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?

Have you updated the review, or posted a new one, with her subsequent behaviour? Parents really need to know what she's capable of so they can protect their children.

@WhatHappenedToYourFurnitureCuz I haven’t. Now that I know there are mental
health issues involved, I don’t know what else she may be capable of and I also need to protect
my family. She has my address and that’s unnerving. Yes, it may be a one off and she may never return but my actions are not
going to based on that maybe/if.

I know I have a responsibility here to report her behaviour, and I’m grappling with that because my first priority is the safety of my family.

Totally understandable, a rock and a hard place. Maybe a compromise is to tell your parent friends what happened and hope it gets round by word of mouth?

Honestly, the way this thread has gone is exactly why I no longer post my problems on Mumsnet. People here are just crackers these days accusing the OP of all sorts for no good reason

To be honest, I didn't see the OP's second lengthy post with more detail and that changes things a bit for me. Keep the review up then, but maybe leave it after that? Unless she comes for you again that is.

Ok. I'm trying a bit of balance here.

I was a private tutor. I had teaching experience, a PGCE, a degree, and a master's degree in my subject. Plus other qualifications; I was also an examiner in my subject. I had a DBS too. I knew what I was doing.

I was on Tutor Hunt. Other sites are available. I had to supply all of my qualifications and DBS before I was accepted. I set my own hourly rate. Parents could browse and select a tutor on the site. I think they then had to pay to get my details. Then they contacted me. The site provided my phone number and email address. They knew where I lived. This was OK. The parents then gave me their address and we arranged a tutoring time. I taught the kids at home. I visited their home, it was expected. I taught each student individually and tailored the lessons to each tutee. I remember going to teach a student who I had been teaching for English language and changing it to a literature revision lesson because that was what he wanted. The parents paid me at the end of the session, we usually discussed what had been covered and how things were progressing. Then we arranged the next lesson.

At no stage, ever, did a parent request tuition for an exam 4 years hence. OPs child has been having tuition for years. The hysterical tutor was not his first tutor, within 48 hours of the debacle he has got a new tutor that he is thriving with.

Tutor Hunt has now changed how the system works and a lot of individual tuition is now online. I think the parents now have to pay the tuition company who pass it onto the tutor. However, that is how it worked for me.

I have been researching local tuition companies and how they work. One man works from home and has lots of good google reviews. He teaches 1:1.

I think OP was using a tuition centre. I am going to use Kip Mcgrath as an example. Other centres are available. She has repeatedly failed to explain why and how a 9 year old child was taking himself to lessons at an undisclosed location with a teacher that she hardly knew. She has repeatedly failed to say what input his school had in the process. School teachers would usually highlight areas for improvement.

Kip McGrath is a franchise. The manager/franchisee has to pay £15,000 - £23,000 in order to set up the franchise. Then they have to pay a percentage of their earnings to the main company. They also have to pay rent and business rates for their premises and pay any staff, together with income tax and national insurance. Anyone with experience or knowledge of a franchise knows that it's not a great process. The franchisee rarely earns as much as they expected. The overheads are usually higher than expected. Many franchises fold within a few years.

The kids attend the tuition centre without their parents in attendance. They are taught in small groups. They are given worksheets which are provided by head office. For me, that is glorified homework, not individual tuition. I don't know how much communication there is with parents. The whole business model is dictated by head office. I would not want to be involved with this, either as a tutor or as a parent.

I looked at Kip McGraths reviews. They use Trust Pilot. I think that this is a better way of collecting reviews than using google. There were a lot of 5 reviews, a smattering of 4 reviews and a fair few 1* reviews.

I imagine that the tutor is struggling in some way. Her pupils are not where they are supposed to be. We don't know why. Something has gone badly wrong. She may have financial issues too. The bad review was probably the final straw.

As said, I wouldn’t take the review down.

I would escalate to Dept of Education, DBS and the police and do her for harassment and abuse of the Data Protection Act / GDPR for using your information to come to your house and do what she did. I would also contact the ICO too.

As you have CCTV, I would personally be inclined to log the incident with non-emergency police. If anything else occurs the evidence is already logged. But that depends on whether you think there is genuinely likely to be any further issues, or whether she ‘just’ lashed out and responded badly.

The OP has paraphrased her review and explained what happened. For peivacy reasons it is not sensible to “post the review” for your delectation. This is completely obvious and reasonable. The tutor’s rage and violent outburst were unreasonable regardless of the imagined provocation.

She shouldn't be allowed near children at all. She obviously has problems.

Exactly!

She didn't threaten the children. She banged on the door. OP didn't answer the phone calls or the knocks on the door.
She hid behind the sofa like a little kid. Although she was big and brave on her Google review.

That tutor is lucky you didn’t update the review about her inexcusable evening visit. She should be grateful, as you could have done that, and she would never have a client again.

OP hasn’t paraphrased her review, just informed us that it was fair.
Likewise, we don’t really know what the tutor’s ‘violent’ behaviour amounted to to. Looking at likelihood, it’s more likely’ that OP is exaggerating.

Years ago , one of my children attended a tutor agency and every holiday we got offers for expensive intensive courses, which we ignored.

As OP stated on another thread that her son has LD and started 4 hours coaching weekly at the beginning of of year 3, I think what’s most likely is that he’s been recently assessed and not done well enough to likely succeed at 11 plus. She was then offered top up and got upset about spending even more.

This would fully explain why everything is so expensive and why she’s furious about investing so much, yet he’s still unlikely to pass. ( perhaps due to LD).
Tutor then furious that she’s worked so hard with DC over the years.
Tutor attempts to contact OP multiple times. OP doesn’t respond, so tutor goes to house and taps on window. OP still not replying so tutor ends up shouting through letter box’I know you’re in.’

All makes sense, huh? Also explains why OP doesn’t divulge any info as it would hangs the story .

Hopefully that will be a lesson for you in RTFT then, before repeating yourself endlessly expecting other posters to indulge your personal fantasies about what may have happened. I take it you can't actually manage to apologise.

This thread is everything that's wrong with Mumsnet. Even one of the top 3 snidiest posters on the thread accusing someone else of being snidey. Fierce competition on this thread!

OP, you have handled all of this perfectly well. I think you can see well past the fuckwittery and fantasy of those who attacked you. You left an appropriate review. This is what reviews are for. I hope it will all be quiet and uneventful from now on. Shame your thread turned into such a cesspit.

It is astonishing that you think what the tutor did was at all acceptable. Talk about victim-blaming.

OP, I have worked as a consultant psychiatrist for almost three decades. This woman clearly cannot regulate her own emotions, to put it lightly. Even if your review was a complete lie, her reactions were absolutely inappropriate. I would worry about her being around children quite frankly.

You are not responsible for her mental health. She absolutely needs to learn how to manage emotions and people around her need to put in suitable boundaries, esp in response to her threats.

If for example, a patient wrote a complaint about me to my trust medical director and thus threatened my career, I would be upset. Would it be okay for me then to look up the patient’s address and go to their house, bang on their door at night and ask them to retract the letter they wrote to the medical director? Of course not. I would be hauled over the coals quite rightly for that kind of unprofessional behaviour.

Some people here really have lost the plot. And for the ones employed in jobs with responsibility like a tutor, I am shocked that they are defending the tutor at this point. All because of one negative review. Very worrying really.

You are quite the fantasist. ‘Tapping’ on the window and shouting through the letterbox is still appalling and unprofessional behaviour. It is astonishing that you would defend this. Have you ever been employed?

Mate, if someone doesn’t respond to multiple attempts at contact you don’t go round their house and shout through the letter box
I seriously hope you’re just being provocative and you don’t actually go round doing that.

She has paraphrased the review. It's on this thread.
It's really weird to just make up stuff like this. What do you get out of it?

OP, the thread is coming to an end. I just wanted to reassure you that if on the slim chance this woman was to harm herself, it would absolutely not be your fault. She may well have some issues that she needs to work through. I suspect that the more likely outcome is that she is currently mortified and embarrassed about what she did. She will probably be harder on herself than some of her supporters here are being, and unlike some on MN, she would recognise that what she did was unprofessional and inexcusable.

Anyway, I wish you a good outcome for your son and hope you feel safe at home again.

I totally agree with your sentiment that she cannot regulate her emotions. I have screenshots of her messages to me saying ‘Pls Pls Plssss take the review down’ at least about 15- 20 times whilst crying outside my home. Only when I said I’d consider it did she leave, until the apology came later then evening.

To the poster who mentioned the driving incident, that’s actually terrifying and I’m so sorry you had to go through that. Also sorry you had to deal with nasty comments and abuse.

I have realised (after almost a 1000 comments) there may be scope for a Netflix documentary or some TV documentary about crazy reactions to reviews. I’m sure there are definitely
more stories, and perhaps there needs to be greater moderation in place to protect consumers and businesses.

Also, I can’t remember which poster said it, but to weed out the tutors who are scamming parents is also very important.

Quite. Having a spirited online debate is one thing. Creating your own imaginary version of events just so it suits your argument, is another behaviour quite entirely!

WTF? 😳

Sad to descend to ageism.

What’s biting you?

Thanks @KnitNot I know you’ve been active in this thread throughout and I really appreciate the solidarity and the kind words 💗