When I was choosing a school for my PPL the one I ended up choosing stateside ("old" Britannia) provided a list of references from past students and their addresses. I sent a few mails to peeps that included work addresses so that there was more of a chance being legit and got good feedback which swung me.
Your questions are all good. My only suggestion would be to trawl through pprune using the search function and bone up on the types of costs (not necessarily the quantum as you will get this at the show) you would incur for whatever training you are going for eg: nav fees, accomodation, fuel for the car to get to the school, insurance surcharge, fuel charge.....(the list goes on and on and on).
That way when you ask the question "does it include everything" and Mr FTO says yes, you can then say "ah but does it include nav fees or whatever". You might be surprised to find that somewhere in the deepest darkest small print that it don't. The devil is always in the detail.