IELTS Penang : British Council or IDP?

Yes. The IELTS examination is not cheap. Rm580 per candidate and I heard that the price has already increased. As a result, most candidates can only afford to sit this exam once, hoping that their score will be sufficient to get them through.

In Penang, the British Council & IDP offer IELTS courses as well as exams. The charges for the courses & exams can easily come up to about Rm1k.

British Council provides its candidates a free online course. However, from my personal perspective, it's too easy & doesn't help much. To be prepared, a candidate has to buy a few books to be familiar with the way the questions are being asked. The Listening, Reading & Writing sections are all held in the ballroom of Cititel, Penang. So, the environment is definitely more comfortable: Fully air-conditioned, clean washrooms, quiet environment & coffee & tea are served. Furthermore, stationery is provided. British Council also caters to more candidates. Around 80-100 people per exam. Therefore, more staff is allocated to run the exam. I would say that the staff are very experienced & well-trained, thus, less hiccups. The first 3 sections are normally conducted very smoothly & professionally from approximately 9am-noon.  Listening test is conducted using wireless headphones. Be careful as to turn your hand phone completely off & not on silent mode as it may disrupt the Listening test.

However, there are certain shortcomings encountered in the Speaking test. For this test, it is either conducted in British Council the day before or in Cititel on the test date. Candidates will be given a certain time slot as to when they will take the test. Problems arise when candidates are warned to arrive before the previous candidate finishes or they may risk being disqualified as the tape recorder for the exam have to be kept running (certainly not the case as the examiner is the one recording each test). Secondly, some candidates do get calls up to 2.5 hours before their allocated time to go immediately for the test as their turn is up. Don't think it's fair to rush candidates into exam halls as they will not be in a fit condition to give their best answers. Thus, it defeats the purpose of giving candidates a time slot in the first place. In British Council, most of the examiners are either Caucasians or Eurasians.

Tests for IDP are conducted in Disted College lecture rooms. The number of candidates are about 30-40 people & only 3 staffs are assigned to the exam. Although having less candidates, registration can be slow & tedious as candidates are required to be photographed & have their thumbs scanned one after another. Air-conditioning is limited to classrooms, no stationery is provided, toilet is dirty & occasionally there will be college students running, talking & shouting. The Listeing test is done using speakers in front of the classroom. There were some glitches as students were not thoroughly checked & some actually brought their hand phones, keys etc into the classrooms. Thus, a lot of unnecessary delays were caused. Furthermore, one student is only allowed to the toilet at one time.
For the Speaking test, candidates are required to come 15 minutes earlier than the test time & therefore, there's no rush. Also, I've also heard many good comments that the Speaking examiners are friendly & helpful & thus make the candidates feel at ease. The examiners are all locals.