Cambly

The worse company I have seen. The pay is horrible, the platform is so low grade, and the students can be so weird. You have no real experience unless dealing with the students from Brazil, Japan, and South Korea. The rest, mostly from the Middle East are just wasting time. They are never focused, act silly, don't turn on cameras, and seem to be playing games. The site has a ridiculous new tutor agreement that says they can use your information, pictures, etc when they want. Um no thanks! They just lost me...

Cambly customer service is just about the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Somehow, my tutor account was totally deleted. I'm not even sure if I was fired or what, if anything, I did wrong. This month was my 3-year anniversary on Cambly. I had logged over 18,000 chats earning more than $47,000. As far as I knew everything was fine. I had about 3 weeks of Priority Hours booked and many reservations scheduled. I had a small and loyal following of regular students, many of whom I had known for years. It would have been nice to at least say goodbye. I guess I'll never get that chance.

I worked for Cambly for 4 and a half years and was welcomed with a goodbye email today. The reason was that some students complained about me but no details were ever given. When asked for details they refused to give them. Do not waste your time working on this site.

TL; DR: tutors don't show up on time; servers are laggy; customer service is virtually non-existent. Avoid.

Very frequently, and I mean more than 50% of the time, lessons did not take place at all due to reasons like the server being laggy (definitely not on my end), teachers not showing up at all and virtual classroom 'technical issues'. Every time I reached out to the support team, all they could say was 'sorry' -- period.

Worse still, when I contacted them with a refund request, they replied with a generic template that clearly showed they couldn't even be bothered to read my message -- they got the starting and ending date and lesson package type wrong. After all, what Cambly is trying to convey is **refund? Impossible!**.

With this kind of attitude towards users as a platform, I highly doubt if you, a prospective tutor/learner, would ever be happy with their service. Avoid at all costs. There are other better companies out there.

I worked for Cambly for several years, mostly on the CamblyKids side. Things were fine for awhile, but I had introduced a book & film approach to some of my regulars and was kicked for playing too much video, even though the parents knew what I was doing and appreciated the more interesting literary content. They said I had 2 warnings, but the first one was 8 months pror and unrelated. You'd think they would balance the performance against errors, but nope.

After that, my ratings started to drop even when I only had regular students who liked me. The rating system is a joke and a scam. I'm certain Cambly manipulates the numbers when they want to drive new teachers to the front.

The best thing about Cambly is meeting the people, but it's a slave job. The pay is so bad. I suppose I will leave soon since I have a new, high paying job. I will miss my friends from around the world, though.

Many people teach English online part time while devoting their full time attention to a creative endeavor, such as writing a novel or designing an invention. If this is you, then don't sign a contract with Cambly! Section #7 refers to "developments," and agreement with this item compels you to give Cambly your "rights, title, and interest" in "all inventions creations, improvements, discoveries, methods, developments, software, and works of authorship, whether patentable or not, that are created, made, conceived, or reduced to practice by him or under his direction or jointly with others during the Service Period, whether or not during normal working hours or on the premises of the Company." It goes on to say that if you refuse to sign a document that they want you to sign, "Tutor hereby irrevocably designates and appoints each executive officer of the Company as his agent and attorney-in-fact to execute any such papers on his behalf to take any and all actions as the Company may deem necessary or desirable in order to protect its rights and interests." So by signing the contract, you give them the proxy power to sign any document using your signature, forcing your legal compliance. I've taught ESL abroad for 6 years but this contract is on another level. It's normal for your employer to own the rights to things that you create at work. It's another thing for them to own EVERYTHING you create in your free time, too. Cambly could legally pursue any royalties you may earn from any creative projects that you complete while under contract with them.

I taught on the platform for over a year as I traveled the world, and it was $#*!ty pay and a platform that didn't always work well. But I really enjoyed the students. Unlike others in the reviews, I had wonderful experience with the students and formed some lovely friendships. I created my own curriculum and saw students gain knowledge, get into English speaking universities, and secure jobs under my instruction. It was rewarding from that perspective. But the company's tutor agreement, which they've amended, is abusive. And they're asking for the rights to ANY and ALL creative things tutors design or develop while working for them (novels, apps, screenplays, etc) although the contract specifically says tutors are independent contractors. They can also use tutors' likenesses for advertisement without permission or compensation. They can sign tutors'names to legal documentation (I'm not sure this is even legal!). They forbid tutors from engaging in class action law suits. The list goes on. I'm not a disgruntled worker writing a revenge review. I was a tutor with an 8.84 rating out of a possible 9.0 I had planned on quitting the platform when the new agreement was to take place on May 17,2021 but I went on the platform two weeks before that date to log in and I was being forced to sign the new agreement early or I could not log in. I had 20 or so hours already scheduled that I couldn't undo because I couldn't get onto the platform, which means I looked AWOL to my students who'd scheduled those hours. This is the kind of thing Cambly does. There is no regard for tutors or students. It's a money grab.

Teachers' quality is not good. They are not willing to help with students' personal goals. Especially after I booked lessons with a few teachers, one told me that it's her 8-year professional experience that she won't prepare for my class, "the most exciting topics come from students' hobbies so pre-planned topics are impossible". Another said, "Unfortunately I do have many students so I am not able to prepare ahead of class." Most of the teachers claim that they will help students to achieve language goals in the video and seem so passionate about teaching, but at the end, the students have no right to decide the lesson, or they said "yes, sure! No problem! Sure thing!" to my requests, but ended up never fulfilling them in my lessons. No trial class so my money always goes down the drain. 4 months, what an exhausting journey in finding the right teacher in Cambly. Perhaps never will I be able to do so, so quitting is the only choice.

Another problem is NO SHOW. To avoid this problem, I actually always message tutors the day before the lesson to confirm their availability. However, tutors are really irresponsible that even if they promised to show up, they can end up never doing so and don't receive any punishment and I cannot leave a comment. Cambly explained that "something unexpected can happen". But isn't that "something" too frequent?

Oh! And customer service. Because my location is Hong Kong, they always arrange people from Taiwan to answer my inquiries in Chinese! However, my language setting is English. I'm not a native speaker of Chinese, so it can be very confusing for me, I write you in English, so why can't just write me back in English?