TOEFL 2: Redemption

Last Friday was a bit of an adventure. Andrea scheduled her next TOEFL attempt in Oakland on that day. I took the day off work to drive her, and her friend Christian (who's in town staying with us until the 20th) tagged along for the ride.

The test began at 11am, and I'll admit I took a bit more of a conservative approach than was necessary. Fearing the bridge traffic on 880 in the Oakland area, I had us leave at 9:15am, which put us at the testing center around 10am. We sat around in a Starbucks to pass the time, then took Andrea up to the testing area to get her checked in.

This time Andrea actually got to take the test, so Christian and I spent the middle of the day wandering around Berkley. We walked up and down Telegraph and got to see all the hippies. After we had seen enough of Berkley, we headed back to Jack London Square to wait out the rest of Andrea's test. Things seemed to go fine from what Andrea was saying, but we'll know her score in about another week and a half.

When we got home, Andrea signed on and found this email:

Dear Andrea Paulina Ramirez Olvera,
I have received your inquiry regarding the iBT TOEFL that you had scheduled to take on May 15, 2009. Please accept my apologies for the problems that prevented you from testing. As an exception I have processed a full refund of your test fees. Please allow 7 to 10 business days for the credit to post to your credit card account. If you have further questions, please contact me. Good luck on your test today.
Sincerely,
Steve Krimstock
Educational Testing Service
Test Taker Advocacy
609-771-7285
skrimstock@ets.org

This response is the result of the Better Business Bureau complaint we registered the day she was turned away for the first TOEFL test. The system actually worked for us, as strange as that sounds. We were both tickled that this finally got resolved, but still shocked that this refund was anything more than a no-brainer.