Horrific exam experience with examslocal

majun

Not sure if this is the right place to post this but I feel that this needs to be mentioned one way or another. My experience with examslocal has been horrific so far. Absolutely abysmal. As much as I enjoyed the class itself and the help these forums offer the exam itself is turning this entire experience into a horrendous one. I am never going to take another Linux Foundation class again if they continue using examslocal for their exams. Let me explain.

First, when scheduling the exam the button to schedule will only become available after a 30 minute wait. What for? What's the point of making us sit there and stare at the screen for 30+ minutes? Plus, I've already had it happen twice that the button did not activate after more than an hour and I had to start the entire process anew. It's really a hit and miss.

Then, if it finally lets you schedule the exam, it is SLOW AS MOLASSES! I've been waiting for it to "retrieve the available time slots" for the last 15 minutes. This happens almost every single time I try to schedule an exam regardless of what computer or browser I use or where I am. I know already that I can abort the registration process now and try again later today. Or tomorrow. Or a few days from now. Or maybe never...

Then, if I manage to schedule the exam and attempt to take it I have to get out my wife's old Windows laptop because examslocal is incompatible with Macs. Doesn't matter what Mac, it simply will not work. Chrome will display a certificate error and that's it. I've tried different Macs on separate occasions and finally had to revert to my wife's old Acer Windows notebook to take the exam.

This has been a truly horrific experience so far. I am never going to go through that again. I am about to give up to be honest and screw the CKA certification. The hassle of having to register and take that exam is simply not worth it. Period.

fcioanca

Hi @majun
We're really sorry to hear you've had such a terrible experience. 96% of our candidates say they'd recommend CKA to a friend so it is definitely very unusual. Our support team is available to help you make this right, please contact them at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org?
Regards,
Flavia
The Linux Foundation Training Team

armbel

What is examslocal? Is it this: https://www.examslocal.com/

tabnuland

I can agree with this. What a horrific slow and terrible registration process. Ok, the 30 minute wait is acceptable since it actually states that it can take that long. (sounds like backend needs a overhaul.. )
The registration of Test Site and Time on the site just is unworkable.... waiting for at least 5 minutes untill it shows the available slots - if at all. And dont you dare to click on a different day to check the availability there... again waiting endlessly untill it shows, or untill it timeouts.

Obviously examslocal need to work on the performance of their app or infrastructure...

ahmedsalaheldin

I have had offensive experience with examslocal and here is how it all began.

For some reason, I had to reschedule my exam, I got a confirmation mail of reschedule but in the portal it did not update. At the specific time, I logged into their website (examslocal). it kept saying, exam is loading please wait and I was unable to start my exam session, the technical support was not any helpful at all, I opened a ticket to describe the issue but nobody took care of it. It seems like I lost the exam fees ($ 300) as well. Ugly and bad experience, I hope Linux foundation changes this proctoring provider in the future

fcioanca

Hi @ahmedsalaheldin

Our training portal suffered a major outage over the weekend, and our IT team is working to restore all services. As a result, some students may still experience issues with their exams. If you opened a ticket with the Linux Foundation at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org, our Customer Support Team is working to address and resolve all tickets in the order they were received; due to the high number received as a result of the outage, response is slower than normal.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and we ask for your patience while we are working to restore all services and resolve all tickets.

Regards,
Flavia
The Linux Foundation Training Team

lwille

I can confirm that the user experience on examslocal.com is abysmal. Why does it take more than five minutes to load a handful of possible scheduling times?

HungTS

cannot agree more. I ended up with submitting a support ticket to LinuxFoundation. Scheduling/rescheduling exam with examslocal is the worst experience that i ever had with any exam platforms.

See my screenshots as below:

-> It is available slot

I was happy because my exam is expiring (after 12/05/2021)

Hit next, "I Agree", then

so, what does "available" mean in their application glossary?

LF should receive these feedback and somehow consider another option for their exam if they don't want to lose the current and potential candidate.

erwinjapie

I couldn't agree more it take forever to load some time slots for a specific day and another eternity for each other day if those times don't suit you.
On top of that if you're unlucky your session will already be expired by the time everything has loaded so you have to start all over again.

shivanshu1333

Examslocal is such a TIMEWASTE, please upgrade your infrastructure, it took an hour to load the available exam slots, that too after multiple attempts, it's disheartening to have such an experience.

peter.gastinger

Let me second that! I was not able to schedule an exam using https://www.examslocal.com/ so far. Please get rid of them and pick a new exam provider or make them improve their service. It is kind of ironic that we are trying to schedule an exam with main focus on containers and container orchestration and there is this mandatory examslocal.com service, which probably runs on one raspberry pi (or similar) and is definitely the worst web service I was ever forced to use! Thanks!

fcioanca

Hi @peter.gastinger ,

We are sorry to hear that you are experiencing problems with exam scheduling. Please open a ticket with the Linux Foundation Customer Support team at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org, and they will assist you. Please keep in mind the forum is only for course-related topics.

Thank you,

Flavia

The Linux Foundation Training Team

errohitverma

Worst experience ever!!
Feels like I am booking this exam in the year 1983 era.
It seems no thought has been invested in designing and creating https://www.examslocal.com/

• Terribly SLOW (around 5-10 mins for a GET request)
• Stone-age User interface
  I wonder why good organizations like LF is using this exam scheduler, it making a bad impact on their name (sorry to say but it is true)

elminino

I've been trying to schedule my certs since Friday, and still not luck. I contacted thier service support, and live chat, and received not answers on either. LF you are making us use this service. Please address the issues we are facing. in the end we are paying customers, and would not recommend the services to anyone.

fcioanca

Hi @elminino

All exam-related issues must be directed to the LF Customer Support team at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org, not to other parties. Please open a ticket and they will assist you.

Regards,

Flavia

elminino

I created a ticket a day and half ago after I saw your responses to the previous commenters. The problem here is one, I payed and expected to take my certs on a timely matter, the service given by the 3rd party is less than acceptable. I can understand a service being down, but the service given by the 3rd party it's unbecoming of the linux Foundation, and detrimental to it name. give the opportunity to use other services not only one provider.
There is not costumer service on the end of the 3rd party. I try to reach on live chat and it fails, I send them email and now I'm getting asked my phone number for some reason.

fcioanca

Hi @elminino

The LF Customer Support team will be the one assisting you at this point, not the exam provider (once the exam window closes, the exam provider cannot assist further). Please be patient as they respond to tickets in the order they are received, within business hours, but rest assured they will assist you.

Thank you,

Flavia

tabnuland

and here i am again.. scheduling a new exam via examslocal. i was expecting it to be fixed by now, or examslocal to be ditched by the linuxfoundation and/or psi.

Same story. Annoyingly slow. Visually clearly a legacy application.
Will avoid psi whenever possible in the future.

bernardm28

I agree examlocal does creates a poor e-learning experience. It takes so long to load i usually open a custom service window.
That said, I open a Jira ticket today because it seems like the linux foundation portal and PSI went down.
Had my test schedule and I was ready to take it but it never became available. Took the afternoon off from work to take it, such a bummer.

Also, I was there before 3pm when the test was schedule and it never let me in as you can see on those screenshots.

bernardm28

So, I will add that although PSI/examlocal are painfully slow.

The LF Customer Support team extended my deadline by one month and let me retake the retake since the PSI website crashed and would not let me access my retake the first time around.
Big kudos to the Linux foundation support team.
Don't forget to open your support tickets. They answered me the next day.

daiwenxugo

suffered the same issue, when I try to schedule the cka exam, it stucked on the "retrieve the available days" forever, tried for several times. its unreasonable

daiwenxugo

@shivanshu1333 said:
Examslocal is such a TIMEWASTE, please upgrade your infrastructure, it took an hour to load the available exam slots, that too after multiple attempts, it's disheartening to have such an experience.

May I ask how do you resolve? just wait?

fcioanca

Hi @daiwenxugo

If you have not already done so, please open a ticket at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org and the Customer Support team will assist you. The forum should be used exclusively for course-related questions.

Regards,

Flavia

ardyhash

Having read through this thread I have opened a ticket with LF support, however feel its my duty as a netizen to echo the frustrations above as well as inform others of my experience while taking the 'proctored' exam.
Firstly, I too experienced all the same struggles and delays while scheduling my exam, I too 'arrived' earlier than the scheduled time in order to 'check in', and I too didn't get started until well after the scheduled time due to slowness with the platform and proctor.
Where my experience differs however is that during the actual exam the terminal window and question pane became unresponsive. The proctor wasn't exactly quick to respond, and told me to follow instructions which included restarting my session and waiting for five minutes... twice.. on a timed exam! This is not including the time wasted on the other attempts prior to these five minute waiting windows, nor does it include the time wasted waiting to reenter the exam session after the proctor advised me to "reload" my browser, assuring me that none of my work would be lost.
Fast forward to 24 hours after the exam (which doesn't make any sense given the results clearly show no human involvement in the grading/validation process) and it appears as though my grade only reflects the second session! All my work was still available in the environment and still validated fine (I double checked after regaining access to the environment), but for some reason my grade only reflect the work completed in the second session (I kept a tally and validated every solution). So not only did I loose a good portion of time to this technical glitch, but also it seems that my work prior to the glitch happening was not graded, even though it still existed in the environment. This is very frustrating to say the least, and certainly the kind of thing that would warrant a chargeback (consumers have rights, and credit card companies can help to enforce them).

fcioanca

Hi @ardyhash

We are sorry to hear about your experience. Please open a ticket at trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org and the Customer Support team will assist you.

Regards,

Flavia

xcoin

interesting, i think the old examlocal platform i took my cka through chrome extension is mucher better than now i took cks by using so called "secure psi browser" and remote-desk running on unstable low-end vm stucked from time to time. The so called "secure psi browser" just like a vnc tool without browsering sites function, we just only can access k8s official site through the remote-desk firefox,the remote vm may be not strong enough out of CPU & mem caused firefox crashed and disconnection.

Even worse several days ago i was paused weirdly when i just entered in the exam vm remote-desk and they told me the platform were undergoing maintenance and they were unable to un-pause it ,it is so rediculous how such idiot function was designed and developed to pause a candidate's exam and cann't be resumed, at that time the support of psi told me they had openned a ticket for me but no response by now serveral days passed,it seems you will never get a answer of solution from psi;

CMulholland

Hi @xcoin I see that you opened a ticket with LF Support team and it was recently resolved, with an explanation regarding your recently scheduled exam.
The following blog posts provides some details and benefits of our new environment including the improvement to privacy (candidates no longer have to share their desktop), promotes equity (all candidates now take the exam using identical environments) and enhances the integrity of the exam.
https://training.linuxfoundation.org/blog/update-on-certification-exam-proctoring-migration/
Please be sure to open a ticket with the LF Training & Support team if you have any further issues or concerns. (trainingsupport.linuxfoundation.org)

xcoin

@CMulholland
hello, you and LF Support team are great, i just blame psi side,the so called "secure psi browser" like a disaster for me.

i just finished cks exam once again cost and lost me another chance again.
i checked their exam vm cpu & mem had 6 core cpu 6G ram or else i did'nt rememer that clearly,anyway it was spare much enough and firefox didn't crashed after serveral time reconnnections this time.
but browsering material by firefox and edit yaml in a remote-desk terminal still like disaster. in the so called "secure psi browser" it was easy to copy material from test paper and paste them to the terminal ,but it was hardly to browsering material by firefox not mention copy to the terminal, even though i copied material to the terminal luckily ,editing was impossible the cursor just stuck ,disppeared,couldn't move unless moved it back to the test paper on left side ，it functioned again; if it can copy paste edit like before on examslocal extension it will be much smoothly ; the problem is simple but complex to describe ,you can experience too, and i have no time to continue to analyse such a horrible product.
don't always tell me to check my bandwidth again,i have serveral virtual-servers which i bought located in California just have 1 core cpu 1G ram, controlled much much more smoothly，and my bandwidth using now to take cks is five times faster than i took cka on examslocal extension。

doesn't the psi experience their product first by themself ?

xcoin

the so called "secure psi browser" like a double layer vnc, the exam vm remote-desktop was inside another layer vnc