Koichi, yes, we live in a capitalistic system which enables something as potential as EduFire to exist, of course this aspect can’t be removed, I mean, we want to be paid at the end of the day! But perhaps getting the best teachers, which will enable EduFire to reward themselves and those teachers, will best be achieved by Edufire working with the teachers. I think that fortnightly/monthly payment terms are a good response. At least that way I know I will get paid if a student books me, and then if I get no bookings it will be that old capitalist system kicking in again telling me that I’m not providing a service that students’ are looking for. Nothing is ideal, but at least this way I can work in more honest and realistic terms. I think it would benefit EduFire as well, as there doesn’t seem to be much point in having a plethora of “ghost” students.

Koichi, I’m really grateful for the work that you and Marco and all the other administrators put in on this site. You are all very supportive, Marco has never not been able to help me in one way or another, the very human aspect of this site is something that keeps me here.

I agree with Holly that “Nothing is ideal, but at least this way we can work in more honest and realistic terms”, and yes Koichi, I think that monthly payments would be just dandy.

Stop the Spooky students Now! :)

I do agree that it (payment up front at the time of booking) would keep the ghost students (who want those anyways?) at bay…. I can imagine the feeling when a teacher has a 1:1 session booked and the one (who actually requested it) doesn’t show up and, even worse, doesn’t even dare to contact the teacher….

Thanks for bringing in some fresh air.

If students pay earlier (upon registration), I don’t quite understand why tutors should have to wait longer than they currently do, relative to the date of the class.

If you want to avoid paying teachers the very next day after a class, how’bout promising pay within 3-10 days of a class, never less than 3 days? So you have weekly pay-outs, but if somebody has a class on Monday he will not get paid on Tuesday but the Tuesday after.

Most important is a feature that lets us know whether a student has paid though, so that we can refuse to do business with him (not wait for him in a 1-on-1 session, kick him out of a group class) if he didn’t pay. Also I believe that Edufire should be going after students who waste people’s time more, just as well as teachers who do.

I remember for example how excited I was that somebody was offering Georgian group classes and I relayed that information to a group of language geeks I know who want to study the language…. at lesson time, the teacher didn’t show up, and same for the next session despite my message to him. I looked pretty stupid and it was a very bad first impression of Edufire for the language geeks I invited. But you know who looked more stupid? The Edufire twitterer, who advertised the 5th (or so) session of this class. Question: does Edufire have no way of knowing which sessions didn’t take place, which teachers are not showing up?

This is great, thank you for your feedback (and keep it coming). We’re getting somewhere, now! Here’s another thing I want to ask you all:

So say someone signs up for a class or 1-on-1 session, and they are paying at the time of registering.

1. Can they cancel and get a refund (I think they should…. but…)

2. If they can cancel, how far ahead of time must they do it? (I think 24 hours, but what do you all think?)

3. Are there exceptions to this cancellation rule? Emergencies do happen, and some teachers would want to give a refund. Do we leave that up to the teacher to do the refund separate from eduFire?

@Judith – Here’s why there would have to be a delay in payment

Putting together some sort of invoice page is something we’re working on, probably like the SuperPass payments page. I think the idea, though, is that if we do make it so people pay upon registration, you can just assume that people who have signed up with you have already paid, because they have no other choice.

We do know when a teacher doesn’t show up, and we contact a lot of them to figure out what happened. It’s best if the student e-mails us too, though, so be sure to let us know when this happens so we can take more stringent action.

Koichi,

I personally think payment upon registration is the perfect idea with cancellation possible for both students and teachers up to 24 hours before the lesson is due to begin. Of course there are times when a student or a teacher cannot make it to a booked lesson, usually to do with unforeseen technological problems or emergencies, and as with any system, there should be some flexibility to deal with issues like these. But if you have a student and a teacher who are both serious and have committed to teaching and learning respectively, but for some reason their lesson can’t take place, then perhaps a credit system, rather than a refund system could be established, enabling both parties to reschedule the lesson once the issue has been resloved.

Koichi…. since you asked…. Personally, I think someone who registers for a class shouldn’t be reimbursed if they cancel (just like someone who pays tuition in college or university doesn’t get any of their money back if they cancel some classes)…. with a refund policy, some people might just start abusing the system: register, pay and then cancel just in time to get a refund…. if you’re going to change things around, you have to make sure no other problems will arise (it’s called thinking ahead and preventing potential problems in the future )…. for 1:1 sessions, people who would cancel a session with a 24 hour advanced notice could re-schedule the session at some other time…. less than 24 hours? Well…. no refunds and no re-scheduling…. Having rules is imperative for any systems to work. Those are the policies I do apply in my business and it works fine (and no one has ever been offended!)….

We have an expression in French: «Les gars, il est grand temps que vous mettiez vos culottes!» :P

For some reasons, I am under the impression that eduFire is reluctant to implement rules and policies… but, it’s big enough to have some… otherwise it’s anarchy and doomed to go down the slope…

I really don’t think a no-refund policy is going to ground a lot of students. If a student has a family emergency, and gets burned out of $X because they couldn’t get refunded, that will likely be the last they use eduFire, potentially losing hundreds of dollars for that teacher or other teachers. I think it’s inconsiderate, and I don’t think it’s like postsecondary tuition. Personally, I wouldn’t ever register for a session knowing that I couldn’t get a refund if something came up and I could give the teacher plenty of notice.

However, I like the refund-within-a-time-window idea. Allow refunds until 48 hours before a class, and you’re golden. The busier a teacher is, the less a problem this should be. It’s often how music lessons are run, and other lessons. Give more than a day’s notice, and you’re solid.

I, for one, don’t want to lose a potential student because they got burned and they didn’t have a refund window.

@Lyne – I’m pretty sure we just agreed with each other on everything you said. Cool :)

@Holly – Good point, I forgot to think about teacher no-shows. I know all of you are super responsible, but there’s a fair amount that actually exist. Like I said somewhere, we’ve decided to be stricter with teacher no-shows by doing account deletions and the like, if we don’t hear back from them with a good reason …. but maybe making some kind of automated system that will automatically suspend no-show teachers who miss say…. two of there classes? One perhaps? Do we make it that strict? Accidents / emergencies do happen, which we need to account for. Maybe it could correlate with the teacher rating, where those without many ratings can get on probation much easier? Not sure if this is fair to new teachers, but I guess it could work….

This brings us to another issue – the engineers were working on a percentage scale to show no-show percentages of individuals the other day. They did a lookup of my name, and I had 5-6 no-shows. Almost all of them were my own classes – this was because I had canceled one session out of a series (that make up the entire "class"). I can’t delete the one session without deleting the whole series, so I just e-mailed my students and told them it was canceled. Of course, because of this I get marked as a no-show for a class. boo. We’d have to put something in place that lets teachers cancel individual class sessions within a series of classes that they’ve set up. In fact, there’s no way for a regular teacher to cancel their own class right now (another thing the engineers are working on, but it’s wayyy more complicated than you’d ever expect, even though admins can do it. I was surprised). Right now if the teacher doesn’t show up to a class now, an automatic refund does take place for the student – but that doesn’t stop the teacher from continuing their bad behavior. Lots of ways to fix this, but one step at a time…. hmm.

Yes good point Sean. I also think any significant change to how students pay needs to be made with the students as part of the discussion. We need as many ideas as possible in order to get it technically right.

@Sean – Yeah, I agree – I think there definitely has to be a refund window. So you think 24 hours in advance is good, then?

Also, I’d love to know what you think about the payout system. What do you think of once a month like we’re doing with SuperPass? Is it too long? Do we do a shorter delay, where you still get paid weekly but you don’t get paid for the previous week (you get paid for the week before the last one)?

This thread is starting to sound very promising! :-)

Btw, here’s a suggestion I edited in, thinking I had time before anybody would reply – you guys are too fast: “If you want to avoid paying teachers the very next day after a class, how’bout promising pay within 3-10 days of a class, never less than 3 days? So you have weekly pay-outs, but if somebody has a class on Monday he will not get paid on Tuesday but the Tuesday after.”

I’d say a 48 hour window is in order. I mean, part of my online teaching practice is to work from the top down in my preparation, so I take my prepared material that I always have, and customize it to my students, so it’s not a huge dramatic thing to have a cancellation, but I usually do this process more than a day in advance to be prepared (For a Tuesday session/class, I prepare Sunday night). I think this protects teachers AND students from getting burned.

As far as the payout system, I’m not too bothered by where it’s at. I don’t understand why this is such a massive complication, but if people are so up-in-arms about it, maybe do a bi-weekly system for sessions. I understand how taxing it can be on the system to manage so many different pay systems. I like Judith’s suggestions. But, realistically, I don’t think people should be getting so bothered by the system, seeing as they haven’t been able to get a realistic idea of how Superpass and such fit into their marketing/business plans.

That wasn’t very cohesive. Basically, 48 hour cancellation window, people should hold off on passing judgment on a young payment system (but I like Judith’s idea!)

We may need to consider is legal realities too. I’m not a lawyer but we need to address some of these issues.

What are the requirements about implied warranties? I think that only matters on the sale of tangible goods.

What if someone claims the payment was the result of fraud? In America they have the right to do so up to 30 days later, but the burden falls on the credit card company. What about other jurisdictions?

Basically, our payments will depend on how comfortable students are with paying edufire. I’m more paranoid about Internet crime than many, but it is still seen in suspicious light by many.

@Sean, while we agree on many (if not most) points I have to ask; What about the future students that are turned off by a friends negative experience, enough bad reviews, or the existence of a site setup by a dis-grunted student? The the potential lost for us tutors could be in the thousands.

BTW: I spent went looking online for some bad vibes about edufire but couldn’t find any.

Prepay at the time of booking.
Cancellation: accept a given period of time prior to class:
12 hours before
If student does not show up or cancel, teacher gets paid
Refund: Agreement between teacher and student.
Teacher Payment: One week after class is given.

Let me throw a monkey wrench into the discussion….

We all are speaking of this from a tutor’s point of view, which is fine of course. But the whole issue that started this discussion thread and of which led to this topic (pay scheduling) was the need of prepay due to students not showing up. It has grown to include rules which will determine how many hours a student should have to cancel before he or she forfeits prepayment. But consider this:

How should a student be compensated when he or she feels their time has been wasted due to the tutor not showing up for a scheduled class. And I realize most everyone is saying they are responsible tutors and this will never happen to them. But there have been times when I have scheduled a class (as a student) and I could not log on to the internet due to unexplained reasons. This was not eduFire’s fault. But whose fault was it?

Now imagine if I was supposed to give a class and I had the same problems. It is 10 minutes before the class is due to start and I know the student has prepayed. But it is impossible to log on to the internet. The argument that has been very well articulated here is that tutors should be compensated when students do not give advanced notice because the tutor has basicly wasted his or her time. And I will agree with that in theory. However, how will the student be compensated when they feel they have wasted their time?

The money from the student has already been collected. The most they can expect at this time is simply to have their money refunded. But doing so does not compensate the student for their time wasted. Should eduFire force the tutor to give a FREE one-on-one session and forfeit the income?

There are some who will point out that how a teacher chooses to compensate a student in such a situation should be left entirely up to the student and tutor. EduFire simply provides a platform for learning. It should not have the right to force a tutor to give a free session since the cause of the class being missed was beyond the tutor’s control. And I agree 100% with this position!

But should rules be made that only protect the tutor’s position without considering the student’s point of view? I would recommend everyone consider these points as they suggest far-reaching changes to the basic eduFire business model.

Ron,

I hope you are successful at getting people to recognize this before it bites us on the nose.

Every day, everybody is the students shoes in one way or another.
- Take a plane. Buy pay for your ticket ahead of time…..weather, flight cancelations, etc
- Purchase anything online. Pay first….and wait for delivery
- Concert. Buy tickets ahead of time…..
and the list goes on and on….

So, paying a few bucks for a class, is not out of the ordinary

I really don’t understand why some people are so reluctant with the idea of paying up front/ahead of time for a service…. it’s common practice, both in the real world and on the net, and clients comply with those policies…. and, please, don’t raise the argument of possible fraud!… I do think eduFire has already established that its site is legitimate. And yes! there are some people who are very suspicious and would never buy anything on the internet… chances are you’ll never see such individuals here or on any other sites (if they want to learn something, they’ll rather attend a regular school). :)

@Lyne: Keep in mind that our student base is not necessarily all financially-independent adults who can extend confidence to themselves, let alone a site they’ve likely just googled/stumbled and are considering. You can’t assume that their advance purchase of a class session is a sign of commitment; rather, it may draw some apprehension.

@Dave That’s inevitable; my main concern is that I would rather have the merits of the teachers be the turnoff, rather than based on the system at large, because I think regardless of the technology/policies, the teachers are the ones that will excel. Anything that may come as a roadblock between potential students and their teachers, has not only failed us in the financial sense, but in the esteem sense. Was that clear? My brain’s all jumbled up.

*Has anyone thought of *a system where the student is billed 24/48 hours before their session, and the teacher is notified/able to see this? This seems like a happy medium between the pay-upon-registration-no-refunds people and the pay-upon-attendance-of-the-session people. Just throwing ideas out there — I’d like this thread to remain constructive and not negative.

Very interesting discussion; I see the pros and cons from both the tutor and student points of view and the administration aspects from eduFire’s point of view. I don’t mind waiting a week or two for payment. That is acceptable. I do know that when I have a doctor’s appointment and I don’t show or cancel within 24 hours, I get charged for the appointment. Extenuating circumstances can be dealt with when necessary. For example, my car broke down once on the way to my appointment. I called and canceled 30 mins before the appointment and the doctor did not charge me for the appointment.

I also understand and agree with Marco’s statements about those teachers that consistently have high attendance rates. Let me explain with a critique of myself. I offer a free Business Book Club class. As of today, 30 students have signed up for the class. At most, 9 have attended. Whose fault? I certainly see the fault as being mine. Not that all 30 have not attended but that 20 or 25 have not attended.

I started the class because I have many business books like the One Minute Manager that are sitting on my bookshelves. If I teach the class, I’ll have to read the books. Not the loftiest of ideas, but if I marketed the class like a business, I’m sure I’d get more students.

Blame Me #1: I don’t market my class. I read the book and talk about it, whether it’s to 1 student or 9. I should and I will now post in the forums which book I’ll be discussing. Maybe the marketing book doesn’t interest you but the time management book does.

Blame Me #2: I can publish many one line blurbs that will attract people but I don’t. Maybe my students think it’s a free class and Alan doesn’t seem to care, why should I? Maybe they forgot they signed up for the class. I don’t remind them.

Blame Me #3: I read a great book about the “Death by PowerPoint Syndrome”, creating text-filled slides where all or most of the information could have been gleaned from reading the slides. I also like conversational classes and this class is very lectured-oriented. Students are happy to read and listen to the information.

Well, I attended this excellent “How to use Facebook for Business” class this past week on eduFire. The slides had text and the class was mostly lecture. I and everyone learned a lot. It was the best class I’ve had on eduFire so far. It reminded me that regular PowerPoint and lecture works well. My students are happy with the lecture format so I guess I was worrying about a problem that didn’t exist. In this case, I learned by literally being in the student’s shoes.

I know there are great teachers on eduFire and I know many of those teachers use eduFire on a more serious basis than I. However, when things don’t work as I expected, I always look to myself first. It doesn’t mean we are not doing our jobs well and it doesn’t mean that the fault is always ours. What this does teach me is to realize that when something doesn’t turn out as expected, analyze all sides of the equation.

Send your students email when they don’t show up. Politely shaming them is fine. Some respond, some don’t. The worst offenders thankfully don’t sign up for my classes anymore.

I’ll end with some business advice. I read in many sales books that most sales people don’t ask for the sale. That shocked me. How could you be a sales person and not ask for the sale!

I have a friend who works in a pharmacy chain store – Walgreens. He is the best example of how to ask for a sale. He works as a cashier. Walgreens has items, like M&Ms that are on sale. For each package of M&Ms or whatever is on sale, he get’s a nickel or dime commission.

One day I stopped by to talk with him. It got busy so I observed him working. He asked about 35 people in a row if they wanted to buy yogurt covered raisins. All 35 said no. I asked him if that bothered him. He said no. Sometimes 70, 80, or 100 people said no but then some said yes.

His persistence pays off. Not only is he the top sales person in that store, but he sells more than all the other Walgreens in his district. Imagine that, 70, 80, or 100 nos in a row and he alone still sells more than the entire sales staffs in all the other stores in his district.

Don’t give up. Persistence pays off!

No one, as far as I can tell, is suggesting that students should be allowed to take classes without paying. And eduFire’s policy of prepayment will be enacted on July 15th, as far as everything I’ve read indicates. I agree with most of what has been written in this thread in theory. But what must be pointed out is that before we insist that eduFire change it’s policy regarding cancelations and refunds, there should be more investigation into the matter that takes into consideration all sides affected.

One of the nicest things about eduFire is that they really just provide a platform for ANYONE who desires to become an online tutor. They do not censor my topics (except in instances of questionable subject matter that may be viewed by minors) and they do not dictate to members how they conduct business.

And of course things being what they are there are many things that eduFire can do to improve this site for both tutors and students. And prepayment was an excellent step in the right direction. But as I write this post there are 69 posts and 18 voices involved in this discussion thread. And the majority of those involved are all tutors. I for one would love to hear from more students.

Just as the relationship between tutors and eduFire is symbiotic, so is the relationship between tutors and students. There is an old saying that the customer is always right. Now of course we all know this is not true. But the reason behind the saying is more important than the overall truth of the statement. Without the student none of this would exist!. Students purchase services from tutors. It is their money that pays our fees and keeps the lights on at eduFire. We all need to understand this before we react and place restrictive policies that may have a negative impact on students who wish to study here.

So lets work towards finding a solution that involves all sides. I don’t think eduFire is choosing simply not to respond to the needs of its tutors. I think it goes to great lengths to try to find solutions, but changes in the site’s underlying business model should not be taken lightly. And even though they may not happen as fast as some may like does not mean the staff at eduFire takes them less seriously.

But as we are waiting for eduFire to make corrections that involve some of the suggestions that have been made here, let me say that we should all look and try to find ways to improve our communication with both our current and potential students. I am a firm believer that rules and ratings may have an effect on the problems involving student no-shows. However, the respect that comes from a positive relationship between a tutor and his or her students will have a far greater impact than rules and regulations ever can!

@Sean, I think your message was clear. My interpretation is that if the turnoff is the teacher and not the machine, then we can do something about it.

@Lyne, who cares why studentss are reluctant? We should pay attention to what is in their minds no matter how wrong we think they are.

@Alan, I’m not the only one that noticed how effective his presentation was despite being a simple talking head show with power point? While I didn’t agree with him 100% (I’m not in the virtual marketing park yet), he did put on an effective class that I think would be profitable as a SuperPass class. I don’t know if this is your kind of music but your comments reminded me of the spiel just before the 1 minute mark of Akon’s “You can put the blame on me” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vppGeM-hLCc)

@edufire, I was talking to someone about handling a QA in a large class and they said other sites have questions emailed. I don’t know how that would work but establishing a queue that the tutor can field as needed makes sense to me.

Could you not have a pro-rata refund system a bit like those offered by hotels or travel agents? If the student cancels sufficiently far in advance then they get a full refund and that becomes increasingly less as cancellation gets closer to the class session and if they don’t turn up they get nothing back? It might be administratively easier to have the hours of pro-rata uniform for all tutors, but if it is feasible perhaps the tutors can determine what their minimum notice is. Understandably, some tutors want as much notice as possible but that might be 48 hours for one tutor and 8 for another.

As for genuine emergencies, well it would be nice if there is some leniency in these circumstances, but quite honestly if one is dealing with a genuine emergency it is unlikely that whether or not one is about to get a refund on a class is going to be at the top of a list to worry about. Very rapidly tutors and eduFire distinguish between the students that are always having ‘emergencies’ and those that really have missed a session because they really couldn’t be there.