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 think you need to amend your review and mention her behaviour. She sounds dangerous.

Try reading the thread.
Seriously.
You'll have a lovely surprise!

I work in education. Google "Lado" in your area and report her

Belief in the truth of what is said or written is often a sufficient defence.

Criticism is not libel.

Anyway I just received a phone call from another tutor in our area (who knows me and our other tutor) who knows what has happened last night (I didn’t tell her) and has requested me to take the review down as this banging on the door tutor has lots of mental health issues and this could significantly affect her.

@Booyou123 I wonder whether working with children is a good fit for her if she's so unstable. I wouldn't want to leave my child with someone who reacts the way she did to the review.

You don’t think other people should have the opportunity to read honest reviews from past customers in order to make a decision about whether to use someone’s services?

Yes, it can ruin people's livelihoods.

You need to take this further @Booyou123
Mental health issues or not, she's behaved unprofessionally and misused your personal information to attend at your home in the late evening. I'm pretty sure if you or I did that then our regulatory body would have something to say about it.
Keep the review up if it's factual and accurate. Also look at whether you can report to the school safeguarding team or LADO. You aren't destroying her business or career but you are protecting children, which as a teacher you have a duty to do professionally I think.

Some people have shit businesses though or shit service. Why shouldn’t other customers be warned before they lose their money? Why should they continue to have a shit business / shit service?

People have lost money, jobs , their health, their livelihoods or even their lives due to shit service from businesses.

I will be in the minority here but bad reviews can ruin people's livelihoods. How bad was she that you'd had her work for a year?

I love that you're asking that question while also telling OP she shouldn't describe her experience classic MN

I think she's completely unreasonable but why are people saying she's unsafe to work with children?

I don’t understand this attitude. If people are providing an inadequate service we shouldn’t tell other people in case it means they don’t use the service any more?

I'm sorry what the fuck is going on in this thread?!

I am utterly appalled that there are people on this thread who think that the wronged party, the person who was harassed over the phone and at their own home should be the one feeling like they did something wrong?! Do some of you not read back your comments and think, hang on, all this lady did was leave a negative review, she does NOT deserve this, the tutor should try and resolve this by normal means - responding to the review, asking her to take it down, and then moving to legal routes if appropriate. It's not OP's responsibility to have to manage another adult's mental health for them, especially someone who is basically a hired contractor.

Regardless what you think about tutors, OP's spelling and grammar, the fact that you personally think it's some sort of moral failing to leave a negative review, that being a 'pushy parent' is bad for the kid - these things are completely irrelevant. The tutor should not have turned up at her house ranting and railing.

And - while this is also irrelevant - if this tutor happened to be a man, I just know those of you being snidey towards OP wouldn't be offering all the reasonings and softening of language in the same way.

@Booyou123 - if you're still about, I'd sit on it until the weekend is over. I personally wouldn't want to remove it but I would understand if you ultimately did that. I can't really say what I would or wouldn't do because I haven't been in this situation.

As a teacher did you not stop and think that £800 a month of maths lessons was excessive and that even with this amount of maths, if he is still behind.. that maybe he is absolutely rubbish at maths and you should not just forget this excessive maths tutoring and focus on his other strenghs.
800 a month is batshit in itself.

I dont think it's possible to know without you telling us what the problem was. How can we know if the review was fair or really wide of the mark. It could be anything. She might have been lazy and useless. She might be unhinged. But,equally, you could be a nit picker, unnecessarily critical and unpleasant. I dont see how anyone can come to an understanding without all the facts.

What were her voice notes and her shouting saying last night? Was she upset/threatening/unhinged. Did she make sense? What was she saying and asking?

I can understand how a bad review can be upsetting but I equally think if you err running a business you need to have a thicker skin than one bad review having you hysterically banging on the door of that person's family home late at night knowing kids will be in bed.

Personally I would not take the review down.

Hopefully in the cold light of day this tutor is mortified by her ott reaction and will apologise.

Sounds like your child isn’t grammar school
material and you are blaming the tutor that she can’t achieve miracles. Not sure why you would even need a tutor if you are a primary school teacher yourself so I’m guessing you couldnt get him to the required level yourself

I don't think she's safe to work with children...she turned up at the door of an ex customer, banging and hysterical. She made the children scared and cry.

She thought that was acceptable behaviour. Or she knew it wasn't acceptable behaviour, but could not keep herself in check to not do that.

That is not someone who I would trust to work one on one with my child

"cause and effect"???
What planet are you living on?

Cause and effect is:
Parent had concerns, spoke to tutor about them and they weren't addressed
Effect: disgruntled parent leaves a negative review.

If you're not happy with a review you write a response on the review platform. You don't pursue the dissatisfied customer via phone, email and turning up at their house!

@Booyou123 I wouldn't take any further action now, she has apologised let it go (unless she escalates further of course).

So she is self employed and you wrote a review that could destroy her fairly fragile business. She’s not IKEA, that stuff is damaging.

She shouldn’t have shown up at your house, but clearly she has MH issues. Unless she was dangerous, I would take a bit of pity and take it down. But maybe feed back further to the other tutor.

i just don’t get the need to destroy a business with a crap review just because it wasn’t the right fit for you. Just move on.

No matter what ops review said, she did not deserve someone turning up at her home, hysterical and banging on the door, begging her to remove the review

The woman should have responded to the review with her own views and comments if she thought it unfair or didn't agree.

Nothing justifies her behaviour. A professional should never show up at a customers home in that state

This is the problem with our terminally online society. Everyone thinks their review is so very important, and “the people hauf tae know” culture. It lacks nuance and reason.

Largely, reviews are opinions. That’s all they are. When you read them, often they make no sense at all. How can one person think a service is fantastic and another think it should be avoided at all costs? In that scenario, the business is the constant and the main variable is the person using the service. Things which are really important to one person can be of no consequence to another. For example, I’ve been to hotels which are fantastic places but really bad for accessibility. I don’t leave negative reviews for them but I will note in my review that if you are a disabled traveller, you might want to try somewhere else.

When it comes to leaving a review for a small company, someone running their own business, online reviews can be very, very damaging, even if only one is negative. If you have 5 excellent reviews and 1 wholly negative, a 5 star rating becomes a 4 star rating. Human nature will lead people to read that negative reviews first. In a scenario like the OP’s, how well they perceive the service depends on the performance of their child. My daughter had keyboard lessons at a music school and after 6 months she hadn’t progressed at all. We changed her to a 1-2-1 instructor and she came on in leaps and bounds. I could have left a negative review of the music school, but more likely, she did better because the new setting suited her more. That’s nobody’s fault it’s just a fact of life. The same is true of tutoring. Some kids do well with it, some do not.

Without knowing the detail of OP’s complaint and the content of her review, it is impossible to tell what the actual problem was. The response to it seems unusual if it was a genuinely mixed review, giving an honest critique. One would think if there was a serious problem with the service, others would have left similar reviews. The bottom line is, unless a has completely ripped you off, put you in danger, or was so poor you feel others are 99% likely to experience the same, just keep quiet about it, chalk it up to experience and learn from it. Anything else is venegence.

And it sounds like the tutor has completely ripped the OP off.

@TheresMillionsOfGeoffreys If you can post the actual review, please do.

I can see a summary of what she wrote but it's not the review itself.

It's her explanation of what she wrote. I read it and copied/pasted it into my previous post.

OP wrote- The following is what my issues were and what I communicated in my review:

'communicated in my review'.
That is not the review itself.

Do not be guilt tripped into taking that review down. I think you’ve been fair in what you have described to us. It sounds like she’s using this trick to force parents into paying even more money, a scam. She was completely wrong for turning up at your home.

I was unsure on whether I would take it further in this situation. Then I thought, if it was a man or a school teacher I absolutely would. So why wouldn’t I in this case, just because it’s her own business? The wellbeing of future children she may tutor comes before her business. I would write another review giving an honest account of what has happened following the last review.

It sounds like she needs to step away from tutoring, have a break and focus on running the business from the sidelines instead, for her own wellbeing if nothing else.