Hello strother, I'll include an additional train of thought for your consideration here. I teach welding at a community college, my main focus is the training of welders and also providing training for incidental welders in any number of additional fields, additionally, we have a lot of hobbyist and others who come in for welding classes. Besides the welder training that we provide we are an "accredited" test facility for the Washington Association of Building Officials(WABO), I have plenty of hoops that I have to jump through to be qualified to provide testing for WABO. What I'm leading to with all of this has to do with workloads, time management, and the many other items which require my time. I receive calls at all times of the day and with various amounts of urgency by those who are needing WABO qualifications for their jobs. Some times these inquiries are started by employers, other times they are from individuals themselves. Since I have a full-time job taken up by teaching, I am often faced with some real challenges trying to fit-in this outside testing. On occasion I have certainly dropped the ball and not gotten back to an inquiry in a timely manner, not intentional on my part, but non the less I'm sure that the person who was trying to arrange for the test was not happy. In the case of testing at our school, I receive no additional personal compensation for the outside testing that I do other than collecting the monies and being able to apply them to our program to buy supplies and other program necessities. So when I do testing that is during a lunchtime, after regular school hours or in the evening it is on my dime. Those who I test are unaware of this scenario and I generally don't discuss that, yet it is likely that some of them are put out when I tell them that I won't be doing the testing immediately or I specify a particular date/time that I will only do the test.
I would venture to say that many of the facilities that you have contacted, might to some degree, be similarly challenged. Don't know that for sure, but it could be a possibility. So even though you are a bit put out by some of these schools, just consider the hidden types of variables that might be in play. A bit more for your consideration. Best regards, Allan