Complaints and appeals

There are two different processes. A complaint is about something that went wrong with the service, a course, a certificate or the platform. An appeal is about a decision on your assessment. They go to different people, they run to different timescales, and only an appeal can change a result.

Complaint or appeal

If you are not sure which of the two you have, write to us anyway and describe what happened. We will decide which route it belongs in, tell you which one we have put it in, and say so in the acknowledgement. You will not lose an appeal because you used the wrong word for it.

What you can complain about

Anything we did, or failed to do. In practice most complaints are one of these:

• Course content that is wrong, out of date, or no longer matches what the regulator the course is about (DfE, Ofsted, HSE or CQC, depending on the subject) currently says.
• The narration, where what you heard does not match what is written. The text is the version of record and every course can be completed in silence, so where the two differ it is the written text we correct against.
• An assessment experience that went wrong: the page failed part-way through, an attempt was recorded that you did not sit, or the questions did not behave as the course said they would.
• A certificate with your name spelled wrong, the wrong course on it, the wrong dates, or a verification page that will not load for whoever you sent it to.
• Accessibility: a barrier that stopped you finishing, or an adjustment we agreed and then did not make. The accessibility statement sets out that route in more detail and it reaches the same people.
• Service and billing: being charged the wrong amount, waiting too long for an answer, or being dealt with badly. Cancellations and refunds have their own page, cancellation and refunds, and it is quicker to start there.

What you can appeal

An appeal challenges a decision rather than an experience. You can appeal:

• The result of an attempt, where you believe you should have passed.
• A particular question, where you believe the answer we marked as correct is wrong, the question was ambiguous, or the point it tested was not covered by the course.
• A lockout, where the attempts on a course have been used up and you believe the count is wrong or that the circumstances warrant another one.
• A certificate that was not issued, or an expiry date you believe is wrong for the course you passed.
• A reasonable adjustment that was agreed and then not applied to your attempt.

Assessments are marked automatically. Each attempt draws its questions from a larger bank against a blueprint, so two people sitting the same course do not see the same paper, and the pass mark is a percentage set for that course. Some questions are marked critical: getting one of those wrong fails the attempt even where the overall score clears the pass mark, because somebody can score well and still hold a misconception that matters. If that is what happened, our decision will say so.

We keep the questions you were asked, in the order you were asked them, and how each one was marked, so an appeal is something we can check against the record.

How to raise a complaint

If you have an account, the quickest way is Help in your account, then Make a complaint. It goes straight to our staff, you get an email to say we have it, and our reply and anything we ask you appear on the same request. Only you and our staff can see it; an employer never can.

Or write to training@rtriibe.com with the word complaint in the subject line. If you would rather write on paper, the address is RTRIIBE LTD, Level One Basecamp Liverpool, 49 Jamaica Street, Liverpool, England, L1 0AH. We do not have a phone line, but if writing is difficult for you, tell us and we will call you. We will still put our answer in writing.

You do not need to use the word complaint, quote a clause, or fill anything in. Tell us what happened and what you would like us to do. It also helps if you give us:

• Your name and the email address on your account.
• The course, and roughly when you were doing it.
• Where it is about course content, the sentence you are querying, quoted or in a screenshot. That is usually enough for us to find it in the version you sat.

If writing a complaint is itself the barrier, tell us in whatever form suits you and we will take it down for you and read it back.

How to appeal an assessment decision

Appeal from the result itself: the result page for an attempt has an appeal button for 28 days after the result. Tell us which part of the decision you are challenging and why. While we have not yet decided it, you can change what you wrote or withdraw the appeal from the same page. Where it is a particular question, tell us what you answered and why you believe it is right. If you cannot use the button, write to training@rtriibe.com with the word appeal in the subject line within the same 28 days, with the course and the date of the attempt. There is no charge for an appeal. The full appeals policy sets out the grounds, what we can do, and when we will accept a late appeal.

An appeal is decided by a person at rTriibe who was not involved in writing the course or the question, and who was not involved in the decision you are challenging. Where the point turns on the subject matter rather than on the platform, it goes to a subject expert who did not write the version you sat. A course that carries an accreditation, or is applying for one, names an author and a separate independent reviewer, so for those there is always somebody qualified to ask who is not the author.

What happens next, and when

A complaint made under Help, and an appeal made from the result page, is acknowledged at once, by email or on screen. Whichever way you reach us, we will also write to you within 5 working days to say who has it, whether we have treated it as a complaint or as an appeal, and what we are doing next.

We will give you a decision within 20 working days. If something genuinely takes longer (an awarding body has to be involved, or an external expert has to look at a question), we will tell you before that deadline passes, say why, and give you a new date. The decision comes in writing and says what we found, what we are doing about it, and what to do if you disagree.

An appeal is either upheld or not upheld. Marking is automatic and is not done again by hand, so where an appeal is upheld we put it right in one of three ways: we void the attempt and give you a fresh one that does not count against your limit, we lift a lockout, or we issue the certificate. Where the fault was in the course itself, we also correct or withdraw that course version. The decision is recorded alongside the original attempt, so your record still shows what happened, what changed, and when, and we email it to you.

Where a faulty question affected other people, we find them from the same records and put theirs right too, without waiting for them to notice. That is an obligation to the accrediting body as much as it is to them.

If you are still not satisfied

Ask us to look again. Say so within 20 working days of our decision and it goes to a director of rTriibe who was not involved in the first decision. You will have an answer within 20 working days, and that answer will say plainly that it is our final position.

After that, the external route depends on what the course carries. Every course page states whether the course carries an accreditation and which body awarded it, and your certificate records what the course carried on the day it was issued, so a course that changed afterwards does not change your route.

• CPD accredited. Where the body named is the CPD Standards Board, you can take an unresolved complaint to them. Our application to the CPD Standards Board has not yet been decided, so no course carries its accreditation today.
• Nationally recognised, or a regulated qualification. The awarding body named on the course page has its own complaints and appeals procedure, and a regulated qualification sits under that body's regulator beyond it.
• Endorsed programme. The endorsing body will consider whether the terms of its endorsement were met. It will not usually review an assessment result.
• No accreditation. Some courses carry none, and say so on the course page. There is no accrediting body to escalate to, so the routes below are the ones that apply.

Whichever body it is, we will give you its name, its reference for the course, and a copy of the correspondence so far. You do not need our agreement to contact them. Most bodies expect our own procedure to be finished first and set their own time limit for coming to them, so check theirs rather than ours.

Some routes are open to you whatever the course carries, and nothing on this page affects them:

• Anything about your personal data can go to the Information Commissioner's Office. The privacy notice explains what we hold and why.
• Anything about a refund or a cancellation is covered by consumer law, which is set out in cancellation and refunds.
• We do not belong to an alternative dispute resolution scheme. If we cannot settle your complaint, we will tell you so in writing. You can also complain to Trading Standards through Citizens Advice.
• Your legal rights are unaffected by anything written on this page.

Your training record during a complaint

Raising a complaint or an appeal does not affect your training record or your access to it. We do not remove attempts, withdraw access, cancel an entitlement, drop an assignment or mark your account because you complained. Everything you had before you wrote to us, you still have while we are dealing with it, and afterwards, whatever we decide.

If your employer bought your seat, we deal with you and not with them. An employer sees whether you passed and the certificate itself, never your answers, your scores or your attempt history, and a complaint does not change that in either direction. Where an appeal changes a result, what your employer sees changes with it, because that is the part they were always shown.

If your complaint is about how your employer is using the platform rather than about us, that is between you and them, and we will tell you what we hold about you so that you can have that conversation properly.

What we do with complaints

We keep a record of every complaint and appeal, what was decided, and why, for 6 years from the date the matter is closed. Accrediting bodies ask to see that log when they review us, and it is also how we find a bad question: a run of complaints about the same question is one of the more reliable signs of one. Any personal data in the log is covered by the privacy notice.