As an experiment I took a Skype / icc lesson once -- and hated it. The coach was fine, the material was fine, as hicetnunc suggested I got a copy afterwards. But the medium I could not stand. Would I have gotten used to it if I had done more of them? Sure, most probably I could have gone from outright hatred to strong dislike... But in general I would recommend a "fairer" trial than what I did. Sign up for a block of 4-6 lessons and only then evaluate the coach, the lessons, the medium. Even a very experienced coach will need some time to figure out what works best for a new student. What you might think is diffidence might instead be a hesitation about which approach to select from the menu.

Has anyone any advice / experience of training online / by Skype ?

I'm still trying to improve, settled on my repertoire, starting out on the Yusupov books to get some structure and recognise that putting more into analysis of my own games is probably the way to go. Has anyone any advice / experience of training online / by Skype ? A club-mate has tried and with the first guy he found it a little unstructured, basically he asked if he had any particular questions and then went over any games he had played. He moved to a second and is much happier. this guy is a FIDE trainer and trains full-time when not playing. he has gone over his repertoire where it was needed and is now moving on to the endgame. This is based on analysis of my friends games. He provides ChessBase records of everything they do in the lessons by email. This seems like a good service, especially as the hour booked often stretches to two !