Some straight talk about tutor safety – Wyzant Help Center

This article originally appeared on the Wyzant Tutor Blog on 9/4/2018.

This article contains information that can help you tutor with more comfort and confidence, but most importantly, remember that as an independent tutor, you are never under any obligation to work with a particular student. If you ever feel uncomfortable, for any reason, please always feel free to decline a student’s request, or let us help.

Interview prospective customers

Remember, the interview process goes both ways! Asking prospective students (or their parents) more about goals, difficult areas, likes/dislikes, learning style, and other relevant topics can go a long way in breaking the ice for those first few interactions. It also helps clarify if a student is the right fit for you.

Email addresses

As often as possible, we recommend that you perform your written communication via Wyzant Messages. This ensures that both parties are protected under our Terms of Use should events such as scheduling misunderstandings, pricing questions, lesson cancellations, or payment disputes arise. We can’t provide these benefits if communication between tutors and students takes place outside of the Wyzant platform. This means that Wyzant may not be able to uphold charges in the event of a dispute, or stop an illegitimate student from reaching out to you.

That being said, if a student has payment information on file with their account and you feel comfortable doing so, you are allowed to share email addresses.

Phone numbers

As long as a student has payment information associated with their account, feel free to exchange phone numbers once you feel comfortable with a student. Tutors are never required to share their phone contact information, so this decision is left to your discretion.

Meeting for in-person lessons

It’s common for tutors to hold their first in-person meeting with a new student in a public place. It can be helpful to create a list of places in your area you know to be conducive to in-person lessons; quiet coffee shops or cafes, libraries, and study rooms are all great options. Also, consider if a parent or guardian should be present whenever conducting lessons with students younger than 18.

Of course, many students reach out to find an in-home tutor, and you should feel free to meet in a student’s home if you choose. However, student’s preferences may change after having a lesson in a place with easy access to learning materials like a library, so if you’re more comfortable in a neutral environment, it may make sense to require that new students meet for their first lessons in a mutually agreed-upon public place.

Meeting for online lessons

One of the key advantages of online tutoring is that tutors and students do not need to physically meet. If you feel discomfort with meeting with a student in-person, or a student has reservations about meeting a new tutor for the first time, consider suggesting an online lesson. This way, you both can concentrate on the important work of lessons from the safety and comfort of your own homes.

Our payment policies

The Wyzant payment policies are an important aspect of tutor safety, and following those policies ensures that you are paid on time. Accepting direct payment from students exposes tutors to the possibility of being defrauded by a student, and could even result in the closure of your account. You can review those policies here.

Remember: students can pay for lessons via credit card, debit card, PayPal, check, and money order via the Wyzant platform. You can view the Student Payment Policies to get a better idea of the student side of that process so you are able to easily answer questions, should a student ask.

If a student insists they cannot adhere to the Student Payment Policies, or cannot pay via the Wyzant platform, suggest they contact Wyzant Customer Support so that we can help ensure they are able to schedule lessons without an issue.

Illegitimate students

Like any marketplace with a large online presence, illegitimate users may try and interact with Wyzant users, passing themselves off as students. While we have several layers of security in place to combat this type of behavior, some of these illegitimate “students” may still manage to reach tutors.

Wyzant closely monitors requests and accounts, and will take action on any student account suspected to be illegitimate. It’s impossible to monitor student and tutor communications in real time without drastically impeding tutors’ ability to communicate freely with students. This means an illegitimate student’s account may stay open for a short period of time, before we locate and close it.

As such, it’s very important that tutors be able to identify these kinds of accounts.

Identifying illegitimate students

When an illegitimate student contact tutors on the Wyzant platform, they usually use the same or similar messages as legitimate students with Wyzant. After reviewing these messages, we’ve composed a Help Center article designed to help tutors identify these requests. You can view it here.

Below is a common message from an illegitimate student. You’ll see it includes contact information that is encoded, an inquiry about tutoring for one month, and is written rather poorly. These are hallmarks of spam requests, along with the most obvious clue: requesting that the tutor circumvent the Wyzant policy and instead to contact them outside the platform.

Marking as spam

If a student reaches out and you recognize the message as illegitimate, you have the option to mark the request as spam. You can do so by clicking the “Mark As Spam” option under the “Yes” and “No” options.

Marking a request as spam will count as responding to the student, which prevents the automated system from prompting you to respond to the student, and will also prevent their message from affecting your response rate and time. Marking it as spam also alerts the appropriate Wyzant team to take action on the illegitimate student’s account.

In fact, this is the fastest way to bring illegitimate requests to our attention.

If you’ve already responded to the student when you begin to suspect that they are not legitimate, please feel free to contact Wyzant Customer Support. We will investigate the account and take appropriate action.

What if I’ve already shared my contact information?

Illegitimate students are often trying to maintain contact with tutors outside of Wyzant for the purposes of trying to gain access to financial information or request that the tutors wire to them money or send them a check. While you are free to proceed as you see fit, we encourage you to break contact, block their phone number and email address, and cease replying to the student’s messages.

If you’d like to share safety information designed to help students, we’ve compiled a list of tips you can share anytime.