Tutor.com Reviews

Pros

You make your own schedule

Cons

Like working at a remote call center where you don't get paid unless you get calls? This is the job for you! The schedule is flexible, but you're at the mercy of the user. If you don't have a session, no pay. If you schedule ahead of time (assuming there are available slots!) you get paid a fraction of the base pay if you don't get calls. Expect to be micromanaged. You're expected to be available for voice calls for like 85% of the time, but most of the students don't use it, and we're expected to teach them through a keyboard. You're expected to answer 85% of the calls, but you get called out if you transfer calls if you don't know the problem. No mercy if you get something wrong. I tutor statistics, and there are dozens of statistical software students can use. Am I supposed to know how to use all of them? Can make $11/hr anywhere, not worth it here. I tutor for another company and I love it. I was hoping to make some extra cash and help out students, but tutor.com is not it.

Pros

You make your own schedule. You work remotely.

Cons

You are paid extremely poorly for your expertise. Minimum wage was standard when I worked here. You are expected to be actively doing something at ALL times IF you are being paid. You are only paid for 100% of your working time during the specific hours during the week that you managed to secure for yourself by picking them up faster than the other tutors. During those periods, depending on your subject, you generally have not a moment's rest between students because incoming requests are directed to scheduled tutors before anyone else, and you are heavily penalized if you miss a request by not responding to it within 60 seconds. Tutor.com offers minimal scheduled hours because they expect tutors to "float." This is being marked as "online" outside of your scheduled hours, during which you are "on call" without being paid for your availability. You have to still sit at attention at your PC when floating, because you are still penalized if you take 60 seconds to respond to a request. And you are ONLY paid for the exact amount of time that you spend actively helping a student, if one is directed to you. You are graded on a variety of metrics and subjective standards by a supervisor who reads the transcript of every interaction you have. They are encouraged by their superiors to never give a perfect review of you; of course, if they did, you might get into your head that you deserve a raise or promotion. (This is something I was expressly told by other supervisors employed by Tutor.com who felt this pressure themselves.) So, they find one or two tiny things to nitpick--even spending too much time with a student--and use that to tell you that you have room for improvement. This also leaves open the possibility that you will be professionally penalized or fired if your supervisor consistently marks a "need for improvement" due to feeling overly pressured by upper management to give tutors subpar reviews. It doesn't matter if all of your students give you 5 star reviews. Overall, this is easily one of the worst companies I have ever worked for. You can literally be paid better and face less stress and pressure working as a cashier or stocker for nearly any major corporation.

Pros

You can make your own schedule and work from home. Also, if you like tutoring, it's always rewarding to work with students.

Cons

Their Classroom program is pretty janky; they launched a new version of Classroom that for some reason exists alongside the previous one, so you'll have to deal with a different UI sometimes for no reason. The new version is also extremely prone to crashing. The pay is also not great. As I understand it, it is also variable from state to state, as you'll be categorized as a part-time employee in some states and an independent contractor in others. For me, the biggest downside is the feeling of isolation from other tutors. I know that it's a remote job, but there's not really any way to communicate with your fellow tutors on the site. This is especially bad because some students using this service can be rude or even aggressive, something that I find is harder to deal with when you're isolated. The only person you'll really interact with is your Quality Specialist, who writes your reviews. I was lucky enough to have a nice and understanding QS, but I imagine that a bad one would make the experience of working here absolutely terrible.

Pros

work from anywhere on your schedule

Cons

You get paid relatively OK for tutoring which is not highly paid but there is a lot of overhead to the job. The top pay is about $21/hour. You get QA messages from the Mentors which you are suppose to read. You don't get paid for that. You don't get paid for the laborious scheduling time. Mostly only the students that have an axe to grind review. Laborious typing because 90% of students want to use 90's chat technology instead of audio. The app frequently disconnects or crashes which they blame on tutor. I have never lost a zoom call but the tutor.com app crashes a lot claiming it lost connection. Limited about of hours in many states to work. Some as few as two hours per day. Audio doesn't work 1/2 the time for the very few students who use it

Pros

Rewarding experience. Love helping students reach their full potential. The hours are super flexible and once you're past the introductory phrase you are mostly left to your own devices.

Cons

Limited hours, strict time limits, and so many things you're not allowed to do or say. They will chew you out for being TOO helpful. They want as few comments on peoples essays as possible because time is money. The pay isn't nearly good enough for them to be breathing down your neck about time.