Avoid paying tutors upfront

[newzealand68]

We have had a really bad experience recently with a female tutor working in the Surrey area. She worked for us for a few months and we noticed her level of tutoring was deteriorating as well as the fact she kept leaving the sessions early. Stupidly we used to pay her a month in advance. During the middle of Nov we had to tell her she was dismissed as she had failed to turn up on two weekends, giving us crazy excuses. She said she would repay the money she owed. Guess what - she hasn't and she won't. She says we don't deserve it!

She has sent very nasty abusive emails.
PLEASE DO NOT USE A TUTOR WHO INSISTS ON BEING PAID UPFRONT - find another.
We have decided not to tutor our daughter any more due to our experience with this dreadful tutor.
We feel very cross at ourselves that we were ripped off by her.

Hopefully new this is a one-off.

My friend is a tutor and let's people pay as they go so to speak. They mess her about something rotten sometimes. Cancelling at short notice for rubbish reasons etc.

I'm a tutor and I always charge 6 weeks upfront now. I've learnt from experience that if you don't, people will mess you about to a truly staggering extent. I've often been left sitting waiting with lessons prepared, and children then don't turn up, with no phonecall and no offer to pay for my valuable professional time which they had booked, and which I had set aside for them. Of course, it depends on the tutor. If they're any good, they won't cancel unless ill, and then would replace lesson asap or offer refund.

YY bramble I understand all that from what my friend said.

I realise there are some excellent tutors out there who are messed around by clients. Sorry, do not want to put down other tutors - you do an amazing job! We just feel very upset at the moment as. We do not have money to throw away. We always gave a lot of warning if we needed to change our session, but unfortunately out tutor abused our kindness. I am sure she is a one-off.

Reading with interest. Am trying to find a maths tutor is surrey.

I've heard that Tutor Doctor are very good - charge a bit, but have heard good things. I am sure you not will be unlucky as we have been. Have many friends who have their children tutored for school entrance exams and they are shocked by her behaviour. Just avoid a tall female youngish tutor!

Agree that it isn't good for this tutor not to turn up.
However I don't think the problem here is the advance payment - it's the lack of a clear cancellation policy.

what's wrong with some tutors?

I started thread on Secondary Education (and got excellent advice there) about tutor claiming my daughter caused damage to his sofa!

I wish there was a way to establish that tutors are following some code of conduct.

I have been using tutors for music and singing for years and none have ever caused any distress to me or to my children.

We had a tutor who suddenly went AWOL before DD's AS level leaving her in the shit. She didn't turn up to a planned session and didn't return phone calls, texts or emails. I thought she had died or suffered a serious accident but she is still getting 5 star ratings in on First Tutors. I complained to them but all they could do was offer me a free intro to another tutor. I am still fuming. She is employed as HoD at a school I cannot believe how vile she was in doing that to us, she always seemed so nice. West London area.

small claims court?

I think as crazymum said, the problem sounds like it is due to a lack of a clear cancellation policy. Also, did you let her know earlier that you were becoming dissatisfied with her service and why? This may have given her the chance to rectify any problems you may have been experiencing. She may not have realised you had a problem for example, with the length of the sessions and may have perceived that you were canceling her out of the blue?

I don't usually insist on up-front payment except in certain circumstances, for example online tuition of overseas students is always paid in advance, or where people have been unreliable in their payment. However, the problem with a PAYG type approach is that you can be wondering around with a lot of cash at any one time and you have to make time to go to the bank with it. Keeping records for HMRC is also more cumbersome when you have lots of small cash payments. I therefore think it is not unreasonable to ask for payment of a months lessons in advance (and some people prefer to pay this way IME), but a clear agreement as to what is owed by whom on cancellation without notice is essential.

Has she contractually not delivered what she said she would? If she hasnt then I would go to the small claims court.

I used to tutor. I had the opposite problem.

I once did a couple of weeks intensive (3 hours per day, for 2 weeks) tuition. They didn't pay me half of the the £800 I was owed, and at the time tuition was my sole income.

Until eventually I threatened to take them to small claims court. Then they eventually paid me about 95% of what they owed (knowing that I wan't going to quibble about the remaining £20, it wasn't worth the effort). The mother

Unfortunately, whilst 99% of tutors are genuine and won't mess you around, you got unlucky. Equally, whilst 99% of clients are genuine and pay up immediately, a tiny minority mess us around. So therefore whilst I personally tended to not ask for money upfront, there are very good reasons for doing so.