Terms of service

1. About these terms

These are the terms of service for Tutorperch. They form a contract between you and the operator of the platform, Tutorperch Ltd (referred to as "we", "us", or "the platform"), a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17207346, registered office 124 City Road, London EC1V 2NX. By creating an account or using the platform you accept these terms in full. If you don't accept them, please don't use the platform.

We may update these terms from time to time. We'll post the updated terms here with a new "last updated" date. If a change is material, for example, a change to fees or to your refund rights, we'll also notify signed-in users by email or in-app message before the change takes effect.

A few quick definitions:

• Tutor: a user who has set up a tutor profile on the platform.
• Student: any user looking for or messaging a tutor. In practice this is often a parent or guardian acting on behalf of a child.
• Profile: a tutor's public listing on the platform.
• Unlock: the moment a student pays the finder's fee to access a tutor's contact details.

2. The service

Tutorperch is a directory and on-platform messaging service connecting UK students and independent UK tutors. We provide:

• A searchable directory of tutor profiles.
• An on-platform messaging system between students and tutors.
• An optional manual review of a tutor's Enhanced DBS certificate.
• A finder's fee transaction that gives a student access to a tutor's contact details.

We do not provide tutoring services, lessons, scheduling, lesson-payment processing, video classrooms, or supervised lesson environments. Once a student and tutor exchange contact details, any tutoring relationship is between the two of them and we are not a party to it.

3. Your account

To create an account you must be 18 or older. If you are under 18 and want to find a tutor, please ask a parent or guardian to create the account on your behalf.

You agree to provide accurate information and to keep it up to date. We use magic-link email authentication, there is no password, so it's important that you keep access to your registered email address secure. Anyone with access to your email can sign into your account.

One person, one account. Don't create multiple accounts to evade enforcement, manipulate reviews, or repeat the unlock fee for the same tutor.

4. The £9.99 finder's fee

The fee is £9.99 per tutor. Paying it gives you a one-off, indefinite right to exchange the tutor's contact details on the platform, for example, by sending and receiving messages with them where the auto-redaction filter on contact details no longer applies. The fee is paid by the student, not by the tutor.

The fee covers the introduction itself and is not a fee for any lesson, lesson booking, or other tutoring service. We earn it once per introduction and have no further claim on the relationship that follows. Refund eligibility is set out in section 5.

How ordering works

The steps to buy an unlock and conclude a contract with us are:

1. You choose a tutor and start an unlock from their profile.
2. We show you the fee before you pay.
3. You pay securely through Stripe Checkout, where you can check your details and correct any mistakes before you confirm.
4. The contract is formed once your payment is confirmed, and we email you a receipt.

Some tutors choose to approve who can unlock their details. Where a tutor has this turned on, you send them a first message and they decide whether to open unlocking. You are not charged unless you choose to pay.

We don't file a separate copy of your individual contract. The contract is made up of these terms as they stand on this page when you pay, together with your receipt email. You can save or print this page at any time for your records. The contract is offered and concluded in English.

5. Refunds

We will refund the finder's fee if:

• The tutor's contact details turn out to be invalid or no longer monitored, and we can confirm this independently.
• The tutor doesn't respond to a reasonable initial follow-up after unlock, within 14 days.
• You and the tutor never agree on terms for any lesson, for example, you can't align on times, location, subject coverage, or rate.
• The tutor's circumstances change after unlock and they're no longer able to teach (e.g. they've stopped tutoring, moved abroad).

We will not refund the fee if:

• You and the tutor agreed terms and one or more lessons took place. Disputes about lesson quality are between you and the tutor.
• You changed your mind without engaging with the tutor.
• You've already used the unlocked details (called the tutor, sent them an SMS, emailed off-platform, etc).
• We have reasonable evidence that the unlock was used as part of platform-misuse, including (without limitation) fake reviews, sock-puppet accounts, or coordinated manipulation of the trust system. The unlock fee is non-refundable in these cases; this is in addition to any account suspension that may apply under our Acceptable Use rules.

How to request.

Email hello@tutorperch.com within 14 days of unlock with your account email, the tutor's profile URL, and a short note on which of the eligible reasons above applies. We aim to respond within 5 working days. Approved refunds are returned to the original payment method.

Nothing in this section limits any statutory consumer-rights you have under UK consumer-protection law, including the right to a refund where the service we provided was not as described.

6. If you're a student or parent

You're responsible for your own due diligence on any tutor you engage. The platform gives you the tools to make a sensible choice, profile content, reviews, optional DBS-Verified badge, but the decision to engage a tutor and the terms of any tutoring relationship are entirely yours.

If you're booking on behalf of a child, you accept responsibility for the child's safety during lessons. Standard parental due-diligence applies: meet first, supervise early lessons where you can, ask for references, and use the independent DBS-check guidance if you want extra confidence on a specific tutor.

Lesson payments and arrangements are between you and the tutor. We don't process, escrow, or guarantee lesson payments.

Review window. You can submit a review for a tutor 30 days after you pay the finder's fee for that tutor. The 30-day window is to make sure reviews reflect a real lesson rather than being submitted before there's been any meaningful engagement. The "Review" action on /me/unlocks shows the date the review window opens for each unlock.

7. If you're a tutor

Tutors on the platform are independent contractors, not employees, agents, or partners of Tutorperch. You're responsible for your own:

• Tax registration, accounting, and reporting.
• Public liability and professional indemnity insurance, if applicable.
• Compliance with safeguarding requirements relevant to your situation (e.g. private tuition with under-18s).
• Qualifications, claims, and the quality of your teaching.
• Compliance with UK consumer law in the contracts you form with students off-platform.

You agree that all profile content (subjects, qualifications, prior experience, exam-board familiarity, etc.) is accurate and not misleading. You will keep the profile up to date.

References. As a matter of Tutorperch policy, we ask every tutor for two references from people who know them before a profile can be published. When you name a referee, you confirm that the person is not related to you and that the contact details you give us are theirs and correct. We email each referee a short, private form; what they tell us is held as our record that the check was done and is never shown to you. We delete a referee's email address once we have reviewed and accepted their reference. If a referee cannot be obtained, we may ask you for an alternative, or handle it case by case.

Listing on Tutorperch is free. We do not charge a fee for the introduction, for appearing in search, or for any commission on lessons. The only tutor-side cost is the optional verification service, see section 8.

8. Verification service (tutors)

This section is a separate service contract between you and Tutorperch. It is distinct from the work-finding services covered elsewhere in these terms.

What it is. A one-off £3 verification service comprising (a) an identity check via our identity-verification provider (Stripe Identity or Didit), (b) a one-time admin cross-check between the verification selfie and the profile photo you upload (admin views the verification selfie once for this purpose; the selfie is not used as your profile picture and is purged from the provider once safeguarding review completes), and (c) where you choose to submit one, a manual review of one safeguarding disclosure document, a DBS Enhanced certificate (England, Wales), a PVG scheme record (Scotland, via Disclosure Scotland), or an AccessNI Enhanced Disclosure (Northern Ireland). Identity verification and the profile-photo cross-check are required to publish a tutor profile in search; safeguarding submission is optional.

Cost. £3, payable once per tutor, before identity verification begins. The fee is cost-recovery for the third-party identity check (Stripe Identity charges per completed verification) and the staff time required to review a safeguarding disclosure if you submit one. The statutory disclosure fees (DBS Enhanced, Disclosure Scotland's PVG, or AccessNI Enhanced) are paid by you directly to the issuing body and are separate from this fee.

Attempts. Each verification fee covers up to three identity-check attempts. If all three fail, you can either pay the verification fee again for another three attempts (no limit on the number of times we'll let you do this, up to a lifetime cap) or request a refund of your most recent fee, both options are surfaced inline at /me/verify when you reach the cap.

Refunds. Under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013 you have 14 days from payment to cancel and receive a full refund, provided your identity verification has not yet been completed. Once your identity check returns a verified result the service has been delivered and the cancellation right ends. Beyond the 14-day window, you can request a refund of your most recent verification fee from /me/verify at any time before that fee's three attempts have been consumed; we review and respond promptly. If you reach the lifetime cap on identity-check attempts and we still cannot verify you, we will refund your most recent fee automatically. Older, fully-consumed fees are not refundable, the service for those was delivered (your three attempts were used).

Separability. Paying the verification fee is not a condition of holding a Tutorperch account, of using the platform's messaging features, or of building a draft profile. The verification service is a separate, optional service that you may decline (in which case your profile cannot be published).

9. Messaging & content

Phone numbers, email addresses, URLs, and common chat handles are automatically stripped from messages between users until the finder's fee has been paid. This keeps the platform's introduction model intact and protects users from off-platform solicitation before they've decided to engage.

Don't try to bypass the contact-detail filter (for example, by spelling out a phone number in words, or asking a student to search for you elsewhere). Repeated attempts may result in suspension.

Message screening. To keep the platform safe, we use automated systems to screen messages between users for scams, abuse, and attempts to share contact details before the finder's fee is paid. Where a message is flagged for routine review, we may hold it for a member of our team before it is delivered, and that decision is made by a person, not by the system alone. Separately, if an account is suspended or restricted for serious misuse, the messages it sends may not be delivered. We may decline to deliver, redact, or remove a message that breaches these terms or the Code of Conduct. How this works and the lawful basis for it are explained in our Privacy Policy.

Verifying first contact. Where we need to, we may ask a first-time sender to confirm a UK mobile number by text code before their first message is delivered, to deter spam and impersonation. We use the number only to confirm it and never share it with the tutor (see the Privacy Policy).

The tutor-only forum is exempt from the auto-redactor, it's gated to identity- verified, published tutors on both read and post, so the contact-bypass concern that justifies redaction on tutor↔student surfaces doesn't apply there. Misuse is handled through the moderation queue and the Code of Conduct.

All on-platform content, profile copy, photo, message body, review text, must be lawful, not misleading, not defamatory, not abusive, and not infringe anyone else's rights. You retain copyright in content you post and grant us a non-exclusive licence to display it on the platform for the purposes of running the service.

10. Safeguarding-Verified badges (DBS / PVG / AccessNI)

A Safeguarding-Verified badge on a tutor profile means a member of our team personally reviewed a current safeguarding disclosure for that tutor and confirmed it as clear at the point of review. Three schemes are accepted, badged per-jurisdiction:

• DBS, Enhanced certificate (child workforce) issued by the Disclosure & Barring Service. England + Wales.
• PVG, scheme record under the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007, issued by Disclosure Scotland.
• AccessNI, Enhanced Disclosure under the Police Act 1997 (NI), issued by AccessNI (NI Department of Justice).

Each badge expires three years from our verification date; before expiry we re-verify the disclosure to keep the badge current. If the disclosure is no longer current at re-verification, the tutor needs to submit fresh details.

What the tutor submits. For DBS, a scan or photo of their Enhanced certificate (PDF or image, max 10 MB), held in our storage only until the admin review decision is recorded, then purged. For PVG and AccessNI, the tutor shares the current record via the issuer's online portal (Disclosure Scotland's Online Account or NIDA respectively); no document is uploaded to or retained by us. In every case we retain the reference number, the name and date of birth as they appeared, the issue date, and the clear / not-clear status, never the disclosure contents themselves.

Live status checks. Different per scheme. For DBS, if the tutor is subscribed to the DBS Update Service and ticks the consent box at submission, an admin may run a live status check against the Service while reviewing the certificate (Police Act 1997 s.116A, using the consent given at submission). For PVG, the same admin can ask the tutor to re-share their current record via Disclosure Scotland's Online Account portal; the admin views the live record and records the outcome (PVG (Scotland) Act 2007 ss. 52, 54, 55). For AccessNI no live status-check service is offered by the issuing body; the badge reflects the certificate as reviewed at our decision date and the 3-year refresh cycle is what keeps it current. We record any status check (timestamp, the admin's name, the outcome) on the submission row. The tutor can withdraw consent at any time by removing their submission or emailing support@tutorperch.com.

The badge is a snapshot, not a continuous monitoring service. We do not auto-recheck disclosures on a schedule and we do not detect or report on any record changes after the date of review. The badge does not constitute a guarantee, an endorsement of any tutor's suitability for a particular student, or a substitute for your own due diligence. See our parent-facing guidance on independent verification.

11. Credential review marks (qualifications)

A tutor may optionally submit certificate evidence for a qualification already listed on their profile. For teaching qualifications, PGCE (or similar training) and QTS or QTLS are different credentials: a PGCE certificate alone supports Certificate checked; the Qualified Teacher mark requires separate QTS or QTLS evidence, verified against the Teaching Regulation Agency record for QTS, or with the Society for Education and Training for QTLS.

If our team approves the submission, we may display one or both of these trust marks on the same qualification row when the evidence supports each:

• Certificate checked, our team reviewed the uploaded certificate, matched the name on it to the tutor's verified identity, and confirmed the document appears consistent with the qualification as listed. We do not confirm results, grades, or award status with the awarding body or institution.
• Qualified Teacher, our team verified Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) against the Teaching Regulation Agency's published record (gov.uk), or Qualified Teacher Learning and Skills (QTLS) with the Society for Education and Training, in addition to the certificate review above. This is not a live registration check and does not confirm current employment or suitability.

On search cards and directory listings, a single summary chip may appear: Qualified Teacher if any qualification carries that mark, otherwise Qualifications verified if at least one qualification is Certificate checked. Qualifications listed without a mark remain self-declared; the absence of a mark is not a negative statement.

What the tutor submits. A scan or photo of the certificate (PDF or image, up to five files, 10 MB each), held in our storage only until the admin review decision is recorded, then purged. The tutor must tick a faithful-copy attestation at upload (Fraud Act 2006). Submitting evidence is optional and is not part of the £3 verification service in section 8.

What we retain. After the decision we keep the qualification's review status, review method, verification date, a fingerprint of the qualification text as approved, (where applicable) the Qualified Teacher flag, and whether the tutor asked us to check Qualified Teacher status on that submission. We never keep the certificate images themselves. If the tutor edits the qualification details after approval so the fingerprint no longer matches, the mark is withdrawn until fresh evidence is submitted and re-approved.

Rejections and lock-out. We may reject a submission and ask for a clearer copy without counting it as a rejection strike. Three rejected submissions for the same qualification lock further uploads until our team manually unlocks the qualification. The tutor may delete the qualification at any time, which cancels any pending review and purges held images.

The marks reflect our review at a point in time. We do not monitor awarding-body registers or detect certificate changes made after a review, and a mark is not a guarantee that a tutor holds any qualification or is suitable for a particular student. See section 12 for misrepresentation prohibitions.

12. Acceptable use

You must not use the platform to:

• Send abusive, harassing, threatening, or hateful messages.
• Solicit illegal services or attempt to use a tutor profile for non-tutoring purposes.
• Misrepresent your identity, qualifications, or DBS status, or attempt to impersonate anyone else.
• Scrape, copy, or systematically harvest the platform's content (tutor names, profile details, contact details, reviews) by automated means.
• Submit reviews you didn't write, reviews of tutors you haven't engaged, or coordinated review-manipulation of any kind.
• Offer, give, or accept any payment, discount, or other reward in exchange for a review. Asking someone you've genuinely worked with for an honest review is fine; paying for one, or trying to influence what it says, is not.
• Attempt to bypass the finder's fee or the contact-detail redaction.
• Interfere with the platform's security or integrity.

We may suspend, lock, or terminate an account that breaches these rules, with or without notice depending on the severity. Where we lock an account, the user can appeal in-app via the support chat on the locked-account screen.

13. Liability

We provide the platform on a reasonable-best-efforts basis. We don't guarantee continuous availability, error-free operation, or that any specific tutor is suitable, qualified, or available.

We are not party to any tutoring relationship that results from an introduction made on the platform. We accept no liability for the quality, conduct, outcome, or cancellation of any lesson, nor for any payment made directly between a student and a tutor.

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes any liability that cannot lawfully be limited or excluded under UK law, including liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or breach of statutory consumer rights.

Subject to the paragraph above, our total aggregate liability to you in respect of the platform, in any 12-month period, is limited to the total amount you paid us during that period (typically £0 for tutors and the sum of unlock fees for students).

14. Closing your account & service shutdown

You can close your account at any time from your settings. Closure is offered in two modes: a 30-day grace closure (during which the account can be reactivated and your data is retained) and an immediate hard close (irreversible).

When an account is closed, we pseudonymise the account on the platform and free up the email address for future signup. Some related records are retained where necessary (e.g. unlock receipts for HMRC platform-reporting obligations) and disclosed only as required by law.

Service shutdown. If we ever discontinue the platform, we will give all users at least 30 days' written notice and provide an automatic data export of the personal data we hold about each account, in machine-readable form, before the service is taken offline. In-flight unlocks (paid but no lesson yet organised) are refunded automatically during the shutdown notice period; you don't need to ask.

15. Privacy & data

How we handle your personal data is set out in our privacy policy, which forms part of these terms by reference. In short: we collect only what the service needs, store it on UK and EU infrastructure, never sell it, and let you export or delete it.

16. Governing law & disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction in respect of any dispute arising under them, save that consumers may have additional rights to bring claims in their local jurisdiction under applicable consumer protection law.

If you have a complaint, please email hello@tutorperch.com before raising a formal claim. We aim to respond to complaints within 10 working days.

We are not currently signed up to an alternative dispute resolution provider for consumer disputes (Alternative Dispute Resolution for Consumer Disputes (Competent Authorities and Information) Regulations 2015 reg 19(2)).

17. Contact & changes

Questions about these terms can be sent to hello@tutorperch.com.

If we update these terms, the version posted on this page is the version in force. Material changes will be announced in advance through reasonable means, as set out in section 1 above.