46 Responses

1. Marianne Ayre

   21|Mar|2011 1

   MY tutor replied and we started March. She is great.
   I had no problem with her response to my request. The fee is also reasonable.

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   Brian Armstrong Reply:
   March 22nd, 2011 at 2:55 am

   Great – glad to hear it! It’s good to keep it in perspective and realize that the current solution does work for most people. We know we can always do better.

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   Sharon Joffey Reply:
   March 22nd, 2011 at 10:41 pm

   I have only received 3 emails in reference to tutoring and two of the students I am presently tutoring the other one the distance was unreasonable ( I agreed, also). I would LOVE to receive more requests. I feel that if a tutor doesn’t respond to the email that they just do not want another student or quite frankly they are not worth obtaining because that could be there attitude in general. Not up to full commitment.

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2. Nancy Ligon

   21|Mar|2011 2

   Display the tutor’s response rate.

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3. Ruth Worsham

   21|Mar|2011 3

   1) You could require them to update their avalibility and contact info every 2 weeks. If they don’t update, they get removed from the site. 2) And/Or you could set an amount for initial service that gets paid to you, and then the tutors would receive the client info from you and their portion of the initial fee if they take the job. You earn money and so do they.

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   Brian Armstrong Reply:
   March 22nd, 2011 at 2:54 am

   Hi Ruth,

   I think every two weeks might be a bit often. I’d be up for #2, but our experience is that most clients don’t want to pay up front before meeting with a tutor in person and seeing how it goes.

   Brian

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   Amelia Reply:
   March 22nd, 2011 at 5:49 pm

   I like the idea of having tutors update every so often. Maybe once a month an email could go out to tutors, saying that they need to update their profile within a certain amount of time or they will be removed from the site.

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4. Sarah Meredith

   22|Mar|2011 4

   Tutor never called or emailed.
   Why not have someone on your end call them to notify them of a student waitin for their help . . . Or the requests come to you and you call them.

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   Brian Armstrong Reply:
   March 22nd, 2011 at 2:53 am

   Hi Sarah,

   You’re right this would be ideal, but the site has grown to over 16,000 tutors and there are just a few of us so unfortunately that wouldn’t be an option :)

   Brian

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5. Diane Landy

   22|Mar|2011 5

   Hi,
   My daughter was desperate to find a trig tutor for an upcoming exam, so we contacted 2-3 tutors to find one available on short notice. After no reply in 1-2 days, she sent notes to well over a dozen more. Only 2 (in total) got back to her!!! We hired one and he was very helpful. We’re very grateful to him; however, we had to travel some distance in rush hour to meet, so it’s not an ideal relationship long term.
   So… we’re still interested in finding a local tutor to hire on a semi-regular basis, but your response rate has been so disappointing, it looks like we’ll have to find one elsewhere.
   What you’re doing is a great concept, with informative bios, and a super valuable service. Just wish it was dependable!
   Sincerely,
   Diane

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   Brian Armstrong Reply:
   March 22nd, 2011 at 2:52 am

   Thanks for the feedback Diane, and good to hear your experience with it!

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6. Tatiana

   22|Mar|2011 6

   I think these two options would be the best:

   1. Allows students to post jobs and have the tutors contact them instead
   This would reverse the problem by allowing tutors to contact students based on their job postings (at least providing this as an alternative).

   3. Notify tutors via other means, such as phone or text message
   If email deliverability is the problem, another form of notification could work better.

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7. Amelia

   22|Mar|2011 7

   As a tutor, I have been reported as “never wrote back,” even though I did. It is the only feedback I’ve ever gotten on the site. If you were to make it mandatory to post your contact rate, I would probably quit using your website. I’ve only ever had two people contact me: I responded to both, and did not receive a response from either. Then I received the “never wrote back” feedback. I’m not sure who left it but I responded to both of them, telling them about myself and asking if they would like to meet up.

   I have found it to be frustrating. I was hoping to be contacted about tutoring. I do other tutoring privately and was hoping that I could supplement it through this site.

   Any suggestions would be helpful. (As far as what people have found to be successful and so on)

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   Brian Armstrong Reply:
   March 24th, 2011 at 5:51 am

   Hi Amelia,

   This is good to know, thanks for letting us know about it. I’m going to follow up with you offline – I’m wondering if there is some technical reason why the students didn’t see your response.

   Brian

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   Amelia Reply:
   March 24th, 2011 at 1:35 pm

   Thank you!

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8. WENTONG HUANG

   22|Mar|2011 8

   I think that allows students to post jobs and have the tutors contact them instead is a way to increase the efficiency comparing to what we have now.

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9. Dr.C

   22|Mar|2011 9

   I always reply to tutoring inquiries, typically within 24 hours of receiving them.

   Of the three requests for tutoring which I have received, two have resulted in tutoring engagements, and the third I declined as it was out of my area of expertise.

   If tutors are not responding to inquiries, I suggest notifying them by email, phone, and snail mail messages. That should catch issues with changed email addresses, etc.

   Profiles of tutors who do not respond to this notification could be hidden so that students or parents seeking tutors will only see profiles of tutors who are actively accepting new tutoring engagements.

   You might also give tutors the option of hiding their own profiles in case they are not actively taking on new students for any reason.

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10. Ben Koppl

    22|Mar|2011 10

    There have been several cases in which I simply did not respond. Either the person was rude in their first email, which I view as unacceptable, or they were asking for a test that was a few days away and I didn’t get the email till after the actual test occurred because my computer was being repaired. It’s unpleasant to not get written back, but writing back after the fact is pointless. I understand this is a common complaint, but I feel that not responding is often not due to laziness, but rather to extenuating circumstances. Things go wrong. That’s life. While disabling the profile is fine in the sense that it would clear the site of unused profiles, actually showing the rate is just punishing people for no reason and provides a lame way of oversimplifying two sided situations, and really accomplishes nothing.

    Likewise, having students post jobs would likely result in those students being barraged with emails from every tutor in the area vying for the position. I would wager there are more tutors than jobs, and likewise that these tutors are in general quite willing to take on additional work as much as possible. From a student perspective, such an experience would be overwhelming and obnoxious.

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    Brian Armstrong Reply:
    March 24th, 2011 at 6:03 am

    Both excellent points that you make Ben, thanks for posting this.

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11. Stefano

    22|Mar|2011 11

    As a tutor, I would like to share my own experience. I have received requests from clients from http://www.universitytutor.com with some type of built-in delay. I have messages forwarded to my Gmail account, but I often see that messages don’t reach me until 2 or 3 hours after they had been initially sent (according to the message). I am located in Ohio at the moment, so I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. Since my schedule is fairly flexible, that is a minor inconvenience for me. Nonetheless, for clients that are desperate and need to meet as soon as yesterday, that is a big complication.

    Unfortunately, the inconvenience gets compounded by:
    1) Remoteness of the desired meeting location with respect to my own for a given time slot. This is a major issue when limited parking or slow public transportation are taken into account.
    2) Time to prepare for subjects I have not studied or reviewed in a long time.
    3) Tests being given or assignments due the following day.

    I usually try to reply back to all inquiries within 24 hours. If I am not available immediately, however, then a session with me becomes impractical for desperate students. Generally, unless I am extremely busy, I try to respond right away. There is one exception; I sometimes do not reply to messages past 9:30P.M. from students that are being evaluated the next day, especially in a subject I don’t normally tutor. This is also frustrating for me because I want to take on as many students as time permits, but I have learned that it is not always going to work out.

    That is why I recommend that potential clients contact several tutors well in advance to avoid these types of scenarios (i.e. at least 5 tutors more than 3 weeks prior to a test or assignment due date). If there is someone you are really interested in working with, then let them know with enough time to work out a schedule that works for both parties. I use Google calendar to save all my important appointments, so if a parent or college student wants to meet me in 2 days or 2 months, then I just make a note of it and plan my schedule around that meeting. I try to be empathetic and understanding of my client’s schedule needs, but they should also know that some weeks I am not available at a moment’s notice.

    I don’t believe universitytutor.com or its tutors are at fault for the schedule anomalies created by the desperate students. As for the tutor never responding, the possible causes cited in the original post are realistic. I don’t think that keeping a record of the response rate is particularly helpful to tutors because they may be students themselves or have schedule restrictions from their other jobs that prevent them from responding in time. They would get a bad grade on an electronic report card when they were not even available to tutor the student in the first place. So, perhaps to mitigate this problem, I suggest:

    1) If a tutor does not respond, parents (of K-College students) or college (and graduate) students should:
    a) contact tutors well in advance of the desired meeting date and time. If you need to cancel or reschedule, let tutors know at least one day before.
    b) contact several tutors on multiple sites to find one that works best for you. I have tutoring profiles on other sites, but I the structure of universitytutor.com

    2) I completely agree that notifying tutors via text messages would be helpful. Before I got an Android phone, I could not check email notifications until I was in front of a computer. But with a text message, I already know I have to write a reply at my earliest convenience. This could probably be configured with the email notification without the need of human operators, which I imagine are costly. So, telephone calls would be more of a hit or miss (if I am in a meeting, I cannot pickup the phone), just like email, depending on availability. Also, this introduces voice mail as the new recipient of lost messages. This article delves into that issue further:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fashion/20Cultural.html?pagewanted=all

    3) A link should be provided in the initial contact email, so that it pops open a window or just sends the message confirming that the tutor got the message. The link should have a timer, so if 24 hours have elapsed, then a secondary email is sent to the tutor in case the initial message was not received (perhaps it was sent to spam or deleted or never received by email server error). If after 48 (or 72) hours the tutor has not responded, then it is clear that a last minute session cannot be held.

    3) Also for tutors that have a tight schedule and cannot properly respond to potential clients in time, a button or command should be made available to communicate whether the tutor is available or not. This can also be included as another link in the email scheme above. Then, the client should receive an automated response informing him or her of the tutor’s decision.

    4) A section detailing whether the tutor accepts last minute desperate clients should be included. The clients should be aware of each tutor’s policy to avoid any misunderstanding.

    5) Allowing students to post jobs and have the tutors contact them instead destroys the purpose of featured listings. This is the method employed on wyzant.com. The reversal of the problem is accurate; instead of tutors not responding, potential clients don’t respond to multiple inquiries from tutors. Clearly, I am not a fan of this approach. Serious clients that end up being a good fit for regular sessions are still only the ones that contact me directly.

    6) As a StudyPoint tutor, I have seen the updating availability every two weeks option as a hassle. My schedule is flexible and dynamic, so it’s far easier for me to send a potential client a brief itinerary of my schedule for the upcoming week (or for the desired meeting days) than to regularly update my profile’s availability.

    7) Charging tutors or clients upfront (or deducting a percentage from a tutor’s pay per session) is bad for business. As long as I get a steady stream of clients from universitytutor.com, I do not mind paying for a featured listing.

    In conclusion, serious clients should tackle this endeavor as any other assignment. They should research and study the profiles of multiple potential tutors in advance, and then try to contact them sooner rather than later. Again, these are just my thoughts on the matter. I am assuming that tutors want to get as many clients as possible and that their schedules are fairly flexible.

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    John Hardy Reply:
    March 28th, 2011 at 6:13 pm

    Hi Stephano. Excellent points you make. I specifically post on my profile a time period for when you need to cancel ( at least 12 hours before), my time to respond back ( no longer than 2 days). I like the calendar idea. If you have Microsoft Outlook on you computer, they have task panes where you can keep track of all your appointments.

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12. Sarah Turner

    22|Mar|2011 12

    I’m a tutor on the site and recently I had a job offer, but when I went to respond my email wasn’t able to deliver the mail. I tried twice and it happened both times. Sometimes the email system is faulty, but I don’t know if there’s much we can do about that! I do like the idea of the tutors updating their profiles, or even just clicking a button to “refresh” saying “yes, I’m still here and looking for jobs!” every month or so. Those tutors who do that should be put at the top of the site, so students can be assured of getting tutors who are still interested in working. Inactive tutors will be at the bottom and will receive the least hits.

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    Brian Armstrong Reply:
    March 24th, 2011 at 6:05 am

    Interesting, thanks Sarah. There are certainly typos at times when students/parents enter their contact email address. We’ve seen this before where the tutor tries to respond and the email address doesn’t work. The phone number can sometimes be a backup for this but not always.

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13. John Foster

    22|Mar|2011 13

    I think that a grace period of three (3) days should be given for the tutor to contact theprospective student. If the tutor doesn’t respond, then the student’s request should be listed online for other tutors to respond to.

    All prospective students should be told that should their desired tutor be unavailable, that their need would be advertised to a wider range of tutors. That way, should the prospect get a response from someone other than the one they sent a request to, then they would know why someone else was responding.

    IMHO

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    Brian Armstrong Reply:
    March 24th, 2011 at 6:05 am

    That would be a cool hybrid approach of the two. Great idea, hadn’t though of that one.

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14. Janelle

    22|Mar|2011 14

    I think the response rate is a great idea! I usually always write back, even if I am unable to do the job and in that case, I still offer names of people who may be able to help. I don’t think the students posting offers is a good idea because first, if the only tutor who contacts them is only willing to get paid a large amount, the student is pretty screwed. Also I don’t know about other tutors but for me, I’m not looking to tutor just to make money, I want to help. So I don’t have time to look for people looking for a tutor, and seeing what subjects they need help in, it’s kind of a waste of time and in that case I wouldn’t bother with tutoring at all.

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    John Hardy Reply:
    March 28th, 2011 at 6:18 pm

    Hi Janelle. I agree. That is the students’ responsibility. If they read our profiles, they should know what we teach. If someone responds to me, I presume that they need help in the subject that I tutor, and if they don’t I just tell them that I don’t teach that subject but I can pass the word on to those who may. The students need to research our profiles before selecting someone.

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15. Olga

    22|Mar|2011 15

    I like the “Notify tutors via other means “. Because things happens , sometimes without me knowing it .
    Also, to require tutors to update their avalibility and contact info — not every 2 weeks, but every 3 months maybe? but please notify tutor about this .
    Thank you.

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16. Sarah

    22|Mar|2011 16

    I am a tutor. To my knowledge I have only received one e-mail through here regarding tutoring. I did respond to this client within 48 hours and we have since been communicating back and forth.

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17. Olivia

    22|Mar|2011 17

    I am a tutor who does not reply to requests that seem “sketchy.” Usually this means someone who is extremely vague and wants to meet up immediately. I usually dismiss these because I know al the terrible things that can happen on the internet.

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    Brian Armstrong Reply:
    March 24th, 2011 at 6:07 am

    Yep this is true Olivia. We’ve had a number of requests go through in the past from scammers and people in Nigeria (the same kind of messages you might see on CraigsList). We’ve managed to get rid of a lot of these posts now but it was a problem in the past.

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18. Jane Schwartz

    23|Mar|2011 18

    I had this problem just last week. I contacted two tutors and didnt hear back from either. I love this concept and was hoping to find someone who could help my son, who is a freshman at Princeton HS. In reading through the responses it seems there are quite a few lost emails, so that may be the issue. Perhaps another way to respond would be helpful. We are still looking to find a good match!

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    Brian Armstrong Reply:
    March 24th, 2011 at 6:08 am

    Yep, good to know Jane – thanks for giving us some feedback.

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19. john hardy

    24|Mar|2011 19

    I think option 1 is a good option. As long as students have the correct email address and we as tutors check it daily, this is one solution. ( If we don’t check our emails,then it doesn’t make sense to have any options would it). Also, as far making sure that we receive it, tutors should set their email filters so as to mark anything received from students as “not spam”. Adding this address to our contacts would ensure that it goes to email. This is important if you use Hotmail as they have difficulty recognizing certain addresses. I hope that this helps.
    Thank you

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    Brian Armstrong Reply:
    March 24th, 2011 at 7:11 pm

    This is important: marking emails from UniversityTutor as ‘not spam’ or adding UniversityTutor to your address book can help a lot. Thanks for pointing this out John.

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20. Georgios

    24|Mar|2011 20

    As a tutor, it would be good if I could temporarily disable my own profile during busy periods and then re-post it when things are quieter – rather than having to set up a whole new profile.

    Also, as other tutors have remarked, one reason I do not reply to emails is if they are of a bad quality. For example, I am a maths tutor and I got one email that only said “VTTUS”. Obviously I didn’t reply! Another said, “i learned english..becouse im very pour how to teach english..”. I think it would be unfair if my response rate is posted and downgraded due to not replying to such gibberish.

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    Amelia Reply:
    March 25th, 2011 at 2:25 am

    You make a good point Georgios! Also I really like your idea about being able to temporarily disable your site, but I think you actually can remove it from the search results. (under your tutor profile, you can just change the answer for “visible to public” to no)

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21. Janet Wi

    26|Mar|2011 21

    Hi, this is slightly unrelated but I was entirely unsure where to send information like this. Recently, I have received a scam email in which the “parent” who contacted me requested I cash in a large check and transfer money to a caregiver who was supposedly housing his daughter in the states where I could tutor her. I didn’t want ANY other tutor falling for this scam and putting their career in grave danger by falling for this. I’m not sure what course of action could be taken — maybe an email warning tutors to watch out for fishy activity?

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22. John Hardy

    26|Mar|2011 22

    Hi Janet. You must absolutely disregard any emails like this as yes, they are scams. I had two of them and did not respond to either of them. I believe Mr.Armstrong posted a response like this somewhere. Yes, tutors do need to be careful about emails like this as you can get royallaly screwed! When in doubt, it is best to ask someone whether or not it is not a scam.
    I hope this helps you.

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23. Frederick Mensah

    28|Mar|2011 23

    Hi:

    I joined UT couple of years ago. I have had four students contact me, however only two took lessons. The other two did not follow through. They never got back to me, although I gave them the option to contact me again, should they need my servicrs at a later date.

    Question is: People have the tendency to change their minds, after they re-visit decisions they have previously made, and sometimes unexpected circumstances creates a problem. No-one becomes culpable then.

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24. Sonam Lashkari

    03|Apr|2011 24

    I personally dont have this problem. I recieve email notifications when someone is interested in my services and make sure to get back to them in a timely fashion. I am very dependable and personally love to tutor math. I am still very much involved with tutoring and continue to do so. :)

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25. Jennifer Chin

    14|Apr|2011 25

    Last Fall semester, I and my daughter had a wonderful experience with one of the chemistry tutors whom we engaged through your UT site. Earlier this year our experience had been disappointing. While the first math tutor contacted did respond advising her not able to take on the assignment, and I appreciated that, the second and third tutuors contacted never responded.
    Maybe, after 3 days from a client’s request to the tutor, the client to be allowed to text tutor directly with a followup. This way, client takes on a more active role which in turn shows the seriousness of the request.
    I am still searching for a math tutor in the Richmond Hill, Ontarioo, area.

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26. Trina

    21|Apr|2011 26

    I have been using universitytutor.com for about two years now! I love it! I have had several great experiences with this site!

    I do have to say though that lately I am pretty frustrated… I received an email stating that my profile was temporarily taken down because I had not responded to tutoring requests. I had responded to every single one, and usually within a couple hours at most! Then I when I logged back onto the site to turn my profile back to visible I clicked on the tab that says “My Clients”. To my shock I saw that I had numerous requests to tutor students that I never knew about! I thought that this must be my fault, I must have somehow set my spam filter to not send me universitytutor.com emails… After checking every setting possible and insuring that everything on my end was working correctly, I have come to the conclusion that this is NOT my problem! I would gladly have responded to all those who asked for me, but was not given the opportunity to do so!

    I rectified the issue with the prospective clients and am now tutoring for a few of them, but I am quite frustrated by the fact that I lost out on connecting with some prospective clients, and thus money!

    So for now on, I will be checking the site regularly to make sure I get to any and all requests in a timely manner!

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27. Peter Cole

    19|May|2011 27

    I would like to see students have a section for online or telephone tutoring. That way I could tutor people across the country using my phone and computer. I could upload problems, etc that the student and I could share and work on together (I work mostly math and chemistry.) Also, having a student request online allows the tutor to contact a student at another time, which may be helpful when potential students are shy, non-motivated (but still need help) or are only responding based on parental wishes.

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28. ödev

    13|Jun|2011 28

    I would like to see students have a section for online or telephone tutoring. That way I could tutor people across the country using my phone and computer. I could upload problems, etc that the student and I could share and work on together (I work mostly math and chemistry.) Also, having a student request online allows the tutor to contact a student at another time, which may be helpful when potential students are shy, non-motivated (but still need help) or are only responding based on parental wishes.

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29. Charlotte H

    23|Sep|2011 29

    I join UT about 2 months ago, and I have already got three students to tutor on a regular basis, so it is so far an excellent experience for me. (I am in Charlotte NC).
    I prefer UT site to Wyzant that is too much hassle to me: no fee and better contact with the student, student select you and not reverse, so thereis a real interests!
    I am not aware of technical issues with email, but I must say that a couple of students requesting my services never replied to my emails of introductions. But I got used to this issue with Wyzant.
    Neverthless, I really like idea of the text message , knowing that an email is waiting for me. It seems that a lot of students have trouble leaving feedback, or do not know how to do it. That might need better explanations on the website or some email reminders. Also, UT needs better visibility on the market, to compete with the other tutoring services.
    Keep up the good work. Looking forward to more students.

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