Varsity Tutors

Garbage. And you know it’s garbage because of these definitely fake reviews that they’ve paid people to put on Unilocal!What a great company that it has to do that! The company is a fly-​by-​night company run out of some other city, their address in San Diego is literally just «San Diego, CA». They assign tutors by who answers the email blast the quickest, with absolutely zero attention to the needs of the students and assign which subjects tutors can teach by completely arbitrary centralized rules made in St. Louis, with no care or attention to any individual learner’s needs. They pay terribly so any good tutor is gone within a month to one of the legitimate companies in town or out on their own. My advice? If you’re doing test prep, books from the library (get the ones from the actual company that makes the test) are ten times more effective than any individual tutor. If you actually need a tutor, go on craigslist or, because the company takes an absolutely massive markup on whatever the tutors are being paid, offer a grad student half of what Varsity would have charged you and they’ll jump at the chance, and they’ll actually have teaching experience instead of just a spare test score!

We had a very good experience with Varsity Tutors. They are very reliable and experienced and have excellent follow through. We had 4 sessions left on the package we purchased that we couldn’t use in time and they gave us a full refund.

I set my son up for a statistic tutor with Varsity tutors. I must say the tutor they sent, Alex is absolutely awesome. He has never been late. After the very first session my son made exceptional progress in his understanding and his very next test improved two grades. I cannot believe the experiences of others. I’m so glad I didn’t read those post before I would never have experienced the best tutor I have met to date. Thank you Varsity for sending us Alex.

Horrible experience! I bought 15 hours of time they provided be a tutor who would never show up on time for first 3 sessions, I worked out a different time to match with her schedule. After 4 – 5 hours of tutoring she says she cannot continue and wanted me to find another tutor. This time they gave me another tutor who after 4 – 5 hours of tutoring made me go through the same drama of changing days, time, schedules to take care of her other students. Am I stupid or getting lessons for free that I am being treated this way. I had enough and I called them and even though the 90 day refund policy had expired they at least had some ethics and refunded the money for remaining hours. I would not recommend them. I personally believe that the company takes a big cut from the tutors hourly rate and when these tutors find other kids outside of varsity they compromise the schedules of varsity students.

I am posting this under the San Diego VT because I don’t see a Unilocal listing for them in Santa Barbara which is where I am.
I went to the VT website on ²⁄₂₀ and clicked on «Request This Tutor» for a particular tutor for my son. They have 31 tutors listed in Santa Barbara. When you click on Request This Tutor, I realized this means you don’t really get to select that tutor. They called me back the same day and asked some good questions and said they would have «no problem» to find a tutor who would match our schedule and my son’s needs. Said they would have someone by ²⁄₂₃ or ²⁄₂₅ at the latest.
On ²⁄₂₅ I finally heard from a guy who said he was going to be my son’s tutor but had a sick family member and so could not tutor him. Said he could do it for a week or so until they find someone else. I told him I’d prefer to wait until VT finds us someone with whom we could form a longer term relationship. So, I immediately called VT who proceeded to tell me that they would call that tutor to, I guess, tell him that that was unacceptable. No kidding. Said they would put my request at the «top of the list» to get him someone asap and would contact me.
I did not hear from them so finally called them again on ²⁄₂₇. Said they were working on it and would contact me soon.
Still no word so I called them again on the morning of ³⁄₂. By this time I was a little ticked because I was the one doing all the calling. James said that morning that he would «dig through this» and get back to me in about an hour. By 5pm when I had not heard back, I called again but had to leave a message.
This morning I called again about 8:15am and they did not answer so I had to leave another message. I called a couple of more times after 8:30, thinking they were not open the first time. Finally I waited until after 9:00am, called and this time there was a difference in the way the voice mail system kicked in. First was the recording saying the call might be monitored for training purposes, but instead of ringing only a couple of times and then kicking over to VM, the recording came on and then it rang 5 – 6 times before it kicked over to VM. So, seems to me they were open and just not taking my call. SOOOOOOO, I went to the settings on my phone, turned off my caller ID, called again and boom! James answered my call! Imagine his surprise to find out it was me!
He said his colleague called me the night before at 7pm and left a message. Really? You can’t think of a better lie than that? I have no missed calls and no voice mail from the day before.
He then told me they were not going to be able to find a tutor to meet our schedule. Again, really? I gave them several options and they supposedly have 31 tutors. You couldn’t pick up the phone and ask me if I could do Tuesday instead of Monday? If I could to 4pm instead of 3:15? Just, sorry, we can’t find anyone for you.
I said I want a refund and he proceeds to offer me online tutoring instead. I said I want a full refund.
I paid them $ 845 and they can’t pick up the damn phone and say «we’re working on it?» They might have some really good and talented tutors, but I will never know. I have now wasted 2 weeks and lots of time and still have no tutor. This is a crock.