This has been the most frustrating job I have ever worked at. These mentors would say that I do too much work for the students when I don't do any of the work for them, I try to help them understand. And then I get accuse of unreasonable pausing between my comments. Like in this one section, I had with a student named Madison when she was not very engaging at all and would only say little and didn't have a lot to say. I said "hello welcome" she didn't say hello or anything, so I had to keep typing to keep her engage and my mentor judge me about me pausing for 53 seconds to say something it's ridiculous. The student was just sitting there on the computer and got me typing constantly because I'm not suppose to pause in between my sentences. Then I had another section with her when I asked her to write something on the whiteboard and he said something to me for not saying anything for 4 minutes when the student was writing on the whiteboard. This is because they don't want pacing to be more than 1-2 minutes. Well I seen other tutors who worked there longer than me and they had pauses for more than 2 minutes and those are the ones that was transferred to me. Then everytime a student leaves the section I get blame for it often the times when I know how to do a problem. This one section I had with a student named Alexia when I came up with a joke to make her feel welcome, she acted like she wasn't in a good mood when I asked her "How are you?" She said "How do I do this assignment?". Her attitude shows that she was never going to understand this. Then when my mentor told me I refused to help her that really made me upset because he sounded like the abusive students who tell the tutors "You're not helping". Then I had another section with a student named Ciara. The question was on the binomial distribution when the student led me to believe that she was following along with her calculator, she didn't give me a fair chance to help her and see if I can help her work her calculator and when she left the session I was really frustrated and then my mentor told me my approach was weak on that problem. I know my approach is right because that's just the way I was taught, but he would side with the students and get on me; Even though some of them leave the session because they DON'T want to learn anything. They would RATHER go on the site and look for a tutor that would give them the answers and see which one is going to give them a shortcut approach. I understand that mentors can't get on the student, but if the tutor is doing his/her job, they shouldn't be given a hard time and shouldn't have to take the blame when they just want to intentionally leave. Some on these students don't know anything how to calculate p-values, find the rejection, t-test,z-test,finding alpha,etc and it frustrate me when a student leaves the session because I know how to do it by hand and not using a software. One of the students I really like working with is Briana, even though she uses a software to calculate the answer and she doesn't know how to do this by hand she says that "I am very informative and patient and rates me as a favorite". Another student named George has also said that I am informative and patient. Another matter I would like to say is that most of these abusive student comes from Southern New Hampshire University and on my first day on the job I had to tell off this rude student named Kaia because she was rude to the previous tutor and he transferred her to me. She told the previous tutor "If you don't want to do your job and take the time to explain then yes please transfer me to somebody who might" The previous tutor told her " I'll transfer you, but if you don't respect the tutor, they may not help you either. It is not our job to do the work for you"."You need to be prepared beforehand".When she started being rude to me I thought I handled that professionally, but I saw the error of my ways, so I changed the way I handled things. Some of these students abuse the tutors intentionally and think they can get away with it. Even if you block a student from the site because of their behavior. They ALWAYS come back. If you don't want the frustration I would recommend working somewhere else, It's not worth it. And as for that Kaia girl good riddance! Because she as nothing but a rude attitude and when she told me she didn't care if I think she has a attitude and don't like it. I ended the session because I don't have time for this back and forth nonsense.

The Princeton Review and Tutor.com have predatory hiring practices and are generally terrible to their tutors.

First of all, no matter your experience, your starting pay will always be in the 10 dollar range. I have been promoted once at this job and my pay only rose to 13.50 an hour. This is significantly less than students or universities are charged on every plan where it's 40 dollars per session. The mentor system is unhelpful and focuses on negatives to ensure you get beaten down and don't make more. As other reviews have covered, you are completely disposable here.

You are required to get certified for quality insurance. This is great, but the certification process really highlights how poorly tutors are paid. Likewise, there's no paid training. You are expected to train yourself. If you do not, then you will be evaluated and have subjects that you can teach eliminated if you aren't fired completely. I got async sessions eliminated in college essay writing because I frequently went a few minutes over session to provide quality feedback. I had perfect marks everywhere else, but was penalized for going even slightly over the time limit.

This practice ensures that tutor.com does not have to pay for new hires by training them, meaning that they can have rapid and instaneous employee turnover and not care about the standards or well-being of long and short-term employees alike.

Also, there's no interaction with anyone besides your singular "quality specialist." This person writes reviews for you about what you are doing wrong. This is the only feedback you will obtain. There's no way to communicate with fellow tutors, meaning there's no way to negotiate pay increases or properly unionize to demand better payment for what counts as specialized work.

Tutor.com likewise doesn't feel any pressure to change. They hire quite frequently, and fire just as frequently. Truly, they are a company that has taken advantage of the vulnerability of those unemployed during COVID-19.

I would strongly suggest not working here. Take any other option you can. If you can't, then understand that it's temporary when you feel like an underpaid cog in the wheel when you're desperately trying to teach an area you aren't certified in to a student that's fighting you for less than 10 dollars. Personally, I feel humiliated working here and insulted as this is a horrible way to wait for PhD funding.

I would love to give this company five stars for working there, but there are some problematic structural issues within the company that prevents me from doing so. I don't expect perfection, but I do wish that their system was established in a way that would help their tutors thrive.

Okay, the first thing you need to know about working with Tutor.com is that the training they offer is on your own time, and they expect you to read through pages and pages and documents and documents. This makes it difficult to know exactly what they want, and they use this to their advantage. You become competent enough so that you don't get your account closed, but the "quality specialists" approach feedback on an error basis rather than providing feedback to build skills. The lack of standards they have make it difficult for anyone to excel within the company, and that's how they like it. The less they have to pay tutors to work, the better it is for their bottom line. Make no mistake: you are a freelance tutor there, and you are 100% disposable. After a while, you begin to understand that this is their attitude, veiled through polite communications.

Because their standards are not clear for everyone and the quality specialists are there to make sure they find every single mistake you make and then go off on a rant for it, they then give you a demerit on your evaluations.

It seems I'm not the only one who noticed this trend. I was hired right before the pandemic hit, and while they handled things fairly well through this arduous challenge and supported the tutors well throughout it, I noticed something happening this semester: they couldn't fill their schedule for beans. I'm serious. They claimed it was because of the increase in demand, but they also expressed that they were going to start closing inactive accounts. I suppose many others were just sick and tired of feeling undervalued.

The reason their tutors feel undervalued is because of the way they evaluate the tutors month after month. The quality specialists never, never, never, never, never, never, never, NEVER, evaluate the tutors for their strengths. NE-VER! The tutors might get satisfactory marks on their evaluations, but the evaluator will then go into long, long, long explanations regarding ONE session about what they perceive the problem was, and the feedback is rarely completely on target. There are really ten thousand things that could go wrong in a session, which includes their classroom running inefficiently, and they always take that as the tutor's problem rather than a difficulty of working within their problem-ridden platform. So, it's insulting when you do everything right on every other session, but then they pick up on one little thing that might be slightly off, and they don't ask what happened or why, and they give you a demerit for that skill. Plus, the tutors have NO VOICE in this process. It's all one-way. No questions are asked. They are not interested in hearing from the tutors, ever. They will run a survey every so often, but don't trust that you will stay anonymous. I have had too much experience with other companies. I've seen people get fired over their answers to surveys! The quality specialists simply go through your sessions, pick something out, go off on some rant about this one mistake they think you made, and they do not discuss it to maximize learning, and you just wind up looking like garbage.

As you can imagine, trying to survive as a freelancer at this company is frustrating, and the work environment is highly negative. You are constantly on edge because you know that if the evaluators even perceive an error, they will give you a low ranking on that skill even though you did right 100 times in 100 other sessions.

Honestly, I have worked for other tutoring platforms with excellent training programs, top-rate, actually, so I have an excellent point of comparison, so I hope you will find value in my observations so you can see I'm not just leaving feedback to hurt the company. This is something that every single person considering working for the company should take into account. If you're already working for the company, no, it's not just you! Others go through this too!

There was one company I work for where they provided paid training, and you have a trainer working with you one-on-one and helping you through the process. They have extensive training for their asynchronous and synchronous sessions, including a two-hour training for their audio-video sessions. The culture is a culture of inclusiveness and sensitivity, so instead of hammering away on a perceived error and marking your entire performance as unsatisfactory for the entire month, they instead look at what you did correctly and then add to your knowledge by going over the basics again, highlighting what is important and what to prioritize. They spell out their procedures so that you know what your responsibilities are for any given scenario. They cultivate the best environment for both students and their tutors. The people who trained me had been with the company for over a decade, every single one of them, so they were able to provide me not only with procedural knowledge and expectations, but also advice on how to approach problematic student behaviors. It was great because I felt like I got to work with an expert, and ALL of these trainers literally bent over backwards to ensure I would be successful. I was overwhelmed with gratitude, actually. It is easy to thrive in a company like this, and I have been! I'm doing extremely well there! Their company is filled with excellent, skilled professionals who all seem to have stellar communication skills. It inspires me to be excellent too! I really see the care they take in taking care of the students, and as a result, tutors are allowed to express caring to the students too, and to be excellent. It's difficult to fail with such as strong team of trainers. Plus, there is always someone available around the clock to ask questions during your shifts.

On the other hand, with Tutor.com, you really don't get any of this, and they just can't seem to get it right. They provide a few basics in their manual, but they literally throw the materials at you with what seems like several thousand other documents and then expect you to read them on your own time. With knowledge dispersed over scores of documents, it is really difficult to know what the company chooses to prioritize. It looks like it's all just thrown together. With the knowledge of your job dispersed over scores of documents, leaving you to pick through their document library on which ones to read, mentally, this sets you up to believe that they don't really have any priorities for tutors to focus on during their tutoring sessions.

But then, the quality specialists come in, and instead of emphasizing a unified concept of the skills and goals for how every session should be, they begin to pick away at you for every single mistake, which is disheartening and discouraging. This is the chosen approach from the top down. The type of feedback you get is that out of hundreds of sessions you might have for the month, they will pick out one or two mistakes and then give you the lowest mark possible for that skill. This method of critiquing is systematic and consistent for the entirety of my tenure there. It leads one to believe that they really aren't interested in your success.

This poor attitude filters down to the students. It made me so sad when a student stated, "You know, you are the first tutor here who has ever provided me a compliment for my work."

The other effect of the department's poor culture, attitude, and organization, which again points toward the top, is that their expectation for covering materials during the sessions are completely unrealistic. They really expect tutors to cover the moon and the sun. My quality specialist overemphasized the fact that I am just slow, slow, slow, slow rather than detailed, thorough, and ensured student understanding.

Let's compare another company to Tutor.com again so you can see that their system is not productive. Another company I worked with clearly defined what to cover in each asynchronous session. You take this approach every single time for each session, and expectations are realistic for everyone. Again, easy to succeed here and become an excellent tutor. Not so with Tutor.com.

So, if I were to compare the two companies I covered in this review, the one that provides an extensive training program with realistic, unified expectations is like being in a classroom with the best, most supportive teacher in the world. Working with Tutor.com is like being in a classroom with a teacher who loves putting kids in the corner and making them wear dunce caps.

OVER PROMISE UNDER DELIVER - THE ONLY THING THEY CAN GIVE YOU IS ANXIETY AND STRESS FOR AN ALREADY STRESSUL SITUATION

Complaint Submitted

Your complaint has been submitted and assigned the ID XXXXXXX. For your reference, a copy of your complaint appears below. You will also receive an email with a link that you may use to view this complaint.

The complaint is being handled by the dispute center listed below. Please contact them with any questions.

Better Business Bureau Serving Metropolitan New York (New York, NY)
30 East 33rd Street 12th Floor
New York, NY *******
*******@newyork.bbb.org
Web: http://www.newyork.bbb.org

I initiated my intial complaint against Tutor.com and they gave me my credit minutes of 26.3 back for this complaint and against another tutor at Tutor.com.

Hello,

This is old. My new complaint has been submitted regarding Alexander S. I will continue my complaints. I had these issues during my college algebra and let a lot of stuff slide. This time I am holding any tutor and Tutor.com accountable. I am still waiting on my credits. Alexander S did the following:

1. Used t chart instead of z chart.
2. Used t formula instead correct formula
3. Lied about using tech for calculations when he openly admitted to using tech at the beginning of session.
4. Deliberately made problem confusing and extended time needed to work a simple calculation.
5. Used up 33.9 minutes in order to make his money.
6. I have mentioned during every email correspondence that I have no access to the ticket link.
7. Made three attempts at speaking to Lauren Lodell at Tutor.com including today 08 April 2015 at 09:10 this morning. I left a detailed message on Ms. Lodell's voicemail.

Thank you.

Tutor.com ignored this complaint against Alexander S and refused to credit my minutes back. They still owe me the 33.9 minutes of tutor time back. Tutor.com and Lauren Lodell kept sending me ticket links that would not give me access to them. My complaint today April 21,2015 is regarding Tutor.com deliberately blocking my access to my remaining 5 hours and 32 minutes ( I am owed 9 minutes for waste trying to gain access). I connected to Caleb M (calculus) just to prove my account is blocked. Caleb M connected me to Omari P (statistics tutor) who could not receive my uploaded document which was also blocked access. Tutor.com is upset that I complained and will continue to complain about their lousy tutors and service. Tutor.com also complained to Post University which is my college where I study statistics as if Post U would discipline me. I am now owed a total of 42.9 minutes of tutor minutes back to my account.
The following message is the response about my first complaint. Tutor.com never addressed the complaint regarding Alexander S, credits minutes still owed, or my blocked account.
On Wednesday, April 8,2015 1:40 PM, "*******@tutor.com" <*******@tutor.com> wrote:
TlCKET *******
Ticket *******
Hi
A Tutor.com Support Associate has responded to your request. If your inquiry is now resolved, you can click Cancel Ticket to the right. If we receive no response from you after 3 days, this ticket will set to Closed status automatically.

To update your ticket, you may directly reply to this email or click the link below:
https://support.tutor.com/helpdesk/WebObjects/Helpdesk.woa/wa/TicketActions/view?ticket=*******. (NO ACCESS TO LINK W/LOGIN OR PASSWORD)
Add Note Cancel Ticket
On 4/4/15, at 12:59 am, unknown] wrote:
Name:
Phone:
(first complaint) I logged in on April 3,2015 for a session with Ahnaf M who wasted my time/minutes and could not help me with my statistics problem I uploaded as a paint copy. I want my 20.3 minutes credited back to my Post University account. Thank you.

Tutor. Com owes me a total of 42.9 tutor credit minutes back to my Tutor.com account which they also need to un-block which was a deliberate act on their part. My complaints continue...