On the surface InstaEDU, under its now-parent company Chegg, appears to be a cutting-edge…read moreeducational company. It seems to offer a variety of lesson services over a digital medium, and the academic areas covered by the company are extensive. However, many truths appear to contradict the professional, financial or, indeed, educational safety of the company.
"Tutors" are allowed to say whatever they want about their own background, history, or professional experience; they are allowed to claim any number of areas where they possess "expertise" indiscriminately and without objective measurement or guarantee; they are consistently allowed to keep from responding to any student or parent in a timely manner; they are allowed to book lessons for which they suffer no repercussions upon missing. In addition to this, their in-company reputations are also a mystery, as there are often no explicit details as to why a "tutor" was given a positive review, and any negative review can be removed without requiring an explanation by the company administration. For example, on Yelp the company brazenly claims any student can "work with a tutor with an Ivy League education," (http://www.yelp.com/biz/instaedu-san-francisco); this is a misleading claim very easy to contradict simply by looking through any number of tutors' profiles, as a vast majority of them are not Ivy-League educated. The company itself is held to no different standard: there are no publicly displayed qualifications, accreditations, or other industry-accepted measurements of the company's own ability to provide what it claims, let alone of its executives.
Furthermore, the company itself maintains an "honor code" that is rarely monitored; indeed, the entire company seems to rely more on its own employees policing each other via indirect comments on posts, something that is hardly a typical professional exercise of administrative responsibility. Students are encouraged to obtain a "free trial," which in fact is just a ruse to have the student's (or, most likely, parent's) credit card information on file to be debited automatically without clearly notifying the student of the time spent in a lesson until after the fact, and if a student needs to cancel a lesson for any reason whatsoever, the student is charged for half the lesson time. If a student has an emergency and cannot cancel the lesson in time, the student is charged for the entire lesson. There is no "group lesson" option which might lower the rates, and it seems there is no standard curriculum by which the company's employees engage content. In fact, there is no guarantee that a legal adult even authorizes the use of a card, which could lead to dicey legal situations for just about everyone involved.
Neither tutors nor students are given any kind of required check to ensure safe conduct, and the company absolves itself of any responsibility for the conduct of either side of an interaction. No guarantee is given of any accuracy in anything anyone says, whether student or tutor, and therefore both parties are put at substantial risk of having either the other party or the company taking advantage. Even apart from the human beings interacting, the area where lessons occur seems to have many technical issues, with constant, inexplicable disconnections possible from either side at any time, which may in fact end a lesson prematurely -- something else for which the company allows either party to take responsibility, instead of itself. Clear warning is not given as to either the technological compatibility requirements or the relevant acceptable conduct of either student or tutor upon entering the site, and no one is given a chance to recover funds for either unless explicitly demanded directly. And the company's support system is vague and difficult to contact.
In short, unless someone is willing to take a significant gamble and finagle answers out of employees for free, it seems like a no-win situation for anyone but the company executives, who seem to view education as nothing other than a means to personal financial gain. It would be better simply to ask one's teacher for help after class, or to seek in-person advice at the very least, as that kind of lesson is far less risky and may even be free -- without a catch.