Easy website to navigate, I just entered my postcode and subject and found a whole list of tutors that I could contact for free. After discussing my needs with all the tutors I chose one who lived quite close to me. I paid a intro fee for his contact details which I thought was very reasonable. I also received a good response from the customer service team when I asked them about leaving feedback on the tutor's profile. I was very happy with my tutor and would recommend First Tutors to everyone.

First Tutors do not get my recommendation, after paying £14.99 to obtain a tutors contact details they only turned up once and failed to provide proof of their qualifications and CRB checks despite saying on the site these would be provided, First Tutors does not perform any checks on the tutors and the profiles are written by the tutors themselves and are not actually checked by First Tutors to ensure the information entered is correct. Ultimately First Tutors is a poor service if you are looking for a well educated reliable and honest tutor, I would advise you look at The Tutor Pages ( thetutorpages.com ) for tutors you can trust or some to the other reputable agencies.

Votes (1)  •  Comments (1)  •  Link to this review

FirstTutors F. First Tutors is a matching service, you can browse tutor profiles and contact them for free. If after purchasing the tutor's contact details you encounter a problem we invite you to leave feedback comments and a rating on the tutor's profile. We then offer you another tutor at no further cost. We consider the above comment to be unfair as it seems that the user did not contact us explaining the problem. We invite Mandy to send our customer service team an email so that we can resolve the issue.

8/23/11  •  Votes (0)

I paid £19.99 to obtain tutor's details, but tutor never responded. Waste of time and money. Has anyone ever obtained a refund from these people?

The other day I found my son a local maths tutor through First Tutors (an online tutor matching service). I had no idea that there was so much choice in this area of the market! Schools should really inform parents of this kind of thing!

Like the comment below I also registered with several other sites too (tutors4me, UK Tutors and Tutor Hunt) but they had no really suitable tutors and no reliable feedback from real people to reassure me. Additionally there didn't seem to be any form of responsive customer support for the others (or even a company number / registered address for UK Tutors - be very careful here as they take payment), while First Tutors dealt with my (admittedly easy) question very quickly.

Everything on the First Tutors site was quick and polished, I ran a search, contacted 4 tutors, and within the day had found a suitable tutor and bought his details! Everything is going well and my son is enjoying his tuition (only had 2 lessons so far) and we are satisfied with his progress.

First Tutors is not free for parents, but the price scales depending on the price of your tutor (£4.99-£19.99, £14.99 for me) to keep it affordable for all, but it wasn't really clear how this was calculated (or at least I couldn't find it).

If you are looking for a private tutor anywhere in the UK this is the site to use!

I signed up to this site in 2008 to offer my services as an English teacher.

The way they work is the following:

- The tutee gets in touch with the tutor via the website - DETAILS SUCH AS TELEPHONE NUMBERS, ADDRESSES OR ANY OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION MUST NOT BE EXCHANGED OR BOTH ACCOUNTS ARE CLOSED.
- The tutor accepts the tutee's request based on personal availability and overall identification to deliver the lessons.
- The tutee then pays a fee (around £10) and the tutor pays another fee per student (around £6)

My page was very attractive and some people started to enquire about lessons, but I was not available at the time of the first requests.

One day this girl contacted me and we finally confirmed the mutual interest to start the classes. She payed her fee and I paid mine. We exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses and began the process to book the 1st lesson. She said she was a flight attendant and was not available all the time but we managed to book one lesson. She cancelled it. We booked another lesson. She had to travel and couldn't make it.Then another lesson was booked and it snowed. She obviously cancelled it. Then it was Christmas time last year and she decided to leave it for the new year...

I was available to have the lessons from mid January 2010 and reminded her of this by sending numerous text messages and e-mails. She never got back to me...

But in the meantime, this other lady showed interest in my services. We started the whole process again and managed to book a day, time and place for our 1st meeting. The website interfered saying that we HAD TO PAY OUR FEES OR OUR ACCOUNTS WOULD BE CLOSED. We were not allowed to exchange messages anymore unless we paid our fees.

I nearly paid the fee again when I stopped and remembered that the 1st lady had simply disappeared. By the way my fee had gone up by roughly a £1 compared to the last one.

This to me looks like a fraudulent site or a terrible way to financially abuse people who need to advertise their services in a recession.

It was actually stupid of me to sign up to a website like that when there are other sites that offer free services and are proved to be reliable.

I wonder if there are other people out there who have used this website or know whether they are dishonest or not.

Best regards.

I have only used this to find a tutor for one child - so far - but will use it again. It is a straight forward service that they offer. They have the details of tutors available to view, you select those you think might fit your needs and they forward the message you want to send. Any reply back from the tutor comes back via first tutors as up to this point you have paid no fee. If from this initial exchange with the tutor, or tutors, if you think there is a chance the tutor will meet your needs you 'buy' their direct contact details and from then on it's up to you. As the tutor I selected was relatively inexpensive per hour the fee I paid was also relatively low ie £10 to 'get this introduction'. I think this is a great service. First tutors gave the service exactly as they said they would - they are an 'introduction' service - as I dare say, as with all such services, some will work out better than others. I have been delighted with the young man it put me in touch with who is doing a great job with my 16 year old son who is grappling with physics higher. Frankly 2 coffee's can cost £10! This has so far proved a small investment for a great result

I have used First Tutors several times and find the service to be excellent. It's quick and easy to find a tutor near to home and if you do have a problem with a tutor they will offer another one free of charge as long as you leave feedback regarding the tutor that let you down. I would definitely recommend this service.