Senior Project Manager, Reuters.Company sizeBig is not betterSome companies like to tell you they are the largest provider. You know what large companies are often like – think of your mobile, or gas or electric provider. Good customer service? Probably not. It’s the same with training providers.The sales staff trying to sell you a course cares nothing about you, or your career goals. They are only interested in their sales commission. That’s why they will try to sell you a course which might be totally unsuitable for you. That includes making all kinds of untrue claims simply because they want to close the sale.Don’t be treated as a sales targetIt’s generally the case that the larger the company, the less the individual customer is valued. You just become a number, a sales target, something to be shifted between departments as part of a system.A smaller provider is much more likely to treat you as an individual, not as a potential sales target. The best providers will try to understand your training needs before offering you advice about which course (if any) would suit you.Is the provider ethical?You might think that all training organisations are ethical in the sense that they advertise a course, you pay for it, and then you attend and hopefully get accreditation at the end. Sounds simple doesn’t it?However, there are some unethical training organizations who have no intention of ever running a course in a particular location. They advertise it however, will take your money but often don’t deliver.The typical way this works is that the unethical provider will advertise the same course running in 5 or 6 cities in the same country all on the same date. They will then advertise the same course in the same cities the next month. They hope to get one or two people from each city and will then cancel all the courses except one and tell people from the other cities the location has changed and they must travel to the other city to attend the course, take their online learning