GoStudent reviews

It took them three months to finally pay me for the work that I completed and when they did they sent the wrong amount, shorting me by $15 which is almost a whole session's worth of pay as they only give $19 per 50 minute session. Not only that, but they sent the money as a wire transfer instead of a direct deposit which then triggered a charge from my bank that makes it not even worth it to go after the shorted amount. They won't even pay you for your work at all if you make less than $100 by the time you realize how much of a scam the company is. I have been a tutor for the better part of a decade working with companies like Wyzant and Varsity as well as running my own business full-time for over 5 years, and I have never had any company be as completely disorganized and unprofessional as GoStudent. Beyond what they did to me, they also mislead one of my students who has a learning disability and scammed them into signing a year long contract when the student thought they were only paying for monthly uploads of sessions. I cannot say enough about how awful this company is. STAY AWAY!!!!!!! Do not work for them and absolutely do not give them your money. Go to Varsity or better yet find a local tutor to pay directly.

I acknowledge that GoStudent is a relatively new company and things will get tweaked, amended and changed. However, all these changes I've listed below have happened in about the last year: I can understand why they stopped using Zoom and created their own platform as the costs must have astronomical BUT what was produced was an inferior glitchy platform which is not totally reliable which is both frustrating for the students and tutors. They then decided to dispense with WhatsApp and create their own area of communication. That's not really worked to its full potential either, leading to further frustration! Then there were changes to the work structure. Many Program Managers (PMs), whose role was to match a suitable student with a tutor, secure a sale and support the students and tutors until such times they could manage without assistance, were drastically reduced. I believe I am correct in saying many lost their jobs before Christmas last year. As far as I am aware the PMs no longer match students and tutors together, they just see which tutors are available and book them, this has led to a lot of mismatching of students' needs with tutors' skills and expertise. Then they revised the tutors pay. When I joined the starting fee was £13.00 per 50-minute session. You then earned a loyality bonus for being an active tutor and hitting a target figure of so many lessons and a frequency bonus when you earned a bonus when you built a long-term tutoring relationship with your student. They changed the loyalty bonus for a different scheme (which was cheaper for them). Then in April 2023 all new tutors were denied the frequency bonus. I guess it will only be a matter of time when this will be withdrawn from the other tutors. Then they reduced some of the starting pay of £13.00 to £12.00 for some subjects including maths. The main way that tutors connect with students is through have a "trial lesson". These are students who want to see if GoStudent would work for them. They have it for free. When I joined nearly 2 years ago, I was paid £13.00 for the 50 minute session and £7.50 if they didn't turn up (no show). The pay was the same if the student decided to take out a subscription with GoStudent (often known a "conversion") or not. About 6 months ago the policy was changed. GoStudent would now pay the tutor £6.50 for the 50-minute lesson and then the remain £6.50 when the student converted. That meant that we were working for below the minimum wage! At the end of September 2023, the policy was changed again. They gave us 6 day's notice of this change which was: all trials will not get paid, you only get paid £13.00 if the person converts and you do not get paid if they are a no show! So basically, tutors are now expected to prepare the lesson and do the session (now reduced to 30 minutes) for free and just hope that convert in order to get paid! As well as the money side of things, and from what I can gather only 50% of potential students booked in actually come for their trial session and out of those that do attend maybe about half of them sign up so the conversion rate is low, getting to know a new student, understand their goals and needs, doing a lesson and building up a good report with the student's parents is untenable. The tutors have asked for meetings with the high-level management and this has been denied. So, many of the tutors are now boycotting taking trial lessons. When this was mentioned in the WhatsApp groups (because GoStudent's new communication system doesn't allow the tutors to chat to each other) many of us made our feelings known by using the poo emoji whenever PMs posted requests for trial lessons to show what we thought and shared how to change our availability on our schedules so that we were not assigned non paid work! Childish, maybe, but doing the grown-up thing and talking about it like adults was denied. The result? The more vocal of the tutors were sacked!! Some were told by phone and others by email that they no longer worked with GoStudent with immediate effect! It is worth pointing out here that we are not employees but freelancers. This used to be a company that I recommend to my friends and family. I no longer feel loyal to the brand and in fact feel watching it disinteLgrate before my very eyes!