TutorHuntReviews 136

I have been a tutor on Tutor Hunt for 5 years and gained many leads from them. However, at the end of last year I got a notification of a change to the terms and was told that I would be charged 25% commission for every student gained. It appears that this is unjust as the commission service is only applicable to new tutors who signed up in 2019 onwards. I am now stuck on a high fee and will probably get no leads and have to go elsewhere.
To top it off Tutor Hunt don't bother replying to support emails and they can't even pick up the phone to remedy the situation! Appalling treatment, avoid at all costs!

DO NOT USE THIS SITE AS A STUDENT OR TUTOR!

After tutoring with this website for almost 6 years, they suddenly changed all their terms and conditions without warning and now charge a 25% commission on top of tutors' fees for every lesson that you take through their platform!

This is TERRIBLE for students because it means every time you buy a lesson it'll cost you 25% more than if you just went directly to the tutor. It's TERRIBLE for tutors because it means we have to take a massive loss on our earnings or we're forced to put our prices up and then likely miss out on picking up students. The only people it benefits is Tutor Hunt themselves.

As a long term user of the site, I have 11 five star reviews and have taught so many students through them over the years. I emailed to ask if anything could be done for tutors such as myself who are suddenly being forced to increase their prices drastically to keep up with this change - or to continue tutoring at a massive loss of earnings. They were short with me and didn't offer any help or apology!

I'm beyond disappointed with their service, after the amount of custom I must have brought them over the years. I'm also very upset about the amount of money they now want to take from tutors and students alike. The only thing I can do is complain unfortunately as they refuse to discuss the matter further.

PLEASE AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

Firstly I would like to say I am sure this site is legitimate and there are genuine tutors willing to help. However my daughters experience has been far from positive as the tutor which I paid a fee of £23 for has no subject knowledge of what we require (this was not brought to light before we purchased their details). Following a rather unusual phone call the tutor has now sent an abusive email. I fear this is instead of admitting lack of subject knowledge. As a result I would say stay away from this site, however this could be an isolated incident.

I've been listed as a tutor on TutorHunt for about 8 years, and while it's nowhere near my primary source of clients I do get a small number every year and have also been discovered and given work by two agents through this site.

However over the last couple of years things have started to fall apart and revealed that their customer service and general attitude towards Tutors is prohibitively weak. There was a client who decided not to pay for her lesson and TutorHunt didn't so much as put a strike against her account when I contacted them for support. Then they decided to threaten my verified status and ask for new references despite having been an active tutor for so many years.

And now, the straw that led me to write this review:

I received an email a week or so ago saying my DBS was out of date and I needed to submit a new one. I wrote back and explained that my DBS has been registered on the Update Service all this time so they would just need to adjust their records accordingly.

Today I received a reply saying that they didn't have the means to do this. I replied saying that would be fine as long as my profile reflects that I have a valid and current DBS until they fix their system.

The reply I then got was a flat out refusal to do anything about it.

I've been using the DBS Update Service for 3 years. The system itself is at least a year older than that. TutorHunt should have been set up to work with it long ago.

It is extremely arrogant to suggest that an official system by which tutors maintain a valid, current, and paid for DBS certificate is somehow not worthy of TutorHunt, and bordering on fraudulent to show in the profiles of Tutors with DBS certificates that they do not have them.

The effect of this will be to alienate experienced tutors as only new tutors will have DBS that was first issued within 2-3 years and clients will understandably be reluctant to approach anyone else.

This will result in clients being misled into avoiding engaging the best tutors available.

Tutor Hunt
I would suggest that for unsuspecting future tutors and especially for the students who express an interest in their services - you make your procedure clearer/ more transparent on your website. In other words that you, Tutor Hunt:
- add commission on each and every lesson (in my case 25%)
- do not allow initial meetings to take place free-of-charge
- expect a series of lessons to be booked in advance before the student/tutor have even met.
I am truly shocked by my experience and have requested that my account be deleted.

Not enough charging £30 for student-tutor matching.
They charge 25% from every lesson fee.
Students are not allowed to pay directly to tutors, but must pay to tutorhunt who after charging 25% transfer money to the tutor's bank account.

They also try to cheat you by claiming on their home page: "We do not take any ongoing commission from the tutors like many agencies do, as this invariably leads to the tutor raising their hourly rate, and passing the cost onto the student.".
But in another page they write: 'We charge the student your hourly rate plus commission, which will be between 15% and 25%.'

What kind of joke is that?!

This website was good before, as they just took £20 per matching student-tutor and no other commission. Having gathered clients they started robbing them.

This is an absolute scam, they did not invest a penny, the website user interface have not changed for the last 10 years.

Avoid!

I purchased the details of a tutor via the site and booked a class, I emailed the tutor with full details of exactly what I wanted to cover prior to the lesson. However, the tutor waffled and wouldn't follow the materials that I provided saying that he was teaching *real* programming then insisted on tutoring me on a topic that is of my competency level at this time. I then followed the lesson up with an email, again explaining what I wanted from him, he responded saying that this was ok, but if I wanted to learn programming (!), then I would be better following his technique - He couldn`t detail any specific issues with the syllabus (I don`t think he`d actually looked at it) though, just that his meandering waffle was better.

Since I am a glutton for punishment, I then hoped to book another lesson with Bruce and after 10+ emails full of miscommunications / misunderstandings, all compounded by being forced to book through TutorHunt`s archaic system, I gave up.

I telephoned the administrative office to deal with a payment issue; the website requesting more money despite having already paid, and was continually given the runaround.

Go elsewhere to find tutoring.

I had a very bad experience with TutorHunt.

A student purchased my contact details and we spent three hours discussing the pricing and duration (due to the huge workload and urgency, which I had to cancel my other appointments on the day), then we finally made a decision.

Student did not show up, been waiting for an hour at the agreed time and location. Wanted to demand a small deposit before the meeting but this violates the TutorHunt's terms and condition, so I didn't do it. The student left a very untrue and negative feedback on my profile, which was permitted by TutorHunt. Saying I misled him into buying my contact and tried to scam him for more. This is ridiculous, not only did I make no profit from the student. I even had to cancel my other appointments for him. I lost time and money, as well as my reputation for something that was completely untrue.

Unfortunately, TutorHunt did not look into the case even though I have filed three reports regarding to this matter.

Don't use TutorHunt! Protect yourself and go work for a legit tutorial centre.