Buying CompTIA Vouchers as an Education To Careers (E2C) Member

CompTIA is the non-profit trade association advancing the global interests of information technology (IT) professionals and companies including manufacturers, distributors, resellers, and educational institutions.   CompTIA offers popular certification programs.  (After the implementation of DODD 8570, all Federal IT/IA employees and contractors are required to maintain current certifications, and CompTIA offers some of the popular choices like A+ and Security+.)

CompTIA offers memberships, and one of the benefits of membership are discounted test vouchers.  Membership in Education to Careers (E2C) provides information technology teachers with a supportive community and educational resources for both themselves and their students. E2C members receive special pricing on CompTIA certifications and a free certification voucher for themselves each year.

I sometimes teach at Cuesta College, and Cuesta recently became an E2C member.  I was the first to properly buy E2C discounted test vouchers at Cuesta, and others there asked about how to do this, so here’s how…

Brian Matzelle, Manager, Program Relations at CompTIA emailed me and said:

You are an E2C member and we do not sell E2C voucher on our Marketplace.  We only sell corporate voucher there.  E2C vouchers are much cheaper then corporate vouchers.

Please see the attached FAQ document for information on where to buy your vouchers from. You have the option to buy E2C vouchers from either Pearson VUE or Prometric.  Who you buy from is determined by where which testing center your students will test at.  If they are testing at a VUE test center then you will need to buy vouchers from VUE.  The same thing goes with Prometric.”

I searched around online for this FAQ document, but was unable to find it.  I went ahead and posted it here for your convenience.  It’s not hard to buy E2C vouchers, here’s the steps:

• DO NOT buy vouchers at CompTIA.  There’s a members only CompTIA Marketplace, where corporate members buy vouchers.  You are NOT a corporate member, you’re E2C, and you get much deeper discounts.
• You need your E2C membership number.  This is the number that your organization receives when they become a member.  This is a shared number that everyone at your organization will use.  (As opposed to your personal CompTIA number that is tied to you.)  You may want to designate one person at your organization as the “voucher buyer” and let them always make the arrangements…
• Decide what test center you want to use.  I like Pearson Vue.
• One way, maybe the easiest way, is to call the test center and use a credit card to pay for the vouchers.  MAKE SURE you clearly identify yourself as an E2C member.  The test centers don’t sell many E2C vouchers, so they are pretty fuzzy on how to do this.  Make sure that they know you are an E2C member and get the E2C price.
• I like Pearson Vue, and I don’t like being on the phone, so I followed the instructions at Pearson Vue to buy online.  I used their Online Voucher Order Form for Americas Region.  This is a new fangled Adobe Acrobat form, where you fill out the PDF, and the PDF itself is hardwired to submit the request to Vue.  It’s a bit different, but I used it, and it does work.
• After a couple of business days, the order will be processed and you will receive an Excel spreadsheet with the voucher numbers sent to the email address you provided on the PDF.
• Register for the exam and use a voucher number.  These function as a 100% “discount” during the order process.  Add the exam to your cart, go to checkout, and then add the voucher number.  It will reduce your price to zero.  Each exam will take one voucher number.
• I attempted to register for multiple exams at one time, and had multiple exams in my cart.  This did not work, you can only use one voucher at a time.  I bought each exam separately with a separate cart, separate checkout, separate voucher number and that worked fine.
• Also note that at Pearson Vue, there are E2C versions of the tests, with different numbers.  So for example, on the A+ tests, the “normal” numbers cash customers use are 220-701 and 220-702.  Since you are an E2C member, you need to register for the E2C versions of these exams, “JK0-701: CompTIA E2C A+ Essentials (2009 Edition) Exam” and “JK0-702: CompTIA E2C A+ Practical Application (2009 Edition) Exam”.  The E2C vouchers DO NOT work on the “normal” exam numbers like 220-701 and 220-702.  (They are the same exams and result in the same certification.)  So when using E2C vouchers, make sure to pick the E2C versions of the exams.