Marty W.

I registered onto Wyzant, and answered all the ads that were sent my way that I felt I was qualified to tutor. This company charges you to do a background check on yourself (of course, that's supposed to be an indication of your credibility), but I wrote the background check company, out of curiosity, to see what they turned up on me. I NEVER GOT ANY ANSWER from them. The company name is "Abso", I believe. I'll bet no background check was ever done on me at all. Wyzant just pocketed the money (a background check should cost about $8-9.00 but their fee was much, much higher than that). And I haven't even gotten to the % they take from any job I got from them.

Secondly, I was a comparative literature major, so I took their literature exam and FAILED! That was because it was designed like a test for a survey history course. Instead of asking about the meaning behind a classic work of literature (even giving the testee a multiple choice answer for ease), they asked quetions like "who wrote_____?" That's absurd. As a comp. Lit. Major I had to take at least one course on all the changing periods of literature, starting from the ancient greeks up to the 20th century. It covered things like the literature of the Age of Reason. I even took a course on the European Literary Influence on the Modern Hebrew Novel (400 level) and was the only non-Jew there! I took it because it interested me. There is so much out there, if you just count American literature, and who the heck cares who wrote it? Literature is a work of art, and the point is why was it written! What's the meaning behind the work? Whether we're talking about Hawthorne or Jean-Paul Satre, it is the purpose of the work that counts.

Oh, shortly after I made this observation, I was banned. I complained and was given my access back. Then a "tutee" scammer hit not only their site, but me too. I almost got taken for $3,000 because the company does not do any checking on the people who fill out the billing information. All they did to him was ban him from the sight. First this company wrote me a letter complimenting me for giving them the information about the scammer, and two days later I was banned for bad statistics.

I've had students who wanted to sign up with Wyzant who also wanted to avoid paying their prices and asked me to agree to tutor a student without working with Wyzant. I turned that person down and she found another tutor who was cheaper. I had another person contact me from an airport, asking for writing lessons, then paid Wyzant, but never got back to me. I wrote him several emails through Wyzant (I had no other info. On him) and got no answer -- what was I supposed to do? I also had a student who originally contacted me through another, cheaper site, but being a foreign student, she could not contact me back through that other site for some reason, so she entered herself into Wyzant, found me and asked me to tutor her. I advised Wytzant of this, which they never answered about at all. But 2 days afer I was praised for the scammer, I was kicked off the system again. The contract states that I can pick and choose who I take on as a student, but all of a sudden my ratio of student acceptance to student initial contact was too low. I complained about this series of coincidences, but was told that there was no way they would let me back in.

Well, I will tell you: I ran around in circles trying to cash that phoney check from the scammer who contacted me on Wyzant, so since they don't check up on their potential students, it was all in vain. I was saved by MY BANK, who called the bank of the fraudulent check writer and found out there was no money there to cover the check. So my BANK saved me -- Whyzant specifically states that they do no checking of students billing information in their contract.

To me, it was a close call, and I would never work for them again. If they're gonna make so much money on me as a tutor, they should be obliged to do a check on the people who submit billing information. I did not take up two other offers because I accepted the fraudulent student on Wyzant. And I certainly got nothing out of it!