Genghis. When? Literally a year ago today. Where? A well known FTO.
I was lucky, and had a very good instructor, one of the best in my opinion; who covered the syllabus and more. The instructor was a tough person to fly with from a trainee's point of view, as he expected very high standards. When it came to the CPL skills test, I was comfortable with all the scenarios and questions fired my way by the examiner (apart from a slight moment when I had to secure the left engine, and started fumbling through my QRH and couldn't find the relevant page. After a deep breath I found the right page and the rest of the flight was fine.
There will always be some instructors who train people to pass exams, and others who take more time to run through other situations which you probably won't face in a flight test, but the gains are obvious..