Top Driver Driving School

Jul 2024

Top Driver provided an overall excellent driving education for my son. Their program is well designed and they live up to their motto of teaching driver intelligence. There were a couple of hiccups with the classroom experience and the in-car driving scheduling; however, Mr. Kraft (the director of the Lombard office, I believe) was responsive, respectful, professional and never made me feel out of place for reaching out to him with these issues.

Regarding the classroom experience: My son did not particularly enjoy his classroom instructor in Wheaton as she was somewhat patronizing. The initial parent/student meeting at the first classroom session was supposed to...read full review

Jun 2024

Top Driver provided an overall excellent driving education for my son. Their program is well designed and they live up to their motto of teaching driver intelligence. There were a couple of hiccups with the classroom experience and the in-car driving scheduling; however, Mr. Kraft (the director of the Lombard office, I believe) was responsive, respectful, professional and never made me feel out of place for reaching out to him with these issues. Regarding the classroom experience: My son did not particularly enjoy his classroom instructor in Wheaton as she was somewhat patronizing. The initial parent/student meeting at the first classroom session was supposed to be about 30 minutes but she dragged it out to over an hour and required each student to read a paragraph from her PowerPoint slide out loud in front of the entire group. Mr. Kraft was able to take my concerns back to the Wheaton office afterward and hopefully that situation has improved. Regarding the in-car driving scheduling: We paid for the Diamond program in order to benefit from the advanced in-vehicle lesson scheduling. With this program, you are supposed to be able to schedule your lessons about two weeks in advance of students in the Silver, Gold and Platinum programs. This is accomplished by calling customer service as early as the first business day of each month. This started out a bit counterproductive for me because the driving instructors often do not provide their availability to the schedulers that early; instead, availability is released closer to the middle of the month when the other program participants are able to schedule. I realized that not many people must participate in the Diamond program because Mr. Kraft made himself available at the beginning of each month to help coordinate my son's lesson scheduling. Generally this is done with the customer service department; however, given our participation in the Diamond program, Mr. Kraft worked directly with me over email/phone and got us scheduled at times that always worked well for us. My son was initially terrified to do the driving lessons, but his initial drive with Ms. Russo gave him self-confidence and eased his anxieties. My son was so reassured that he ended up doing every driving lesson with her. Ms. Russo had a calming presence and knew what to say to make each experience pleasant and educational. We were very lucky to have found her and benefited from her teaching skills. Top Driver is now certified to facilitate the Secretary of State road test. My son had his test with Mr. White. We weren't sure how well he did after the test because Mr. White didn't say much and disappeared to tally up his score. He revealed with an unprecedented level of excitement, however, that my son received the best score of any student he had had do the road test since they started facilitating them about 4 months prior! My son was so proud of himself and now takes his driver intelligence with him each time he drives. I am not a paid reviewer; I am not an affiliate of Top Driver; I am not benefiting from this review by any means. Mr. Kraft, Ms. Russo, Mr. White and the helpful customer service agents all deserve an A+ shout-out for helping my son happily accomplish his goals on a schedule that worked for us. Thanks to Top Driver in Lombard!

Jun 2024

We had a great experience with top driver and will use them again next time around. Dave White was fantastic! Very thorough and will use them again because of our personal experience with Dave.