Private training colleges are being accused of targetting one of Tasmania's lowest socio-economic suburbs with unethical door-to-door selling practices.

People in Clarendon Vale in the state's south said the colleges were pushing expensive courses onto people who could not afford tuition fees and would not manage the study load.

Multiple training colleges targetted Clarendon Vale, using the Federal Government's "earn or learn" welfare changes to increase enrolments.

Bradley Smith, 20, was at his mother's home when he spoke to door-to-door salesmen representing Australis College.

Lured by the promise of a free laptop, he signed up for a double diploma in business and management at a cost of $26,000.

"They didn't really say what laptop, they just said a free laptop and they said gift vouchers to get stuff for school and that whatever was leftover we could buy whatever we want," Mr Smith said.

"[They had] four or five courses available and they wanted to sign me up for each one.

"I struggled in school and they're like, 'oh well it's easy'."

Mr Smith's mother Amanda Innes intervened and did not let him sign on.

"I felt like [they] were harassing him, not only him [but] me too, cause they wanted me to push him to sign and I wasn't going to do that," she said.

"It was a lot of money, he's on a disability and, being honest, if he can't do his high school certificate, how can he do a diploma? He can't."

Simon Paul from the Clarendon Vale Neighbourhood Centre said often unemployed people do not understand the debt they are taking on.

"It's very unethical behaviour by these providers," he said.

"There's so much pressure applied to these people and they really aren't familiar with the contracts and I don't think they really understand what they're signing up to."

Broker offering incentives fired: college

Sorry, this video has expired Concern over course salesmen ( Michael Atkin )

Australis College's Andrew Hetherington said that in Mr Smith's case, the broker was door knocking without its knowledge and had been fired.

"We issued an apology to Bradley. We advised the agent that their representative, in our opinion, had engaged in inappropriate activity and we terminated that agent's contract," he said.

"Australis does not provide inducements for a student to enrol, we do not provide free laptops or iPads."

Mr Hetherington said the college had been trying to have a fake Facebook page offering laptops shut down, but that request had not been met.

"Something that does plague the industry is third-party agents and resellers to those agents who take the logos of RTOs (registered training organisations), the branding, the images, the signatures of RTOs and create their own pages, website etc to try and create their own leads for the college," he said.

The federal regulator, the Australian Skills Quality Authority, has investigated two complaints against Australis College this year.