TakeLessons.com Tracking Order Status

If you are an adult student, the policies on this site are intolerable and unfeasible.The music teachers use this site because if you attempt to cancel even a minute past the 24 hour "cancellation period" you lose your money, unless you happen to have one of a VERY few teachers, who will offer a makeup lesson. I had a teacher who stole hundreds of dollars because the lessons are prepaid and I had some issues come up that were beyond my control. Recently, I contacted he teacher 20 minutes outside the cancellation window and she deliberately ignored me to ensure that she would get her money, even though I had to miss my lesson. I contacted takelessons,con and they would not intervene on my behalf. The owners of this site care NOTHING for the students.

The instructor I had was very good, patient and clearly skilled. It's the communications from the company that I had challenges with. First, their online dashboard for scheduling and payment is TERRIBLE. I couldn't communicate with my instructor through it, so we just exchanged email addresses and phone numbers. Second, they sent me so much email that I couldn't manage it and stopped looking at what they were sending. Third, they offered me a 30-day free trial of their group lessons, which I didn't use and didn't realize I was signed up for. It turned into a year membership, but since I was also taking lessons with my instructor, I sadly assumed it was part of the fees. I took lessons with my instructor for about five months and decided to end. At that point, I cancelled my membership....or so I thought. The group lessons membership fees didn't end and I noticed them on my credit card six months later (shame on me for not closely checking my credit card bill - eek). I called to ask for a refund of those fees only from the point I stopped taking lessons, or six months. They only returned 3 months, and I paid for a whole year and never used it. I'm annoyed and think their customer service and platform stink.

The teachers (independent contractors) I have found are excellent. This review is of the company takelessons rather than for any individual teacher. The takelessons platform is glitchy. After one such glitch that resulted in my lessons not showing up (preventing me from logging into my online classroom or even seeing my schedule of lessons), takelessons refused to even partially refund the lesson that was interrupted by the app malfunctioning. The malfunction was apparently due to some kind of reconfiguration. The phone rep said the company *was* aware that the app wasn’t working but consumers weren’t notified. The company’s rep cited policy that instructors themselves have to come up with an alternative online classroom if the takelessons classroom isn’t working, and further policy that a lesson has to be canceled in these circumstances to avoid paying for the lesson. I prepaid the lesson and was out 15 minutes (1/4 of the time), because of the app not working as it should. The company indicated that it isn’t financially responsible for that loss of my time and suggested I ask my teacher for a credit instead. In my opinion that is a very shady business practice.

My youngest son (7yo) took chess lessons using Takelessons. Well after a year, his teacher passed away unexpectedly. It was a terrible time for us. We just realized that Takelessons took our remaining balance because we didn't request a refund within 90 days of purchasing the lessons. They send reminders for everything else, but not in this instance. So $60 gone and a 7yo little boy still grieving his teacher. Needless to say, we will not be using that platform again.

First off, this review is not for my ASL teacher Kimber. She's amazing, fun, responds quickly to emails, and overall fantastic. My lackluster review is for the takelessons site itself. I find it shady that you have to send a request to change a recurring schedule. I tried to change from a 45 minute lesson weekly to a 30 minute lesson weekly. Instead, they double-booked me for a 45 and a 30 minute lesson, overlapping times, weekly. It was a huge pain for me and for my teacher to figure it out and there was no way for me to rectify it on my own; I had to send a request to takelessons to have them make the correction. Any time you have to "request" to cancel a recurring event is suspicious to me. It's just not a good customer experience. I was lucky enough to find a great teacher here, but if she ever left then I'd be done with takelessons.