Tutor.comReviews 47

I recently had a bad experience at tutor.com I emailed them twice without any response. I went through two tutors one of them said he did not know how to do it. The other had to leave in 2 mins. I retried and got the same tutor at the beginning and suddenly he said I know how to do this. HE DIDN'T he taught me all over the place and we only had 8 mins left. AFTER THE TRIAL, GO TO SETTINGS AND SUBSCRIPTION AND CLICK CANCEL MONTHLY PLAN, THEY WILL BILL YOU $80. DONT WASTE YOUR TIME. I have tried it a couple times with different credit cards, I didn't complain the first couple of times because they didn't teach that bad, but after this situation I have had enough. The first time I signed up, I didn't want to make a big deal, but know after consistent tries to finding the right tutor, I COULDN'T FIND ONE!

I worked there for more than a year. I was fine until they changed mentors and the new one had no idea how to teach at anything above a kindergarten level, but she was criticizing my college level sessions. My ratings among students were sky high, I had great rapport and I know my stuff. They didn't care. The nitpicking never stopped. I really think it must be run by a bunch of daycare workers making money on the side.

I could go on for days about how terrible this site is but I'll list a few things:

1) The tutors kept passing me up as they thought my math was too hard. It's first year university statistics.

2) Waited 2 weeks to book an appointment with the highest rated math tutor. He literally typed he "wasn't feeling it today" after eating up 11$ of tutor time staring at the question and logged off.

3) I cancelled my subscription (as it was garbage). They continued to charge me for 2 months.

4) I demanded the money back since I was told my account was closed. They said it was a computer glitch, apologized and paid me back LESS than what was stolen from me! Like I wouldn't notice because I'm queen of the money factory!

Just a terrible experience.

I set up an account and scheduled a mock session. Then couldn't log in to prepare. Checked my user ID and password to be sure problem was not on my end. Tried to log on throughout much of the day. No online help, so I called. Person on phone was polite but didn't know why my user name and password were no longer valid. Took my contact info and informed me the Tech Desk would investigate. Next day I received an email that they had all the applicants they needed for my subject area so they just closed my account. I can't even check for other possible subject areas because my account was closed! I wasted too much time! There HAS to be a better way (advise applicants by email but leave their accounts open for other subject areas?) to handle an excess of applicants. I would rate tutor.com a ZERO if it was possible.

What a joke! Tutor.com makes up stories to reject their applicants. I was rejected for lack of content knowledge and I have not even completed a mock session! I had issues with my microphone and got it fixed, in which, I notified them about it and then scheduled another mock session. The next day, which was a couple days prior to my newly scheduled mock session, they send me an email telling me I am rejected due to lack of content knowledge. How is a faulty mic related to lack of content knowledge? What a complete waste of time. I am an Author of 9 published books and a senior student in a bachelors of Arts in English academic program. I lack no knowledge and to Tutor.com, stop telling lies and tell the real reason why you are rejecting applicants, which is due to you not being able to afford to hire tutors!

Tutor.com charges their customers more and pays their tutors less than many of their competitors. They always ask tutors to log on because of high demand but do not offer any incentives (bonuses) to do so. In fact, now they've put a daily hours cap on tutors who work in places where the minimum wage is higher than what they would like to pay (and what they do pay many tutors) - although this is still less money than what many other sites pay all their tutors. Even when there is high demand and not enough tutors available to meet that demand, they will not lift that hours cap. That is, they would rather have customers wait ridiculous amounts of time (some students have told me up to 2 hours) than pay their tutors minimum wage. This is frustrating for both tutors and students. As you go on, managers will require tutors to ask more and more irrelevant, time wasting questions and use more irrelevant, time wasting tactics in tutoring sessions. This is probably because they care more about the students buying more time than they do about using the time efficiently and learning as much as they can. The script tutors have to follow is so convoluted, patronizing, and inefficient that students will naturally be dissatisfied. They have ridiculous time limitations which just annoy students and make it very difficult to give them the help they need.

I've been working here for a few months. I got upgraded from a probationary tutor to a Tutor I within one month, and have found >90% of the students to be excellent. A good place to start out tutoring online, and it seems like for the students a decent place to get quick online tutoring. My mentor is knowledgeable about the material and how to teach it, though I have to say there is not much oversight apart from the student reviews. All in all I would recommend to potential tutors and students.

We signed up in a moment of desperation for a chemistry tutor. I could tell immediately it would not be a good fit and cancelled the same day. It took four months of billing and multiple replies to their emails to finally cancel.
Their customer support is extremely poor and quite frankly, rude.
As I said-the tutor seemed fine but endless your child is independent and able to manage this type of tutoring, I wouldn't bother. You will endure quite a fight just to cancel.
RM

Respected Manager,

This to let you know, that i am extremely annoyed by the way your system works. Your system rejected my job application because i am not a US citizen. If this is your main criteria why is this is not the first check on the website but the last. You ask me to be available for you and give a 2 hour test answering you 50 questions and you reject me based on my location? It is a serious concern.

If you want US or Canada residents only, why is there even an option for you to ask me and let me select another country in the form. I meet all your criteria except my location, and this is not acceptable, being disqualified at the third stage.

I want a prompt response, as if you are unaware, this is bringing a bad name to your company and fetching bad reviews.

Thanks & Regards
Diwesh Saxena

Passed test - waiting to do mock session. 4 tries and THEY have declined 2 sessions (wouldn't schedule though it shows the time is available) and 2 sessions cancelled day of session (the last one an hour before we were to begin. You can't schedule again for 24 hours so they wait to decline or cancel so you can't get another appointment same day. If tutors are supposed to give 24 hr notice WHY don't mock session leaders have to give 24 hr notice? NOT happy so far.

I use to work at tutor.com. First, for the student, it is probably a good place. For the tutor, there are better places out there. First, the scheduling is an absolute pain. And, the main office knows it, and they refuse to do anything about it. Second, for example, if you have 99 sessions rated as good or better, but you have that one session marked bad, that could just be from a typo from the student or just a crazy student, the mentors and supervisors will brand you as a poor tutor. If the tutors treated their students like the mentors treated the tutors, there would be no students left for the company. The mentors talk constantly of being positive with the students, but they are constantly negative to the tutors themselves. Some students feel negative just getting an incorrect answer; we are suppose to be held accountable for that? I even had a supervisor tell me that, with a statement I made during a session, the student "could take it as being negative". "Could"? We are suppose to be held accountable for what a student could take as negative? Sorry, not for me.