Samkitch
Careful of misinforming our friend. You say that the PPL will "...take a big chunk of money out of you and you really need to put that towards you ATPL...". However the PPL can be the first part of an ATPL if he is willing to pay for training. Otherwise cost is not a large issue. You also suggest that Oxford has especially high qualities, whereas all schools are approved to the same standards, all schools have their critics as well as those that would not go anywhere else. The instructors move around schools, I have worked with ground or flight instructors who have taught at Oxford or gone on to teach there.
I would recommend that ZaneSaxon not go to Oxford simply because an anonymous contributor to PPRuNe has heard of it. I recommend he visit (the only reason I did not before choosing my course was they could not be bothered to answer any of my calls are to contact me after I left details, so I was not impressed with the admin) but that he also must visit other schools of different types, certainly including some smaller schools. This is a huge decision, especially if he does decide to pay the premium of an integrated course.
Since you seem not to acknowledge that the course can be done another way, I suggest you recommend people find out for themselves the difference between an integrated and a modular course. There is plenty available searching this forum, and the modular schools will talk anyone through their courses, those with integrated courses will tell you about those. However don't always trust their comparrisons with modular, even if they offer both. One only told me about integrated (before I knew the difference) even though I had nearly 180 hours, of which 10 would have counted! Needless to say I went modular.
Never trust sales people (including me, I work for a school), talk to the students without the staff present.