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’m sorry, but that other tutor is out of order. Firstly, you’re not responsible for someone else’s reaction. Your review comments are useful for other parents based on what you shared here. No chance I’d be removing the review after everything. And as for not knowing what she’d do next, I’d merely keep a diary & report her for harassment if appropriate. She’s an adult. She needs to accept feedback, not just positive.

What an absolute lunatic! I'd be leaving another review so parents know she'll turn up at their homes and cause a scene if she's unhappy with their review.

It's commonly known that we cannot please everyone, all the time. You shouldn't be soliciting reviews if your mental health (absolutely ridiculous) cannot cope with negative feedback. Feedback sites attract all kinds of reviews- justifiable or not.
What you cannot do, is intimidate your customers when you're displeased. This is absolutely unacceptable; and you're not being unreasonable to be alarmed by this, OP.

You and your child have had a close, personal relationship for over a year. It sounds like she thought everything was fine up until this review. I’d think twice before posting such a scathing review for all to see which could potentially ruin someone’s livelihood. She obviously has her side of the story and maybe thought if she approached you face to face, woman to woman, you could resolve it as adults. This has come across as unhinged on her part, but I wonder if she actually was, or was she just upset? Actions have consequences!

Do not take your review down! You’re a paying customer who has had a negative experience. You’re entitled to share that experience.

For someone to tell you to remove it because of the tutor’s mental health is putting the burden on you. If she’d ran her business better and didn’t push parents to shell out more money for bad tutoring, she wouldn’t be in this mess.

You’ve done nothing wrong, she’s been completely unprofessional and actually behaved disgustingly. If her MH is so bad that she’s doing this, she shouldn’t be working with kids.

The tutor was ridiculous.

However if you really are a teacher at primary level, you should be very on top of what your son knows about maths.

There are some things in your posts that puzzle me.

You should have monitored his progress not simply doing the homework with him but also checking the lesson content and his understanding against the 11+ exam content.

You should also consider that if he's not working at the right level now, it may not be the tutoring that is at fault- he may simply not be able to pass the 11+ no matter how much extra input he has.

Not your responsibility.

Slander is spoken. Libel is written

Nonsense.

You don’t what the OP is correct it’s her perception doesn’t mean she is right. We don’t know what she said in her review. Must been pretty bad for to distress the tutor so badly.
think before you post in future you only have one side of the story & you don’t know if that is true,

Let's say a male plumber did an inadequate job of a new bathroom, and a Mumsnetter posted a critical review. Said plumber consequently pestered her and her family with multiple phone calls, and then came to her house and hammered on her windows. That mumsnetter's thread would read very differently.

Women shouldn't get a pass where a man behaving in the same way wouldn't.

This!

And send the police all the documentation you have already, OP - the voice notes, evidence of the frequency and tone of contact, and the contact with your relative.

They should visit her and have a word.

This does sound worrying and unprofessional.
You are entitled to write a review of your negative experience ,although without seeing the review specifically its difficult to say wether you were unreasonable in that part but she certainly was unreasonable to come to your home,ranting,crying and frightening you and your family. Particularly as you had expressed your concerns to her and not reached resolutuin.A bad review isnt a police matter.
You mention in one of your posts that the tutor charged additional extra fees(£1000s) for intensive lessons on maths that should have been covered already in order to push up your sons marks up, if i had been told that my child needed that much extra tuition to get through the 11 plus id be questioning wether Grammar school was right place for him tbh. When my DD did the 11 plus 8 yrs ago, we werent familiar with the level of intense tutoring that better off parents pay for,my DD did practice papers at home for a couple of months before the exam and passed really well so this all sound overkill.

So you’ve never complained about poor service , ever?

Your thread the other day was about leaving negative reviews on Google and Facebook about a football party company @Booyou123

Maybe keep off the review sites in future?

OP says that other parents were also suddenly faced with extra costs for work not covered. This doesn't sound like a 'her son' problem. It sounds like an inadequate tutor panicking at not having covered everything, and trying to make more money out of her error.

Some people get a bit of a power trip about leaving negative reviews. Once they come knocking on the door over it, it's probably better to give review sites a swerve for a bit.

Im Just as confused. She said she was tutoring the child for a year so was that at home or another setting. Now she refers to her as "head". I feel sure that what ever she said has had a real impact on the womans business so explains in part the behaviour. Im not saying it was right but we dont KNOW what was written for other clients to see

I think this is all the more reason people need to know. If she is this unwell she shouldnt be alone with children.

The behaviour shows recklessness and poor judgement.

She needs some help

This is such a shitty take.

This 100pc
OP, depending on the reasons for the negative review and how it was documented, the tutor may have every right to be upset.
Of course she should not have turned up at yours but it was obviously in the heat of the moment.

I don’t get how this is costing £1k a month! The vast majority is what the child should already be learning at primary school, and to be entering them for the 11+ they should be naturally academic and in the top 10% of their class…BEFORE embarking on tuition.

The tuition should just be a top-up and helping the child get used to the specific way the tests are presented, and being under exam conditions.

If spending £1k a month, that a LOT of tuition hours…and your child is still behind on maths…either your child isn’t suited to the level needed, or the tuition isn’t being provided, or the tutor hasn’t been honest about your child’s abilities. It sounds like you have been royally ripped off by this tuition company, and that your child is spending excessive hours on additional tuition. If it’s this much work/struggle to get ready for the 11+, how is the child going to fare at Grammar School?

Sometimes it’s better for the child’s confidence and mental health to be top of the class at a comp, rather than bottom of the class at a Grammar.

As for the additional ‘charges’ that yourself and other parents have been hit with, I think what you have picked on is that the tuition company have a policy of purposely under teaching the maths element, in order to create more work/fees for themselves when they claim all these kids are behind. They know by the fact that you are paying £800 a month that you are both desperate for your child to pass, and have significant spare cash…so they’ve engineered this situation to push you all further. I suspect there was talk of “X isn’t likely pass the maths exam without Y amount of extra support, and X will have put all this work in, and parents would have gone to all this this cost…only for him and you to be disappointed etc…but it will all be fine if you pay us another £200 a month”.

She’s also completely out of line by contacting your sister, her dispute was with you.

The other tutor, who you didn’t tell about her behaviour, contacting you to make excuses on her behalf is also not on. I can almost guarantee that person was sent there by the original tutor, they have realised trying to intimidate you into removing the review isn’t going to work, so this mental health claim is just another tactic. It’s like the partner who says “I’ll kill myself if you leave me” to stop the partner from being able to make their own decisions. Anyone who tries to contact you about it, I would just simply tell them they the dispute is not with them so you aren’t going to discuss it with them.

More than anything, I’m shocked at how much you have spent on tuition.

I disagree.
Some children are placed under undue stress and pressure to fulfil their parents expectations.
Pushy parent syndrome comes to mind.

Sounds like the tutor is not providing an adequate service and it then squeezing desperate parents for more money on the hope she'll provide a better one.

I don't blame you for putting something out there to alert parents its not the best company to use.

But I think given her response - irrational and unhinged was followed by an actual apology and that she will leave you alone, you should do the same in so far as leaving her alone.

You’d probably class me as a serial complainer / I make an effort to leave honest reviews whenever something is bad / not as described. I also do section 75 claims where possible, because I’ve been fucked over so many times.

i also give positive reviews for every single positive experience I’ve had. Sadly they are just fewer than the negative ones.

service levels have decreased enormously since Covid.