I also personally know of SEVERAL good guys who were 'sold' the idea of doing a B737 type rating during late 2004 - 2005. Were apparently told quote "you will have 2-3 job offers when you finish". Rushed to either take out a £26,000 loan from HSBC or re-mortgaged their house, because there was only one place left on the course! Resigned from well paid jobs to free up the time to complete what they were told would be a 4 month course. Completed the JOC and the B737 rating. Had nothing but praise for the quality of the programme at Astraeus; all said "instructors were excellent". They ended up waiting 8/9 months to complete 10 sectors, on no salary because they'd resigned from previous employment. Most of them passed their Ryanair interview when they accumulated 100 hours on type. But after the cheques were cashed these additional hours were not offered to them and the salesmen did nothing whatsoever to help them fly the extra 60 hours to secure their positions with Ryanair. So after a long delay in the hope that they could secure employment with 10 sectors, and as if the interest payments on £26,000 and the loss of income added on top wasnt bad enough, they ended up having to revalidate their B737 rating a year later (£1500) and then had to take out additional loans to go to Eagle Jet and pay "another" £12,000 to buy another 300 hours. They ended up in Turkey or with Sky Europe, at their own additional expense, a few ended up with Ryanair (2 were chopped during line training... and ended up back with Eagle Jet) and although 1 or 2 ended up with UK airlines, the others were eventually taken on by their Eagle Jet placement airlines, but they had to continue working for FREE until they reached 500 hours on type. The salary at Sky Europe is 1250 Euros / month .... tax free though!
My advice .... if you fund your own type rating make sure you have enough cash to finish the journey!