What are red flags in online tutoring contracts?

Price you cannot see

If the only path to a number is a counsellor call, you are entering a sales funnel. Legitimate programmes can publish a band or a calculator. ‘It depends’ is fine as a sentence after you have seen a starting price — not instead of one.

Lock-in dressed as a discount

Multi-month packages can be fair when the per-class price is clear and unused lessons are refundable. They are a trap when the discount exists only to make leaving expensive, or when ‘annual fees’ are non-refundable after week one.

Anonymous or rotating tutors

A child cannot build trust with a silhouette. If you cannot see a face, qualification, and how they talk about maths before (or immediately after) the first lesson, you are buying a slot, not a teacher.

What a cleaner contract looks like

Prefer programmes that can show all of these in writing:

• Public per-class price and clear 6- or 12-month enrolment.
• No-cost EMI terms stated up front when offered.
• Written refund rule for unused lessons / early exit.
• Named tutor; rematch if fit is wrong.
• Safeguarding page that names recordings, access, and data — not vague ‘we care’ copy.