Tutor turned up at my house at 9.45pm over a negative Google review – what would you do?

[Booyou123]

Hi everyone

I’m still quite shaken up by this and would appreciate some thoughts and perspectives.

My son attended a private tutor for about a year at the start of Year 5 for the 11 plus exam. After we stopped using her services, I left an honest Google review based on our experience. It wasn’t abusive or offensive, just a negative review.

The tutor was extremely upset by it. She repeatedly called me and my husband, sent so many emotional voice notes and messages, and even contacted my sister-in-law (who also has used her tutoring services) multiple times because she knows her. She told my sister in law that if I don’t take the review down, she’s calling the police as I am violating her business.

The part that has really terrified and shocked me is that she then turned up unannounced at my house at around 9.45pm. She was banging on the door and windows, demanding to speak to me about the review. She was absolutely hysterical, crying and sending me messages begging me to take the review down.

My children were in the house and ran upstairs because they were scared. My son was crying and very frightened, and asked why his teacher was there banging on the door.

I called the police afterwards and was advised to document everything. They couldn’t deploy anyone as they had some major incident in Woolwich, London. They told me that if there were further incidents, the behaviour could potentially amount to harassment.

Since then, she has sent a message apologising for coming to my house, saying she will never do it again and won’t contact me further.

What is bothering me most is that she only knew where we lived because of her professional relationship with our family. I can’t get past the feeling that using a client’s address to turn up at their home over a Google review is a huge breach of professional boundaries, maybe even DBS and goodness knows what else.

Part of me thinks I should just accept the apology and move on. Another part of me feels this was so inappropriate that I should take it further. She’s a woman who runs a professional tutoring company, and she was completely unhinged.

What would you do in my position?

I would update the review to include details of her behaviour.
Any parent who is going to leave their child alone with a tutor needs to know this.

Before doing this I emailed and spoke to the head regarding my concerns and they were effectively dismissed. I don’t want anyone’s child to effectively experience what we have, and therefore I wrote my review. I wrote the parts that were positive and the parts that were negative.

Is the 'head' the head of the agency and the tutor who came to see you- ie the same person?

Some of these replies absolutely baffle me!

If i had a bloke who provided a service and then rang multple times after a negative review, let alone came to my house at night, and then posted on here, there would be a lynch mob ready within the hour and volunteers to post even more reviews than trip advisor.

Its shit than the tutor has a business that can be so badly affected by reviews, but that also means she has a standard of behaviour to meet. Harrassment is not one of them.

Bloody Hell OP, that's nuts!

Absolutely unacceptable for her to turn up at your home freaking out the way she did, especially as your son got upset. Personally, I'd want to be warned about this woman's behaviour if I was thinking about using her services so write another review telling what happened.

She shouldn’t have turned up.
BUT
You shouldn’t have left a bad review. I don’t buy the fact that it took you over a year to realise.
Somethings very off about it/you.

Unless we know what you said in the review OP it’s hard to judge whether she overreacted. Given your unwillingness to share it must have been pretty scathing and damaging. Of course she was wrong to turn up at your house so late at night etc but she must have been badly affected by what you wrote. Perhaps think about whether the review is worth ruining someone’s career and mental health over. If it were me in this circumstance I’d feel guilty and take the review down, unless she’d done something especially egregious, criminal or scandalous.

Tutors can provide accurate communication for those paying for their services. A review detailing that accurate communication was not provided is useful for other parents who might buy this service expecting that to know.

The OPs post was specifically about response to review after direct communication had been tried and failed. The response was clearly extreme.

it is not clear if the head was the tutor whether these sessions had been online and so the head/tutor knew your home address as a regular visitor or only knew your address from registration/invoicing. If the tutoring was online it would be especially for the head/tutor to turn up at your home. I can understand that you didn’t pick up calls or return 15 missed calls. You need everything in writing.

There isn't any point, but we seem to have reached a position where some see anything except wholehearted praise as victimisation or worse

Again - and if this is an exception - one bad review among mostly good ones isn't going to harm anyone, so we can only wonder why the tutor's reaction was so severe

I honestly think I'd want to report to LADO, she is unstable and massively inappropriate

id also add to the review that she reacted this way to your words

@CocoaTea

A few points from your post.

1. I've worked in 5 independent schools now. The majority of parents do think they're paying for results. The higher up the price range, the more they expect. It is very hard to challenge this attitude as a teacher.

2. As a tutor, I've learned to be very upfront with parents. I under estimate the grade I'm predicting because otherwise, the outcome is a version of what the OP did with their tutor. However, this upfront-ness is very unpopular. This year, one parent said to me 'All these lessons were to get him an A*. Why are you not predicting this?'

3. I appreciate the cost of tutoring. I pay more per hour for DC's tutor than I earn per hour.

4. OP had a year of tutoring with this tutor. IF she was so unhappy, why did she persist with a tutor that was doing a bad job? I appreciate it takes a few weeks to bed in with a student. But after a month or so, anyone involved with the process would have an idea of how things were going.

5. And finally, while the parent may have sunk a lot of money into the tutoring, it doesn't equate with a review so excoriating that it tarnished the tutor's reputation so badly it affected her livelihood. Even a teacher undergoing capability has a chance to put things right/work through it/defend themselves.

The OP is a teacher. She really should have had an idea way before they were a way in if things weren't going well. It's her child. Why was she not tracking his progress?

I don't think it matters what she said - they always have the ability to respond to a review and say 'this review is entirely inaccurate, please contact me if you have any concerns'. Every business gets a bad review eventually. Turning up at someone's house is unacceptable.

There should be no onus on the OP to answer a phone - the tutor had no idea if she was busy or not.

Ots unclear that it was about his provress or perhaps she discovered the tutor had been lying about the process/progress. How is it the OP’s fault?

I actually think this is a good idea. LADO will also look to the OP as a parent/teacher and at the actual review which I suspect is a lot worse than the OP is letting on. LADO also work to protect the professionals facing unwarranted (or maybe not entirely fair) allegations.

This thread is nuts. Even if OP had written an absolute shittogram for a review, something that was nasty and scathing, it would still have been unhinged for her to turn up at the house.
The nature of my work means that I get a lot of online reviews. Getting the occasional bad review is par for the course. If it's a genuine one, I'll take on board but tbh people are nuts online. They'll give one stars because they had a bad day or got you mixed up with someone else or maybe they're just a CF who got told no.
It's normal. Most people know this. Thats why a single bad review isn't such a big deal. If you've got plenty of good reviews too, customers look at the whole and make a decision on that.
The fact that she reacted like this when her business involves children and she turned up at that child's house, is a massive issue. And frankly, doesn't matter whether the review was reasonable or not.

You post is confusing @Booyou123

She was 100% wrong but you aren't saying what you did.

You said you spoke to the 'head' (I assumed you meant at your child's school!) but then it appears this tutor is the head of the agency she runs as she also tutors.

Yes, agencies usually take addresses of students. They need that to verify payment and if , of course , tutors are coming to your house.

I think there is a mismatch here.

You left a review which was meant to help other parents.
She read it and thought it would end her business.

That's a BIG difference.

If you had concerns, it would be wise to talk to her directly first either to iron out your concerns and give her a chance to remedy those. Or to end the tutoring.

I think you needed to be careful with reviews if they would make her unemployable as a tutor. It sounds like it was a very bad review if she was came to your house in a rage.

A minor bad review IME would be:
A niggle over timekeeping (if she turned up late for face to face lessons.)
If she gave too much homework- or not enough.

A bad review would be :
If she had an aggressive and unkind manner towards your child.
If she didn't know what 11+ demanded and the tutoring was at the wrong level.
If she was unreliable.
If she appeared disinterested, unprepared, etc.

Is your own judgement at fault here for posting something you should have spoken to her about months ago?

She was 100% wrong to do what she did, but without more details it's impossible to know if you crossed a line between 'helping other parents' and destroying someone's business.

I left a review on a digital used car salesmans site. He called me ad told me to take it down or he'll come to my house for a "little chat" very threatening. Contacted the police.... nothing has happened!

OP, maybe her husband has just lost his job, maybe her parents aren’t well, or maybe one of her kids, maybe she’s going to lose her house.

her reaction is unhinged and suggests there may be more going on.

if she has run a tutoring agency successfully and you were with her a year, your review obviously hurt.

im not sure you’re being fair.

once again we have on MN just one side of the story so while you can get an echo chamber of people saying “she’s nuts” we’ll never know the full story as we don’t have both sides. Only yours.

For the sake of everyone’s mental health, I’d leave things alone now. You’ve obviously caused quite a dent in her life.

If she’d wanted it taken down there were better ways to go about doing this, there’s no denying that but then we haven’t seen the review, have we?

so how can we judge?

I wondered the same.

Honestly, there is little point in hiring tutors for 11+, so many parents spend a heck of a lot of money on that to no avail. It's far better to do a bit of work at home with your children, there are aids online for that purpose, and past papers. Cultivate an atmosphere of fun learning without pressure.

I think it is scandalous that primary schools don't do the correct preparation these days; regardless of whether or not the children actually do the eleven plus it is basic stuff. I never had extra tuition for eleven plus and neither did my son, our schools taught us what to expect and we had regular tests leading up to the exam.

The tutor was well out of order to turn up at your house shrieking, when you do a job like that you have to take the rough with the smooth. I know somebody who privately tutors, she does maths and physics to A level but earlier on she tutored some children for 11+ and Common Entrance, gave that up because of unrealistic parental expectations and it was such a thankless task. Extra lessons are often too much for young children, I know I'd have hated that. When school finished, apart from a bit of homework, I wanted, and needed, to do my own thing.

Yes, particularly after this passage from the OP:

My issues with her tutoring were directly something I experienced and my son. I believe there was a lack of transparency, poor communication and not being clear about his learning journey and timeline.

You are assuming that the review was so bad it ruined the tutor’s/manager’s career (in 3 hours!). Maybe it just wasn’t a 5* review. From a previous post it appears that any negative review is challenged by the head until removed.

Just maybe the ‘challenge’ was blocked because the OP ignored the 15 missed calls and voice notes and threats to involve the police (why?) and so the person used to getting their own way then drove to OPs house to confront her about the negative review she had left 3 hours ago. You can’t (even if you tried) ruin a career in 3 hours.

If she only knew the address as a result of a business transaction this is even worse.

The manager is 100% in the wrong.

If she had contacted you by email or phone, not at 9.45pm, explained how your review would impact her work and asked you to reconsider what you'd written, how would that have worked for you?

Would you have had a re-think?

I think it is often better to leave no review rather than risk destroying someone's livelihood- which is what your thread suggests.

My issues with her tutoring were directly something I experienced and my son. I believe there was a lack of transparency, poor communication and not being clear about his learning journey and timeline.

But communication is two-way. Did you ask questions? Were you actively involved? Why did you allow 'non-communication' to happen?

If her behaviour was so bad, other parents would have discovered it sharpish.
If you had some minor issues, they were not worth mentioning.
And you would have ended the relationship far sooner not after a year.
It comes over as spiteful behaviour not done out of concern for other families.

BUT she was very wrong in how she reacted.

how many stars did you give her @Booyou123 ? You could really destroy her entire business with a bad review.

You don't seem to know what "slander" means.
How good or bad the review is is irrelevant- for the accusation of slander it has to be untrue.

Slander refers to verbal false accusations. Libel is for what is in writing.

So the message here I’m getting from most posters is if you’ve had a shit service you should stay quiet in case you harm someone’s business?

if someone has a business that can’t withstand an occasional shite review they should probably pack it in anyway.