WyzAnt.com

When Ms. [redacted] registered to create an account and use the site (wyzant.com), she agreed to follow Wyzant’s outlined terms of use, including Section [redacted] Even, per her own admission, Ms. [redacted] opted to cease use of Wyzant’s platform and instead meet with the referenced student and receive payment independently, which is a violation of the terms of use. Wyzant reserves the right not to list the services of any individual, and we have chosen not to host Ms. [redacted] profile going forward.

Consistent with the site policies to which Ms [redacted] agreed when she registered to create an account and use the site (wyzant.com), see Section of the Terms of Use, all content submitted to the site is provided to Wyzant on a non-confidential basis and Wyzant retains the right not to provide any copies Additionally consistent with Section of the Terms of Use, Ms [redacted] granted an irrevocable license to display content (at its option) which may have been submitted to the site Furthermore, when a user’s account is removed, any submitted information is no longer accessible and while it is no longer visible to or shared with any parties, it must remain on file for administrative, technical and other reasons

Initial Business Response / [redacted] (1000, 5, 2015/03/16) */ Payment for the lessons conducted were remitted by direct deposit on 3/3/2015 in the amount of $30, and on 3/10/2015 in the amount of $30. The total amount paid was $60. Thank you!

Complaint: [redacted] I am rejecting this response because: despite Wyzant's claims, their terms and conditions 1) were not representative of all nuanced, potential arrangements (for example, there is no mention of restrictions on pricing when one vs two students would like to receive tutoring services simultaneously and 2) were not clear, especially to new tutors who recently signed up with WyzantIn summary, Wyzant did not properly represent their terms nor did they do a good job of making terms and conditions that did exist easily available for new tutors who signed upIn addition, Wyzant did a very poor job of blocking 3rd party recruitersI was constantly contacted by prospective employers on Wyzant who shared their email address and phone numbers with me, asking me to make arrangements outside of the websiteWyzant would then freeze my account due to breaking terms and conditions even tho it out of my control if I have received a message from others on their messaging systemIn general, Wyzant should be ashamed of how they treat their tutors and circumvent blame for their poorly communicated terms and conditions Sincerely, [redacted]

Don't waste your time applying to WyzAnt as I just experienced their abusive clause and potentially [redacted] practicesI applied online and exceeded all the conditions and expectations listed in their job offerI also scored 100% on WyzAnt skills testsNevertheless, my application was deniedI can understand that, but I required some explanation from WyzAntI contacted the company by phone and emailA "ticket" and "case number" was opened and I expected a reply from a representativeI 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.comWyzAnt considers this decision to be final and a representative will not be made available to further discuss this matterSincerely, 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 SiteWyzAnt 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 noticeWyzAnt may also delete, or bar access to or use of, all related information and filesWyzAnt will not be liable to Users or any third-party for any modification, suspension, or termination of service, or loss of related informationWyzAnt may amend these Terms at any time by posting the amended terms on this Site." (artof 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 applicationYet, it was deniedOnce 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/studentsI took minutes of my time to share with you how WyzAnt actually operatesI hope this helps you make your own judgement on this company and service

This has to be the worst tutoring site on the face of the planet While any site is going to have hiccups, since nothing is perfect, last month their site got cracked not hacked; hacking is just customizing programs for your personal use& I could no longer log into my accountMultiple password reset requests & I still hadn't gotten the email to reset itThere is nowhere on their exterior site to generate an IT ticket for those with an account; if you try to contact them exteriorly, it prompts you to log in to file your complaint Just as I realized I was going to have to escalate this dramatically & immediately, I get an email from Wyzant stating my account has been suspended for violating terms of serviceSeveral emails back & forth, with me stating how their site has been cracked, them denying it & telling me that Ia Certified Tech Support Specialisthave no clue what I'm talking about, it's still not resolved & I have reported the Identity Fraud to Social Security

Initial Business Response / [redacted] (1000, 5, 2014/10/08) */ On 9/24/2014, WyzAnt sent the account holder an email alerting her to a $pending charge that would take place on 9/29/The email invited the account holder to phone Customer Support if she had any questions regarding the chargeOn 9/29/2014, WyzAnt charged $to the PayPal account on fileLater that same day, the account holder called Customer Support to contest the charge and request the closure of her accountThe representative let her know that he would open a ticket with the Finance Department who would process her refund request and close her accountTwo days later, on 10/1/2014, the Finance Department processed the refund back to the PayPal account on file and closed the account, as requestedA receipt of this refund was emailed to the account holder at the time the refund was processed

Since first listing her profile with Wyzant, Ms [redacted] and Wyzant’s Profile Review Team have been in contact numerous times regarding policy and procedural expectations Most notably, explicit information regarding ongoing account requirements was provided to Ms [redacted] in July and March When reminded of Wyzant policies in July 2015, Ms [redacted] confirmed understanding of these policies and agreed to adhere to them.Most recently, Ms [redacted] ’s tutor profile was removed in accordance with Wyzant's terms and conditions, available on wyzant.com, that she agreed to when listing her profile Ms [redacted] first contacted Wyzant regarding her account status on 8/26/and Wyzant’s Profile Review Team communicated with Ms [redacted] via email regarding the removal, as well as provided information regarding this action, on 8/30/and 9/01/ Wyzant reserves the right not to list the services of any individual, and we have chosen not to host Ms [redacted] ’s profile going forward We wish Ms [redacted] the best in her future endeavors

I am keen to bring to public awareness that the Wyzant platform is maintaining an unethical teacher database with so many customer complaints.

Some of the sites which list the complaints against unethical actions of Wyzant include:

https://www.highya.com/wyzant-reviews

https://www.bbb.org/us/il/chicago/profile/tutoring/wyzantcom-0654-88349022

I believe this is high time that I bring to customer awareness of the poor vetting of their instructors and next the resultant character defamation of the student through their platform and the instructors. As a business when it comes to handling students and education you need to be more careful and be able to have a proper validation of the teacher qualifications and the experience as Education service is not just another service. It handles youngsters. Wyzant list tutors who are house wives, who perform professional and odd jobs during the day/night. Next they list students who are currently undergraduates and High school students. All what the tutors are expecting from the student is send the assignment/material not the topic name in a standard exam board such as AP Chemistry. If you ask the tutor to explain a section in a standard High school syllabus such as CP US History, CP Latin or AP Chemistry the tutor becomes very rude and scolds you and says that is how he/she has been tutoring on Wyzant with his/her previous students and have collected 2000 hours.Some instructors list their hourly rate as $300-$500. I am not sure on what basis they do this. Next some instructors send a link from Wyzant asking for feedback and forcing to award 5 stars, if we do not do that they keep messaging and troubling the general life.

We have had the worst experience with this database/platform very recently. I created an account for my daughter to get assistance on clearing Highs school subject doubts time to time. We were so unfortunate that our database search always ended up with this unprofessional /not properly vetted instructor category and I thought that the Best fit for guarantee was correct and got few refunds from the poor teachers and at the same time we found some decent High school teachers who were great and knew what they are doing. We awarded good star ratings and we are in touch with them still through other education platforms like Varsity tutors. The trick here is that the Terms and conditions missed the most important clause like other established education platforms include that you can go on to keep searching the best instructor till you are satisfied and we will guarantee that wee will get you the best teacher for your student. Other unethical thing is that the Wyzant platform says that the student should not ask the teacher to complete the assignment, but the tutor says she/he is only doing answering the Homework. This is a pure academic dishonesty.

The best part is that when they deactivate the account of the student after deciding that they are unable to obtain the correct profit(after certain number of refunds for poor teaching), they list the student as a black listed consumer and then even if the student create another account with his/her credentials they deactivate your account saying that your account is a duplicate. This happened to me because my account got deactivated due to the 3 refunds from unprofessional teachers, next my daughter created an account under her high school account and they deactivated the account while a lesson was going on and then charged me from pay-pal for the incomplete lesson and the instructor also charged me as she was informed that my daughter's account is deactivated. Other part is that when your account get locked the tutors are messaging and calling my daughter and introducing other platforms and some like to go for reduce fees and some like to go for higher prices and next some called my daughter and called criminal as Wyzant baselessly locked the account for their profit purposes. Right now my daughter is going through a depression due to a character defamation done by one of the instructors from Wyzant after the account being locked. When I send an email asking what information regarding my daughter was sent to the instructor in order to list my daughter as a criminal all they do is sending this email:

"

Hello Gayani,

Personal information about Wyzant users is never shared without the consent of that user. Wyzant will inform tutors if a student account has been closed since we are no longer able to facilitate lessons with that student.

The accounts containing your information were closed in accordance with our Terms of Use. Wyzant considers this decision to be final and a representative will not be made available for further discussion.

Regards,

The Wyzant Team

www.wyzant.com

Questions? Visit our Help Center!"

I understand this was my mistake for using this Wyzant database for searching tutors and opening the second account under our daughter as well in order to merely to search a tutor from this database. I believe this is not a criminal activity as my daughter is completely separate individual from me and it's valid that we open two accounts under two different individuals and they tracking the personal messages on the accounts to maintain their business and intruding the privacy of individuals is incorrect. The way the Wyzant robot detected the second account was duplicate was merely through the message and video recorded lesson which is a clear privacy intrusion.

I advice the public to read the complaints listed under Wyzant and refrain from accessing this database due to the unethical nature of this platform, the resultant character defamation and the way Wyzant washes their hands after inappropriate action take place to your student.

There are other good platforms that I have started looking in to lately when I googled and found very good tutoring services and I regret over joining a platform that has an average rating of 2.2. Hopefully some more professional tutor databases comes up soon.

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.

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2014/10/08) */
On 9/24/2014, WyzAnt sent the account holder an email alerting her to a $pending charge that would take place on 9/29/The email invited the account holder to phone Customer Support if she had any questions regarding the charge
On 9/29/2014, WyzAnt charged $to the PayPal account on fileLater that same day, the account holder called Customer Support to contest the charge and request the closure of her accountThe representative let her know that he would open a ticket with the Finance Department who would process her refund request and close her accountTwo days later, on 10/1/2014, the Finance Department processed the refund back to the PayPal account on file and closed the account, as requestedA receipt of this refund was emailed to the account holder at the time the refund was processed

MrT*** profile was removed according to Paragraph ** of the Independent Tutor Agreement, which each tutor signs in order to conduct their tutoring business This section encompasses Wyzant’s Academic Honesty Policy, any violations of which are taken very seriously Upon a full review
of MrT*** account upon his appeal, it is clear that this policy was violatedAdditionally, MrT** admitted to egregious conduct in his communication with the Profile Review Team As such, Wyzant is no longer able to host his profile. Regarding MrT*** request for submitted content, the cited sections do not allow for the release of Mr T*** referenced information Paragraph *** "Wyzant does not claim ownership of content that Independent Tutor provides on the Site....." refers to copyright privileges only The cited information from Paragraph ** was taken out of context and refers to “session plans, notes, outlines, tests and homework,” rather than any content submitted during the application process MrT*** complain is not for session notes, etcbut for information he submitted for this listing. Per Section * of the Terms of Use, all content submitted to the site is provided to Wyzant on a non-confidential basis and Wyzant retains the right not to provide any copies. Additionally consistent with Section * of the Terms of Use, MrTan granted an irrevocable license to display content (at its option) which may have been submitted to the site Pursuant to the agreement to use the Site, Wyzant is entitled not to send to Mr T** submitted information for his listing

Complaint: ***
I am rejecting this response because: I really don't want to use WyzAnt's platform anymore because it is such an unprofessional, sketchy websiteThe first time I was contacted by WyzAnt regarding the deactivation of my account, they said the reasonwas "e-mail correspondence", now it's tutoring independently after both the student and I voluntarily chose NOT TO use the website as a platformI am glad my account is deactivated now that I realize how terrible this website is, but I still demand that WyzAnt is punished for its unprofessional and sketchy behaviorsThere are plenty of bad reviews online from customers who went through the same problem as I did and who felt violated, WyzAnt should be taken down ASAP
Sincerely,
*** ***

Wyzant’s site policies are outlined when tutors create an application for consideration and to complete this process, tutors are required to sign Wyzant’s terms of use Consistent with this procedure, Ms*** agreed to these terms when she registered to create an account and use the site (wyzant.com) Per these terms, specifically Sections and 16, Wyzant reserves the right not to list the services of any individual, and we have chosen not to host MsTousian’s profile going forward

Very disappointed with interaction with company Tutor response poor I wasted time waiting for a follow up call which never occurredCompany took no responsibilty or offered to attempt to contact potential tutor It appears it is strictly a referral serviceNo one cared that I was not happy No one from management ever called In the time period that I was contacted by a specific tutor, she raised her rates and was very vague about times and dates It seemed she was looking for better offers

We respectfully disagree with Mr*** statement regarding the reason for the creation of multiple accounts Nevertheless, the Terms of Use state in paragraph 16, “WyzAnt reserves the right to suspend and/or terminate any user with or without notice at any time in its sole discretion, for any reason or no reason.” As such, the decision not to re-list his profile will stand

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2014/11/21) */
After looking into this matter, WyzAnt found that the tutor's profile was removed according to policy for a violation of the terms of use that the tutor agreed to when WyzAnt listed his profileThe terms of use may be reviewed on
WyzAnt's home page

Complaint: ***
I am rejecting this response because: The first account created was rejected over a year ago for unclear reasonsI called to ask customer service, and their response was to resubmit my creditialsI did so and was approvedThus, the creation of multiple accounts was a decision made according to WyzAnt customer servidce
Sincerely,
Justin ***

As noted in her complaint, Ms***’s tutor profile was removed in accordance with WyzAnt's terms and conditions,
available on wyzant.com, that she agreed to when WyzAnt listed her profile WyzAnt communicated with Ms*** via email regarding the removal and provided information regarding this action WyzAnt reserves the right not to list the services of any individual, and we have chosen not to list Ms ***’s profile going forward We wish Ms *** the best in her future endeavors

Initial Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2014/09/18) */
WyzAnt.com is a marketplace that provides listings for private, independent tutors who wish to advertise their servicesCompleting a profile to be approved for a listing is voluntary, and all who sign up must agree to the terms of use
and payment policies that are outlined for every applicantPart of the siprocess is designed to make every potential tutor aware of the terms required for a listing to ensure that there are no surprises when it comes to operating within the WyzAnt system
As stated in the terms of use, Ms *** is correct that as independent tutors and not employees of WyzAnt, tutors are not supplied with any curriculum or supplemental materials to aid them in their duties as a tutor
WyzAnt is sorry to hear of the frustrating experience that Ms *** has describedThe Customer Support Department is unaware of any communication between Ms *** and any WyzAnt staff membersIn light of this complaint, however, we are happy to refund the $that was paid to voluntarily purchase the background check, and will ask the Finance Department to process the refund today, September 18th,
Again, we are sorry to discover that Ms ***'s listing and WyzAnt's services did not meet her expectations, and we wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors