Lets not show these potential new recruits that we're a bunch of exclusive up our own arses closed shopkeepers and actually welcome them with some helpful advice and encouragement.
Agreed... But maybe the helpful advice is that with a PPL from a quick and cheap training organization, you may not have what you think you have (if you even finish your training before some financial woes befall them). If aircraft renters and insurers won't take your new license seriously, it'll cost you more in the long run, to get the addtional training to get you where you could have been done right the first time.
There is nothing wrong with asking for quick and cheap!
Disagreed, it's just plain insulting to the service provider and his peers. It suggests that you think that they are not entitled to be fairly paid for the service they provide. If you choose to learn to fly in "Cheap" poorly maintained aircraft, that's your choice, but you have no right to complain about "spam cans" later. If you choose to receive training "quickly", and perhaps are not thorough, with the background information not well understood, you could become one of the persons who are spoken of poorly because of a poor demonstration of flying skills
A lot of my training has been quick and cheap and as I was careful to monitor quality,
Would it not be necessary to have a good grasp of the elements of high quality training (meaning you'd already received quite a lot of it) to be able to monitor training you are, yourself, receiving? Self audit for quality is a demanding exercise...
I hope that that original poster's wife finds a economy oriented training organization, and is appropriately thorough in learning to fly. I'm happy to share the sky with pilots whose approach is to do things properly, and apply the resources necessary to be airborne as safely as practical.