WyzAnt
Reviews and Complaints

Having explored various reviews about Wyzant.com, it's evident that the platform offers a mixed bag of experiences. While some users have praised the expertise and dedication of certain tutors, others have faced challenges with unreliable tutors and poor customer service. It seems that the platform's business model and vetting process may need improvement to ensure consistent quality across all tutoring sessions. If you decide to use Wyzant.com, it's advisable to carefully vet your chosen tutor and manage your expectations based on the diverse experiences shared by users.

I have been a tutor on WyzAnt for 3 1/2 years. I was in the lowest tier (receiving 60% of my wages) for 4 months. The first job was the hardest to get. I tried several different styles in my response. I did not reduce my rate; I do not believe it would have gotten me my first student faster. After my first good review, accepts came in faster. WyzAnt is a great value. It provides the structure, documentation, a separate Email system (I'll get to that later), tax documentation (including mileage), and potential students, One of the mistakes I made in the beginning was to state my first and last name on some of my job replies. Because of this, a few of the "students" (their parents) "found me" and called my home directly; One stalked me. WyzAnt's strict policies protected me thereafter. Don't get me wrong. I will, after establishing a working relationship, exchange phone numbers and let some know where I live (tutor from my home), but initial meetings are normally at a public place. I am now at the max rate. If I get a new student by word of mouth, I still use WyzAnt. I like the centralized control of my business and find it easy at tax time to do my own taxes. It is now [protected] (I updated the title), I still use WyzAnt, even for new word of mouth students. I have hidden my profile so that I don't get inquires that I cannot handle.

The first words that come to my mind are THANK YOU! I am a single mom who got hit by the economy hard and has to re-invent myself due to my chosen career going by the wayside. Therefore, I enrolled myself back in college to start a new degree, new career and Algebra was going to be the downfall of all my plans if I did not pass! After I had done and re-done an assignment over and over until I realized I had done the same problem over seven times and still could not understand the work and therefore could not pass it, I decided to find a tutor. I found Jon who was prompt in responding to me and quick to set up a time to meet in order to help me get through this very stressful assignment. We were able to set up a time within days of my contacting him. When we sat down to go over what I needed to know, he was very patient with me and made me feel at ease. Jon's approach to the assignment was straight- forward and thorough; the algebra problems didn't feel as they were such an enormous task as they did when he walked in the door. When we were finished with my first lesson, I felt as if I would be able to move forward in my studies by myself and was not so intimidated by the work ahead of me. I would highly recommend Jon to anyone who is having problems understanding math. My only wish is that I had contacted him sooner! So, as I said in the beginning, Thank you Jon!
P.s. - I PASSED THE TEST THE DAY WE HAD OUR FIRST LESSON!

As a 20-year college professor, I have used all of the Learning Management Systems (LMS) available. WA uses Blackboard, the best LMS, for online learning. As a result, all subject-matters can be covered effectively using pedagogical and/or andragogical methodologies.

When students state they are seeking in-person/local sessions in their post, tutors outside their geographical area do not respond. When students state specific learning objectives that they want to achieve, tutors who can meet those particular needs will respond. General posts such as "need to learn computer science," or "want to learn law" will receive responses that may or may not meet their exact needs.

While Lynda.com boasts criticism of Professors in Higher Education, along with. Posts from their tutors that exhibit a severe lack of subject-matter knowledge and skills, WyzAnt.com (WA) showcases the qualified and expert tutors it employs. WA ensures positive learning experiences, and provides excellent support to both its tutors and students.

WA provides and manages all resources necessary to connect students to excellent tutors, including procurement and allocation, payroll, legal, administrative functions, etc., so that tutors can focus on managing their projects, and prevail in helping students meet their goals and achieve success. Their management in these areas is very much worth the percentage WA charges.

WyzAnt.com is an outstanding company for both students and tutors.

I found a great local tutor via WizAnt for my son. I see some customers are hesitant to provide billing info before they can get tutor's phone number. I was ok with that, may be because I spent more money than the tutor from WizAnt was asking per hour, to just check out 2 other tutors, who were not a good match. If you are willing to pay for work, it should not matter: we provide billing info for all types of purchases all the time, not knowing if it will be a good buy. I was a teacher myself, and know that this work is not easy, and deserves to be paid for. Also, you are NOT charged till your tutor loggs in session date/ time/ description, and you rate it. I also hear that the commission WizAnt is getting from the tutors' rate is quite high, starting from 40%, and depending on collected tutoring hours goes down to 20%. It does sound high. But if Tutors do use this company for marketing, I think it suits them. They do have an easy to use website, which pops up in a top 5 companies, providing similar services. The tutor I was connected to by WizAnt is very professional lady, her commute to my place is very short, and the rate is affordable. Sessions are logged in by the tutor with the short description of content, and time. My tutor is very good about providing exact session timing, I am not worrying about overcharge. You can see all charges on-line. So far I did not have issues with customer support (had to call to make sure my new billing info is available, so payment is not overdue). With the growing competition, I hope, WizAnt will lower the % it takes out of the tutor's rate, otherwise as a customer I am satisfied with WizAnt services so far.

I have been tutoring for Wyzant a little over a year. At he present time I am tutoring as much as is reasonably possible. I have only secured 2 students on my own (4 hours per week), but through Wyzant I average about 10 hours per week.

I have seen complaints about the amount of money that Wyzant retains from the sessions. It does decrease as your accumulated hours increase. At the present time I am at the top percentage of pay. Using Wyzant has been a really good experience. I don't need to market myself, or worry about collecting my fees. All of this is done for me. Anyone that complains about the fee that Wyzant retains forgets that it is a business and a business does need someway to make money.

As for students not responding to email, parents can go out and review your profile and decide if your rate is within their budget and if you have the right skills they require. If not, they don't bother to respond. The reverse is also true. I have been contacted directly through Wyzant after parents have gone out and reviewed my profile.

The tutor needs to market themselves on Wyzant to maximize their students. I reviewed other tutors in my area to see what rate was being charged for comparable skilled teachers. I also ask my parents to leave a write up if they feel that I am doing a good job. This written commentary appears in my profile along with my rating. If your ratings are not good from parents, then you need to take the initiative to inquire from the parent what they feel you need to do that you are not. It is the tutor's responsibility to respond to job postings in a timely fashion (since they can be filled quite quickly), prepare for the sessions, and openly communicate with the parent beyond the session write-up. Just waiting for Wyzant to "drop" a job in your lap is unrealistic.

I've been working with Wyzant for almost two years. I have been distressed to see that some people think it is a scam. It is NOT. It is for people who want to be self employed. It doesn't work by magic. You have to do your part. But it gives you a venue to find people in your area looking for tutoring help and for them to find you.
Wyzant provides the links between tutors and clients, and then it's up to you to correspond and see how you'll fit together. It's true some people don't put their payment schedules in, and so the computer will not let you exchange phone numbers.
Unless you are trying to go around the system, which is unethical, this protects
Both your privacy and the clients. Wyzant takes a portion of your income, but they also set up payment schedules for the client and for you and you are able to teach without having to worry about payment all the time or be embarrassed by it. And they send you a 1099 if you earn over $600 in a year. You get tested, posted, given a blog site and review site so clients know your performance. Some clients are short term,
Some long, but there is constant posting of people seeking help and people desiring work. I kind of found Wyzant by accident, but couldn't be happier with them.
But truly you have to work at contacting clients. Thing is, it's all set up for you.
If you're good, you may get word of mouth business. But it's not good if you're just going into it for the summer, for instance. It takes time to build a clientele. I want to be self employed and love tutoring and so for me it's a great fit and their services are worth the percentage. You have to understand how it works, though. They connect to you and prospective clients and do the billing and income tax and give you this great venue to put yourself out there on the market. I hope this helps some of you who
Are frustrated with it.

I started with WyzAnt tutoring in March of 2013. It took about 6-8 months to get my first regular solid clients. Once I did, my positive evaluations and word of mouth reputation started to grow my business. My expertise lies in math and science, as I used to be a pharmacist, and there are a broad range of subjects I can help with. It was always the educational side of pharmacy that I enjoyed the most, and now I get to see light bulbs go on in people's minds and understanding take place on almost a daily basis. This does my heart and soul so much good!

WyzAnt provides all of my referrals, and takes care of the business end of things, which I know that I am not very good at. They have handled numerous issues with aplomb, and I always get my direct deposit payments when they say they are coming. I have express pay with them, so I receive payment about 5 days after I enter lesson reports. This means I get paid something almost every day, so I have a nice source of cash flow.

It turns out that I have logged in over 900 hours of tutoring with this company, and I have the honor of being the second most successful tutoring record for the year so far in the Cincinnati/Dayton area for WyzAnt tutors. They recently invited me to join their online platform, and I just gave a pharmacology lesson to two nursing students in other parts of the country because of this! I expect this side of the business to grow slowly, as the local tutoring originally did, but I intend to gradually pull in my driving radius so that I can still serve communities close to me in person, but cater to more students by giving lessons online.

If you have a marketing niche (as I do) and if you follow WyzAnt's Terms of Service rules carefully, it is possible to help many students and make a living doing so over time. I am so glad I accidentally found WyzAnt's website two years ago!

Michelle in Mason, OH.

I am not a staff member of Wyzant, as one reviewer suggested all 5 star ratings were. You can find my tutor profile on Wyzant to verify that. I am genuinely baffled by the low reviews and honestly trying to understand it.

This review highlights my experience, but maybe my experience is abnormal, and the company is a scam. I can only write what I have personally experienced.

Since Wyzant puts a lot of money into advertising, they are the first tutoring website that popped up in the search results when I looked for ways to become a tutor. After creating my profile, I saw all the horrid reviews of Wyzant, and so, I went ahead and created a tutoring profile at 6 other tutoring services.

Within a few days of creating my profile, a member of the Wyzant team personally called me to congratulate me for being selected to tutor for them, and he wanted to make sure I understood everything.

Within two weeks of posting my profile, I had 4 consistent clients and over 10 hours of tutoring, and it won't be long before I have over 51 (with my 4 consistent clients), and so my commission rate will drop to 30%. So by the time I need this to be lucrative( in September when I no longer am teaching), I will be making more money with a lower commission rate. I actually have to turn clients down because I can only take on so many hours while I am still finishing up the school year as a professional educator.

So, I am really confused by the low ratings. Yes, they take a high commission, and it really could be lower, but they do so much of the advertising for you that it makes sense their commission would be higher than other places.

I am baffled by all the low reviews, and I can only think of three reasons why:

1) The people writing these low reviews tried to be dishonest and take money from the clients, thus, avoiding wyzant commission, and wyzant found out and let them go, so they are ticked. Don't be dishonest, people.

2) They weren't successful as tutors, and they blame Wyzant. The thing is they might be really good tutors, but they might struggle with presenting themselves well through writing, and, unfortunately, with an online profile, you have to know how to write well.

3) Wyzant is really a scam, and right now, they are making me feel good with all my the business I am getting, and then all of the sudden, they will delete me, and I will see it is a scam. But for now, my experience with Wyzant has been quite positive, so I am going to trust that rather than some strangers on the internet who may just be ticked off for a variety of reasons and going on a rant.

(Like I said, the negative reviews may be true. I have only been tutoring for Wyzant for a month, but as far as my experience shows, they are a great company to get started in the tutoring business)

As a tutor, I've had a very positive experience with WyzAnt for over two years. With Wyzant, when I meet students or their parents, the only topics we need to discuss are educational topics.

It's true that when a tutor begins with Wyzant, the company takes 40% of the client's money if the client doesn't pay in advance. What's not true is that this 40% take lasts FOREVER (like the previous reviewer wrote). It rapidly decreases by 5% increments to a 20% take as the tutor's hours increase. Also, if a student purchases hours in advance, they receive a 20% discount that comes from Wyzant's side of the business. This discount reduces the company's take to nothing--yup, 0%--for tutors who have many hours with Wyzant under their belt. Of course, Wyzant's cash flow still benefits by holding the prepayments, and, for all I know, this pay structure and discount offer may change in the future.

My experience with tutoring before Wyzant was that brick-and-mortar agencies near me usually took 50%, this percentage never decreased, they told me what my rate had to be, and they often requested that I travel further than I wanted to go to meet students. It was a pain in the butt to advertise my own tutoring services, and students inevitably would forget cash or forget their checkbook. Messing around with advertising, bookkeeping, credit cards, or paypal would be a waste of my time. Wyzant's credit card processing and email system is convenient, but their real benefit to me has been the advertising service they provide by letting potential students compare my profile and rate to many other tutors in my area. After gaining enough hours to reach the 80% pay rate, this advertising service to the tutor is nearly free because most of my hours are from students who pay in advance.

What's most important to me is what WyzAnt does not do. They've earned their take by not sending emails to tutors or students in situations when they aren't requested, helpful, or needed. I like that they remain invisible unless they have something useful to contribute. Because of their trust in the student and tutor, working with WyzAnt has been refreshing and empowering for me and for my students. I think WyzAnt utilizes the internet and automation in a common-sense way that has improved the process of tutoring throughout the country by creating an open marketplace for tutor profiles with rates included. Wyzant, like this site, has helped to build a transparent internet.

I like that Wyzant offers referral bonuses to its tutors. If you become a Wyzant tutor or student by signing up after going to

XXXXX [link edited by moderator]

Then I get a cut of Wyzant's take. If sitejabber determines that posting this URL makes my review a conflict of interest, then please delete the URL or replace it with XXX's or something but please keep the remainder of my review.

My only criticism is that Wyzant's built-in email system doesn't handle cut/pasting and copy/pasting correctly because of some strange carriage-return issue.

The site advertised tutoring service, I added my paypal information, and read online a little more about it, I had a meeting that was scheduled with a tutor, and it was cancelled. However, I was still assessed a fee despite the first hour session (that never even occurred) is supposed to be free. I keep getting a notice that states this exactly (copy and pasted): Hi Gabriele, This is our third and last attempt to notify you that you have an outstanding balance of ($38.15) in your Wyzant account. You must update your payment information immediately to address this situation and avoid collections. Please visit the payment information page to add or update payment information for your account. Your payment will be charged within 24 hours after you’ve updated it. You may also call Customer Support at (*** to process payment over the phone. Regards, The Wyzant Team When I contact customer service, they are of no help, and told me to pay then they will refund it - no way

I simply made an initial inquiry about tutoring format, and one of the tutors told me they refused to do any homework for me. They also said I had to do all of my own reading.

I was really offended that somebody would lead with something like this, but I understood that may be other students ask them to do specific assignments.

I very politely told the tutor that I had no intention of asking her to do homework for me. Very soon after I got a notice that my account was closed because I was asking a tutor to do assignments for me. I am horrified.

Do not use this company. They allow their tutors to simply lie and then they will close your account. If I could screenshot our correspondence I would. This person who reported me is deeply unethical and willing to obviously lie. Do not use this service.

Please be careful as there are some people who hold themselves out to be “tutors” and despite their credentials, they are not! I was scammed by a person alleging he is a tutor and ran with $1125 after pressing me to send the funds via Venmo to his sons account! That should have been a red flag, but I needed a bar prep tutor on a hourly basis for tactics and this guy cares more about my personal life and relationships than helping prep for the bar. He canceled and only provided 30 mins of the 9 hours he committed to for a week. A lawyer who doesn’t know he has appointments and cancels less than 24 hours and doesn’t know the day of the week is beyond concerning. But he took advantage and asked for money upfront likely because he needed to pay something worth no intentions of offering what he indicated he would or could. (This is part of my review I was posting to Wyzant, halting that and posting here).

A tutor scammed me out of $1125 asking to not send it through Wyzant because they take 25% and he wants all of his money. He canceled the first session then only skimmed a book for 20 or so minutes of the 30 minutes he sat with me and asked me 10 mins of personal questions that had nothing to do with the bar!

He refused to return $1000, I agreed to give him $125 for the 30 mins. And he said he would sue me for $6k+ if I sued him for the $1k. I have emails and texts proving communications and lack of response to re-schedule. This could be racially motivated and I do indeed feel discriminated against.

The first session Beth contacted me to say she had an emergency with her cat and she met with us about 3 hours later than we scheduled. The session went fine and we wanted to use her again.

On Monday she was scheduled to meet my son at 5:00, she wrote to say she was running late and we set a new time of 5:40pm. She never showed up, no contact, no message to me at all. We tried all evening to reach her. The following day she said her computer died... blah blah blah

I said we would keep our Wednesday session 11/16 if I had her contact details in case I couldn't reach her for the session using the link. She didn't show up. No call, no text, no email, no Wyzant message. I called her 2 times, sent 3 texts, emailed her and sent 2 Wyzant messages but received no response.

I would not recommend this tutor because she is not reliable and does not have the courtesy to contact her clients when she can't make the appointment.

I had wyzant account three years ago but never got the chance to it before and yesterday I decide to use the wyzant account to work as a part time tutor. I was keeping get the messages that remind me which part i need to updated. I did as it told and then they told me i need to do a background check to to complete the application. I spend one afternoon and night time got all my information updated and paid 16.99 US dollars to get my background check. This morning i got my background checking results and i passed it but this afternoon, i got another email tell me that i need to improve my introduction a little bit more to better sell my tutoring. When i was trying to update my introduction i got another email was told that my account just got deactivated because failure to meet vetting requirements. I still don’t get what’s the reason for it. I tried to contact them but was telling the same thing again and the background check money i got paid by myself was no refundable too. I just can’t believe that i spent that much time to updated my information and paid the money for the check will cause my account deactivated.

When I started working for WyzAnt, it was a great company. It took a while to get students, but diligence paid off. I was okay with jumping through the pay scale hoops to get to the 80/20 split. At the time, customer service would connect to real people on the phone based out of Chicago.

About 4-5 years ago, I saw things change. WyzAnt was on the cusp with the online tutoring, which was nice when covid hit and tutoring moved to online. We were already 1-2 years ahead of the curve. However, business models also began to change. Even veteran tutors were restricted to a 75/25 split. When the CEO came online for a meeting and tutors flooded the comments with this question/complaint, Andrew ignored it until the complaints became too many to ignore. He just said expenses were tight so they had to adjust to that model (his annual income does not bear out how "tight" things were).

Customer service became more inaccessible, and recently has been horrible email responses that don't even relate to the question. Clients are complaining that emails are lost, especially through all the marketing emails they're getting from WyzAnt. The online platform crashes consistently.

The sense here is the model was good initially, but after making money and establishing a reputation, the company has now moved to squeezing out profits and coasting. Customer service, infrastructure, and relationships with strong tutors is suffering.

I worked as a tutor through WyzAnt for many years and many clients, but recently I couldn't log in to my account. I reached out to IT at WyzAnt and, only at that point, they told me that my account was deactivated. They cited the reasoning as a vaguely-written clause in their guidelines. I asked for clarification and they just pointed back to that clause-- nothing else. I figured fine, they take out too much for my liking anyway and I had no problems getting clients, so I wasn't going to fight it; they can release tutors for whatever reason they want. It was sad as I didn't see that I had done anything wrong, but, if they weren't going to explain anything, they obviously didn't want to work with me, so what was I to do anyway?

The bigger issue that I have is that I had earned a number of really nice reviews from clients over the years. I had no reason to think that my account would be deactivated, so I never saved them to a personal file. I could have always accessed them on their portal. Since my account was now deactivated, I now had no access to any of my records there, including my own reviews.

I contacted WyzAnt about that and they told me that my reviews belonged to them, so I could not have them. I still feel that this is wrong. Those are reviews of me and my personal services, not WyzAnt's service. I am only asking for my reviews.

I looked into Wyzant as a potential way to attract a few more students. I have been teaching privately and in classrooms for nearly 20 years. I already have a good client base, but it's always nice to have a few additional students.

Immediately, upon beginning the "application" process, I started to have second thoughts. Wyzant takes a significant portion of the earnings, so in order to actually earn my current standard rate, I'd have to charge more than most people would be willing to pay, but I figured I'd lower my rate a bit and do online teaching only.

Part of your application process also includes writing a few descriptive paragraphs for your profile. There is minimal guidance for this part, aside from what they consider a "great" example. If your paragraphs don't live up to their vague standards, you will get a form letter asking you to review. Obviously, as it is a form letter, there is no feedback, no guidance, no suggestions. You will have no idea of what they want revised, unless you wrote the most vague one sentence answer. You will, however, get another link to that "great" example.

To be available to teach, your subjects have to be "verified"; some subjects can be verified through a test on the site. The test I took was so easy, it was a joke. It in no way properly assesses one's skill level or ability to teach. The test is multiple choice, and even though there is a time limit for each question, it wouldn't be hard to find the answers online ad manage a passing score.

I didn't feel comfortable associating myself further with Wyzant, as I have a business reputation to maintain.

Very recently after i have covered 200 hours of Wyzant tutoring i got a message from Wyzant that i have:

Dear Gayani,

After reviewing your account, Wyzant is ending your access to its platform according to paragraphs 17 and 18(b) of the Independent Tutor Agreement. It has come to our attention that a student requested that you complete work on his or her behalf. According to our records, you agreed to complete this work and as such, we will deactivate your account effective immediately.

If you disagree with this action and wish for us to reconsider, then within 10 calendar days from this notice, you may provide Wyzant with documents or other information for review.

Regards,

The Wyzant Team

My issue is that why students use Wyzant was to get assignments completed only. Otherwise no one follows Wyzant for regular lessons. Because the tutors who are there are not only school teachers, so some do not know the syllabus even.

In my whole career with Wyzant all I did was solving College and High school assignments.

Most students who need help are not the ones who knows how to complete the assignment.

Next I gave a written explanation on this truth that i promised the student to complete the assignment and explain the assignment during class.

After not assessing the truthful nature of mine even, the next mail goes on :

Dear Gayani,

Your profile has been closed according to paragraphs 17 and 18(b) of the Independent Tutor Agreement. Based on the information you provided, we will not reactivate your account. Wyzant considers this decision to be final and a representative will not be made available to further discuss this matter.

Additionally, we have notified the following students that you are no longer listed on Wyzant:

AAA, BBB, CCC.. etc.

If you have any lessons scheduled with other students, please let us know and we will notify them of your deactivation as well. Since your account is no longer active, you may also let us know if you have conducted lessons that you have not yet submitted through the platform; if you provide us with the complete lesson details (student's name, date of lesson, start time, end time, subject, and a 25-word minimum review, if this is the student's requirement), we will enter the completed lessons on your behalf. Payment for these lessons and for any other lesson you have already submitted but for which you have not yet received payment will be issued according to your selected payment schedule.

Regards,

The Wyzant Profile Review Team
www.wyzant.com

Questions? Visit our Help Center!

Where is Justice?

When they get money by advertising Homework help and assignment help given no issues. When a qualified tutor does it with ethics and explaining the assignment it's wrong.

The money that is received back from this platform is also 75% of your rate only.

This platform should be closed for illegal business.

I have proof that most of the tutors listed here are only doing assignments.

The Job requests comes like this only:
An Instant Book Lesson is Available

Gayani, there is a new urgent request for an online Java lesson. You can confirm this lesson, but must be able to accommodate the lesson start time and date.

Wednesday, May 29 at 7:30 PM MDT

Online Java lesson with AAA A., a high school student

Message From Student

I need help rewriting a piece of code to fit as a different data structure for my assignment. It's due tonight!

Student's Assignment

LeaderboardMenu.java 39 B

All what I did was write the answer and the student obtained 99%.
Pls. do justice here...

Wyzant now takes 25% of our fee. Still a little high. The real problem is support. A student scammed me and Wyzant left me out to dry: A student scheduled one lesson (one hour) but wanted me to fix up their paper and send it back to them. He also didn't want to use the video chat. I said I would make suggestions. I did. I read the paper and ended up giving a few dozen over the hour. I have a BA in writing and literature. His use of punctuation throughout the paper he submitted was vastly incorrect. After I pointed out the mistakes, he sent back the first paragraph, which was slightly better. The hour ended, and I sent additional suggestions as a courtesy, since he said he couldn't afford more time ($20/hr). He gave me a one-star rating. I complained to Wyzant because I believed that the student set up this one-hour lesson so he could take advantage of their policy that makes the first hour with a new tutor free, if the student is dissatisfied. He wrote nothing about his dissatisfaction, only giving the one star. I had no option to respond to the rating. Possibly, the student was unhappy that I didn't write the paper for him. It was St. Patrick's Day. Maybe he was partying? Wyzant told me that the only way I could get rid of the bad rating was to return the money. Who wins then? The student and Wyzant. Forget these online tutoring services. I suspect they are all scams.

Wyzant is one of those companies that spams you with emails if you end your registration process early. I got emails from them for like a month while I was finishing my last semester of college. I finally get around to completing my registration, and invest a good deal of time and emotions passing all the 'subjects' tests. I fill out the 'short bio' field, which is to be displayed to students. There is a notice stating that I would have a limited number of opportunities to change it.

Long story short: I get a notice of rejection after my bio wasn't accepted the third time.

What I'm so angry about is that I was under no impression that I was being vetted and facing a hard cutoff. There should have been a more precise advisory along the lines of "You will have three and only three tries, else you will be rejected." I thought this process was a shoe-in to which I could return afterwards to hone my presentation.

A top Wyzant tutor, Marlene Soper agrees to take $40.00 then, WITHOUT NOTIFICATION, charges $60.00 instead!"

The wyzant platform malfunctions severely for over an hour and wyzant offers compensation for the first hour only. When the tutor, marlene soper, steals the extra $20.00, for what she estimates to be an extra 30 minutes online, wyzant only offers me a website coupon instead and refuses to help with the tutor situation.

Proof conversations copied below:

1. From skype, when technical issues were so sever that wyzant suggested we try another platform:

Me: "I think we need to stop here and wait for wyzant to get back to me. Sooo sorry."
Marlene: "yeah. I agree. I'm so sorry about this."
Me: "plz accept the 40 usd they credit to my account on their website? Or which ever u prefer"
Marlene: "oik. It's up to you. They gave you the credit, you might as well use it. Right."
Me: "ok, thank you. One minute, let me log on and check. Ok, it's there"

2. From our text messages when the theft took place:

Me: "hi marlene. I just received notification that wyzant charged me for $24 in addition to the 40 dollar credit. Have you received any notification of this?"
Marlene: "nada, when we met a week ago and had difficulty, we were talking for over an hour. When we met friday we were dealing with all of this for 1.5 hours. I asked for 1.5 hours of compensation and have not and will not ask for anything for the weekend before."
Me: "I see. I thought we agreed over skype that it was only gling to be $40? I would have preferred a heads-up, marlene.in any case, wyzant should be responsible for the extra payment, not me. I will contact them. Thanks".
Me (Later on): "hello. Wyzant has placed a credit of $25 usd in my account. Please accept that credit for the extra half hour and refund me the original 24.02 usd. Wyzant cannot transfer the funds to me directly, only through the tutor. Thanks."

No reply.

3. Email excerpts with wyzant since the incident:

"thank you for reaching out to us... Please know that tutors are able to charge for the amount of time spent with their student during a lesson. Wyzant had provided you with a credit of $40 as a courtesy due to the technical issues that you had experienced with our online lesson platform in hopes that this amount... May cover the cost of time spent attempting to troubleshoot the issues... If you do not believe the length of the lesson has been incorrectly reported by marlene, we would encourage you to speak with her directly regarding this... I want to reiterate that we are so sorry for the technical issues... With that being said, please note that there is no way for us to refund the additional $24.20 that you were charged by marlene without explicit permission from the tutor to reduce the length of the lesson... While the $30 coupon cannot be refunded to your payment method, it will remain on your account and can be used towards any future tutoring you receive through wyzant... Ince wyzant acts as the payment processor for tutors listed on our site, we are unable to adjust the charge of a lesson and provide a refund without the consent of the tutor that has submitted the charge. As such, we will not be able to provide any further refunds for your lesson with marlene s... It is important to note this decision was made in accordance with our terms of use of our site, which all users agree to when creating a wyzant account. Wyzant considers this decision to be final and a representative will not be made available to discuss this matter further.

The story:

The lesson involved in this situation is empty, for over an hour I suffered severe technical issues which wyzant could not explain. I could not even log into the classroom! In the end, they suggested I try an alternative platform until they checked their own for errors. That's when they deposited credit to compensate the first hour.

Marlene only taught a total of 15 minutes in that entire time, simply reviewing the previous lesson in preparation for start something new. Yet, I offered to compensate her for the time she spent online waiting by giving her the $40.00 credit deposited in my account. She accepted it as an even compensation, after all we were both affected by this. Then charged me an extra $20.00 behind my back! From my own money, not from wyzant.

So what was I left with as a student? Over an hour of time wasted, no new content, severe technical issues where wyzant could not help, and a payment of $20.00, un-anticipated and undeserved, with no real compensation from the company behind all this!

It's funny that a top reviewed math tutor would behave this way over 20.00 dollars! I am a graduate student, so 20 usd mean something to me, especially when they're taken by force. But for someone who charges $40.00 / hr and has over 400 positive reviews? I guess they do too.

Over ten emails were sent back and forth between me and wyzant, their answer was always the same: we're sorry for your loss, but we can't help with the tutor or the money she took. And we can't pay you directly, only site credit. Good luck!

Since I cannot upload photos onto this review, I have copy-pasted the exact text messages that were exchanged between me and marlene about money, plus excerpts from my emails with wyzant. Please read them above and judge for yourselves!

A final note: what marlene did was immoral, it's called stealing, I would be careful about dealing with her. Even successful tutors get greedy. Also, wyzant is not built to protect the students, it doesn't care if they're being extorted by the tutors, even if their platform is to blame! I would never recommend this site to anyone, their policy is unfair (There's no timer in the classroom, the tutor names the duration of the lesson as she sees fit and wyzant has no proof how long the lesson actually lasted), the platform is always crashing and their customer assistance is useless. Again, please do not save your card or paypal information on their site.

My wife is a fabulous Madarin Chinese tutor. She has written books on the language for publication, taught numerous classes and is well respected in her classes and in the community. She has her own tv show on Mandarin with Chinese children. She works in all fazes of media, and communication, and cultural events and sponsors Chinese international film festivals.
Then she finds a part time job and decides not to complete the profile that they had sent and supposedly say they sent numerous mails, which we never received. Then they have the gall to remove her totally and keep her from responding regarding tutoring. I sense a scam dealing with bias against minority Chinese, a review board that doesn't understand what it takes to teach foreign languages, and a bias because of her email address and jobs she has had with students on her own. I would recommend moving to anyone else and the complaints keep piling up.

Wyzant makes it really difficult to understand how to get started as a new tutor. If you do not complete there convoluted process correctly within 3 tries, you will NOT be considered to be a tutor. Without explanation, they will just say, "Sorry you don't qualify", in so many words, without giving much of a reason. Don't waste your time plus they will take a large portion of what you make.

I found a tutor on www.wyzant.com website and she had rather low prices for her lessons comparing to other teachers. So I contacted her and she seemed nice. She suggested a day and time for our first lesson.
I did not like the lesson, it was not informative, not interesting and it was something different from what I have expected. So I decided to find another tutor. When I was about to pay for my class she said that I have to pay $100 even though on the WyzAnt website it was said $50!
I did not want to fight her so I gave her $100. The same day when I came back home I went to WyzAnt website and saw that instead of $50 there was already $100! Ridiculous!

I am very disappointed with www.wyzant.com. First tutor was terrible and I really did not like him. Every time he ended the session after 20 min and said that was all he wanted to tell. Then I decided to find another one. But that person was very dishonest and did not know anything! All my second tutor did was telling me things that I already knew. When I asked him more difficult questions he suggested me to google the answers! What kind of tutor is that? Terrible! This place is just a waste of money.

I am a mathematics tutor and have experienced quite a few problems with this company. It seems they will do nothing to resolve problems. My first problem came when a clients payments were being rejected by Wyzant. The client had me talk to her bank as she felt bad about my not being paid. It turns out the bank submitted the payment on 3 separate occasions and these were rejected 3 times . The bank finally gave up on fixing the problem as this company refuses to admit they have a problem. Now recently they claim my email address is invalid. My email provider assures me they do not do what Wyzant claims they are doing which is to delete my emails before they go into spam. From my research the only reason my email provider would delete or reject an email is if their servers do not meet the current industry standards for security. They will not open a dialog with my email provider to resolve the issue. I can not bill for tutoring sessions that have been done, I can not respond and apply to meet new students, and for the most part I am very fed up with them. Considering they take 45% of my pay for this service I would think they would be willing to look into these matters but they blow people off.

Don't waste your time applying to WyzAnt as I just experienced their abusive clause and potentially discriminatory practices. I applied online and exceeded all the conditions and expectations listed in their job offer. I also scored 100% on WyzAnt skills tests. Nevertheless, my application was denied. I can understand that, but I required some explanation from WyzAnt. I contacted the company by phone and email. A "ticket" and "case number" was opened and I expected a reply from a representative. I copy/pasted here the reply I got, for your own appreciation: "The decision to deactivate your WyzAnt tutor account was made in accordance with our terms and conditions, which are available for review on WyzAnt.com. WyzAnt considers this decision to be final and a representative will not be made available to further discuss this matter. Sincerely, The WyzAnt Profile Review Team" I reviewed the terms and conditions WyzAnt refers to in what I consider being a bold and shameful reply, and it includes the following: "WyzAnt may provide notice to Users via email, regular mail, or posting notices or links to notices on the Site. WyzAnt reserves the right at any time to modify, suspend or terminate the services (or any part thereof), and/or use of or access to them, with or without notice. WyzAnt may also delete, or bar access to or use of, all related information and files. WyzAnt will not be liable to Users or any third-party for any modification, suspension, or termination of service, or loss of related information. WyzAnt may amend these Terms at any time by posting the amended terms on this Site." (art. 21 of WyzAnt Terms). For your full understanding of the situation, let me also underline that I did not infringe any of WyzAnt terms, and I did not post any inappropriate content on my profile and application. Yet, it was denied. Once again, I can totally accept a NO to a job application, I just ask for an explanation when I meet all criteria, when I usually get a YES from similar job offers, when my skills have been proven through 15+ years of experience and satisfied clients/students. I took 5 minutes of my time to share with you how WyzAnt actually operates. I hope this helps you make your own judgement on this company and service.

Wyzant removed me as a tutor for "not following their guidelines" even though I have been a great tutor for them for two years and have always followed their guidelines. When I contacted their customer service center by phone to get answers, the customer service people can help you with any information and the review board refuses to be explicit. DO NOT use! Find someone else to work with. Horrible customer service and lack of any contact with their tutors when they thinks something is going wrong. They refuse to talk to you, just decided they had enough of me and so "poof!" gone!.

I have had six federal background checks and three State of Ohio background checks done in the past nine years and passed every one of them. None of these were good enough for Wyzant who demanded that I pay for a background check through First Advantage (who I believe Wyzant receives a kickback from. The background check was demanded after I complained about not being paid, being paid late, and overall slow/poor customer service. One time they even cut off communication between my student and myself because the student's credit card number had been entered wrong. Wyzant uses the background check scam on every tutor that complains about not getting paid. Their pay is slow (eight days from their bank to mine) and is often late. Wyzant is a penny ante company that floods the area with tutors and provides no students. The worst tutoring company out there doing business.