Dear Families,
I hope you’re all doing well in the heat!
As many of you will know, I’ve been using TutorBird since 2023 as my parent and student portal. It’s the system that sends lesson reminders, manages billing and keeps everything in one place.
As tuition has grown, I’ve found that cancellation requests are now coming through lots of different places, including email, What’sApp, iMessage and Moodle Mail. To make things simpler for everyone, and to make sure everything is managed consistently, I’m moving to a single cancellation process.
From Monday 20th July, all lesson cancellations must be submitted through TutorBird. This allows you to cancel lessons yourself and provides an instant confirmation, so you’ll know straight away that your cancellation has been received. To keep things consistent, if I receive a cancellation request through another method, I’ll ask that it is submitted via TutorBird instead.
By default, both parents and students can cancel lessons through TutorBird. If you would prefer only parents to have this permission, just let me know and I’m happy to disable student cancellations.
My cancellation policy isn’t changing:
- A minimum of 5 days’ notice is required for all cancellations.
- Cancellations made with less than 5 days’ notice are charged at 55% of the lesson fee. This reflects the time reserved in my diary and the planning that takes place before each lesson.
- I completely understand that illness and surprises can’t be helped, so I allow one free illness cancellation per term. Please note that these are my tuition term dates, which may differ from your child’s school term dates. They can be found at georgehalltuition.com/termdates.
- Cancellations made with less than 24 hours’ notice are charged at the full lesson fee unless you’re using your free termly illness cancellation. These can be logged through TutorBird or by giving me a call.
While I’m writing, I also wanted to clarify the best ways to get hold of me.
For parents, the most effective way to contact me is by telephone after 3:45 pm, Monday to Friday, or at any time on Saturday. I always do my best to keep on top of emails, but alongside tuition I also manage over eleven work email accounts, so the occasional message can get buried in my phone! Where possible, please give me a call instead. If I’m unable to answer, please leave a voicemail and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.
For students, Moodle Mail remains the preferred way to contact me, as it appears directly on my dashboard. For safeguarding reasons, I don’t answer telephone calls from students’ mobile phones, and students may only speak to me by telephone if an adult is present. This is because telephone calls are not usually recorded, whereas LetsMeet calls are recorded by default.
Thank you, as always, for your support and understanding. These changes should make the cancellation process simpler for everyone and help keep everything running smoothly.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch! 🙂
With all good wishes,
George 🙂