalate the financial issue. I would have to call a separate department to discuss any scoring issues, as my daughter receives accomodations for dyslexia and therefore would have to call their SSD division.

I asked to speak to a supervisor and was told that there were no supervisors. I asked for a person to send a query by regular mail, but he could not identify a person or address to send an actual letter to. I asked about an address to a department to send a letter to, he could not provide this either.

Most SAT scores are back after 2-3 weeks. It is now 4 weeks since she took the test. Colleges with rolling admissions are starting to make decisions regarding acceptances and my daughter's most recent scores are not available.

The problems are manifold:
1) You can't get through to customer support easily: holding times can be very close to two hours; if I had a vendor like this at work, I would find a new vendor
2) Once you get through, there is little the representative can do for you
3) You can't speak to a supervisor because there are no supervisors
4) You can't send a letter, because there is no one to send a letter to
5) They do not respond to or answer emails
6) They do not respond to or answer queries even within their own standard of 3-5 business days
7) My problem has not been resolved, so I have contacted the Better Business Bureau (The BBB given the College Board an A- rating. Realize, however, that they only insist that the vendor contacts the client and tries to make good on their complaint. To maintain a rating the business only needs to make an honest effort to resolve a complaint. I imagine after complaining on the BBB site, then, that the College Board will actually contact me
8) The College Board is actually a multimillion, money making corporation--that they cannot spend an nth of their earnings on reasonable customer support is shameful; simply shameful.

At this point, my advice to any student would be to take the ACT. If all goes well, the SAT will work out just fine. But if there is a problem, the College Board does NOT have your back and does not seem in the least bit of a hurry to resolve any problems. These are YOUR borad scores and there is now a viable alternative with a company that--at least per my friends--will actually pick up the phone and work with a customer to resolve a problem.

As I see it, in my daughter's case, the College Board and/or their representatives made an error and did not send the correct copies of an exam to the exam site. Because of this, they charged me an extra $14 and are now holding my daughters multiple choice scores hostage for an unknown period of time.

It would be one thing if they called and at least attempted to solve the problem There are times where we as customers are wrong or just don't get it. But at very least, the vendor needs to pick up the phone and have a dialogue with the customer. They also need to have avenues of redress and at least have a valid process in place to resolve problems. The College Board does not."