Farah is a weekly NINJA CPA Blogger.

An update on my AUD Exam experience:

I arrived 45 minutes early at the Prometric center, for AUD at 9am. I wanted to be calm and not feel rushed as I checked into the exam.

I patiently went through the procedures, and sat at my allocated computer to start the test at 9am.

9am came and went. 10am came and went. No test appeared on the computer screen and the Prometric techs continued to work on it.

Another 1+ hour passed as the issue was escalated to Level 2. Finally, I was able to take my 4-hour exam more than 2 hours later.

There goes the rest of my day – I thought I had done well, scheduling it for 9am so that I could go to work in the afternoon.

I was informed that if I left, I could not reschedule for the next day, because the issue could take more than 24 hours to resolve. I was informed that rescheduling next week would be difficult because it is near the end of the month and students procrastinate when taking tests, i.e. the Prometric center would be very busy. I could try, but there were no guarantees that I could take the exam next week, before the end of the test window.

Alas, I did not procrastinate when scheduling AUD, but it did me little good. So to make it in this test window, I took the exam today, mentally and emotionally exhausted.

I am not the only one to have had such a dismal experience. There was another poor fellow whose computer did not work, and he was fortunate that he was not taking the CPA exam.

I have read that Prometric test center experiences can be less than stellar. What would it take to make them care a little bit about upgrading their technology or service? Tweets? Blogosphere fury? Emails from other people who have had less than stellar experiences?

The only positive thing was that the employee was very friendly and tried her best to resolve it. I hope that she gets a bonus.