TakeLessons 

The people running the site: BZZZZZZ - They tried to entrap me into letting someone circumvent the system. I told the parent, No, No, No. I would not do that. They (takelessons) informed me..even speaking to the parent on the phone was a violation. I found it absurd. Sorry, Perhaps since MS bought it. Maybe they'll fix the broken system.

So unethical! I bought an initial one-time 3 lesson package to try out online music lessons. It was a one-time purchase.

They not only continued to bill me monthly, they set me up for auto-pay without my knowledge. Trying to cancel the recurring lessons was a multi-step process.

To top it off, I never got to finish the 3 lessons I initially signed up for. Their technology is terrible and the instructor couldn't get their instruction room to work. We had to move to my own Zoom meeting room to even do a lesson!

I can't believe Microsoft owns this scam company.

Bad bad system. Teachers are good but the interface is shady and unethical. If you buy 5 lessons and then choose to schedule those lessons at the same time same day, it will put your cc on autopsy renew each month. I booked 1st (out of 5 prepaid) singing lessons. Took the 1st 3 and then instructor said, " Hey, out of convenience, would you like every Sunday at this same time for your remaining lessons?" I said sure. Well apparently the moment I did that, it took my card on file and set it to autumn renew another $350 worth of lessons at the full rate. I was unaware of this until the 2nd time they auto charged my card. All of a sudden the music teacher was like "hey you have lessons, when would you like to take them"? I logged in and couldn't believe i had been charged for 2 months @ $350 per month. I complained to them and finally got most of it back minus $150. Now 1.5 months later I have the music teacher saying I have a lesson scheduled for tomorrow. What the hell is going on with TakeLessons.com?

Since 2015, I’ve been teaching on TL. With 50 - 5 star reviews later, I’m leaving this program. It all started to go down when Microsoft purchased, student referrals went way down and it is still dropping in value. The straw is the payment platform, switching to Hyperwallet. (see their reviews here). I’m not about to give this new horrible company my social security number.

The experience on the tutor end is awful. They charge a high commission with a worse video platform (with no usable whiteboard), less service provided than some other sites that charge comparable commissions, and they let any rando who views the profile write a review without any vetting for whether the review comes from a link the tutor shared or was from a current student who registered and paid with TakeLessons, which means fake bot reviews have unjustly hurt my ratings due to negative reviews that seem bitter about my fair market rates for my tutoring expertise and credentials.

Many requests also seem to be fake or bots, and after reading other reviews I want to emphasize as a tutor that we do not receive the money until the scheduled lesson happens and we mark the student as having attended. I imagine there might be some dishonest tutors out there, but I myself have never marked a student as having attended if they do not, but many students who buy lessons from me and then don’t take them might have their money held hostage by TakeLessons, not the tutor. One angry parent who demanded a refund harassed me for a bit for not giving her a refund but us tutors have no mechanism to refund you directly and we don’t get the money until over a week after we mark a lesson anyways, so chances are TakeLessons is greedily holding on and you should first reach out to them.

I signed up for 15 violin lessons to be taken every 2 weeks and they were happy to let me make the purchase. Days passed but the lessons were never confirmed. Then one day, they disappeared from my schedule. Turns out, the instructor had informed them that he can no longer offer lessons but nobody told me and TakeLessons will hold your money instead of immediately reversing the transaction. There should be transparency between the students and instructors. Since they were holding my money and my lessons were gone, I thought I was being scammed and reading through these reviews, that wasn't too far fetched. After emailing them, they did eventually call me and return my money. That's why they have 2 stars instead of 1. But it was a nerve wracking experience. Not at all comfortable. I wouldn't recommend TakeLessons.

TRAP AND FRAUD ................. BE ALERT

I myself is a teacher who got connected to give online classes but had a very bad experience from MR. ANIL , from defense background who pretended to be father of Ms. Anjali and when i asked him to share the details of daughter to whom i have to teach, he said he will pay me first and share her details later. I accepted the same and than when he had to pay. he had whole lot of demands like
he forced me to have phonepay instead of GOOGLE pay..... he even asked me to move to a silent place coz he is calling from some govt. call which is being recorded.......he started giving me explanation to the payment being an allowance of education for govt. servants...... all nonsense...... well overall a very BAD EXPERIENCE

Terrible service. The teacher canceled last minute and I need him to teach a group. I was thrown under the bus.

DO NOT USE THIS WEBSITE!!! A scammer got on here trying to get me to download a "check". When I told him I will not download it, he didn't explain why he couldn't just send a direct deposit, and guilted me because he's "going through a divorce." What a joke microsoft. Drove another business into the ground...

continued decline of quality and knowledgability of services since microsoft took over. microsoft continues to run Take Lessons into the ground. Their goals seems to be to run them out of business. Very sad since TL was all about focusing on the teachers and clients above themselves. It was a bad decision but they shouldn't have to pay for it with their business. It is just a matter of time before they go under. MICROSOFT SUCKS!!!! A major UNETHICAL move on microsoft's part. Shame on them.

I have been a Take Lessons dance teacher for YEARS. After Microsoft took over, I get hardly any leads, or the leads that I get literally are irrelevant to the service I offer. I have made zero dollars there the entire year.

I am based in Nevada, but get students messaging me from the East Coast constantly. I have tried everything in my power to continue because I could make decent residual income there up until the switch.

I am not receiving new students AT ALL. Not because my profile isn't up to date. Not because I don't have videos or a clear and updated headshot. Not because of a lack of credentials because I am double certified to teach. Not because I don't have good reviews, I have 5 stars across the board. My background check is good for two years. Not because I don't respond, I respond to EVERYTHING, even if I feel like it is bs.

The leads I receive are people who don't seem to truly be interested in the first place and never respond. I have been flagged on my messages to students several times on pre-loaded messages CREATED by TAKELESSONS!

The new system is trash and I am beyond frustrated. I am going to have to leave them after all of these years and take my services and dance degree elsewhere.

My date of experience is not limited to a single day, this has been the whole of 2023.

I agree with Steve's review below. Takelessons USED TO BE GREAT before the Microsoft invasion. The previous mission was to help artists create an income doing something they loved. Now it is all about Microsoft. They don't care about teachers, they are slow to reply to emails (can sometimes take a week) but expect teachers to respond to students in under 12 hours (not 12 business hours, just 12 hours) before releasing a 'sorry your teacher is so slow email' to the student. The website is janky. The part for the teacher's notes, for some reason, was changed into this little, teeny tiny box in the corner that is not easy to read. Despite them saying the site is disability friendly, it is not. It is confusing and often times the fonts are very, very small. There was also a day in which potential students couldn't even open the booking page. (How is someone supposed to purchase if the booking page doesn't work?) It also used to be user friendly on all browsers but they removed Firefox and keep recommending Microsoft Edge (now why would they do that? #sarcasm) Also, apparently they have their product managers write 5 star reviews here. Reetik Chandra is a product manager for Microsoft, not a teacher. (I just reported this to Trustpilot.) He was super easy to find with a web search. As a person who cares about students and cares about education, I don't think Microsoft understand that education is not about tech but about human interaction. Humans need humans. Before I really felt like Takelessons valued that and their aim was 'to help artists create a living doing something they love.' Now I actually feel like we are being treated like Uber drivers, we are all just in service to the MIcrosoft machine. I wouldn't be surprised if their end goal is to remove the teachers altogether and just use AI. But most people do not like this form of 'education' (if it is even education at all.) (This is coming from someone who talks with numerous students from numerous different places and students consistently complain to me about big tech and the lack of control of it.)

My payment did not go through because of a problem with my bank, so Take Lessons canceled my monthly membership and would not restart it. I'm paying a fortune for lessons instead of a monthly fee. They will not budge on this. Another corporate buyout that ruins a good thing.

My Edge browser was updated and it prompted me about 5 free lessons. I only wanted to check what is this about. After this, I was bombarded with messages from Tutors asking if I wanted to enrol in their class. There is no option to remove our personal details from their site.

Update: I contacted their support and my personal details were removed. Now no more messages from their tutors.

TakeLessons use to be awesome. I would get roughly $1,000 extra month teaching piano online with group classes (private classes are still good though) but ever since Microsoft took over, it went down hill. Now I get roughly $250 a month. They cancelled the subscription model for La Carte and not as many want to pay directly. Students would use to pay $20 a month and get unlimited classes for a month. Now, the teacher sets the price and no one shows as they use to. For some reason, TL can't apologize to the students and teachers, and won't go back to the subscription model.

Please be aware that some of the instructors are less than honest.
I’ve lost money due to instructor, claiming I did not cancel. I have emails to ship differently.
Please use caution when picking your instructor. Apparently take lessons does not!

I signed up for five lessons, gave them my credit card, attempted to communicate with the teacher, no response for two days. Attempts to contact through their customer support link, no response. Then received an email telling me how to sign up for lessons. Sent an email to the teacher asking for clarification and if I’d been scammed, got an email in response canceling my lessons. Might be a good teacher, I don’t know, their website and processes are broken.
Addendumnext day: I’ve had numerous email exchanges in which they offered to transfer my balance to another teacher or to a family member, but not cancel the transaction even though it was still pending on my card, more email exchanges with Frank V. “Student Counselor” the only way to cancel the transaction was to cancel my credit card. This may be a real company, but their poor business sense is astounding. Do business with them if you have a desire for incredible frustration, but I say stay away stay away stay away.

Great teacher, poor customer service
Great teacher for my son to learn Saxophone with Teacher Andrew, but they bad faith for the july 4 summer promotion, but even i have all the screen shots for the payment processing, no pop-up message for "valid for new students only". End up either I admin the full charge or i can get full refund, because their website backend mistake.

My wife gifted me a number of lessons on TakeLessons.com. I used the first one for a guitar lesson. The teacher asked me if I wanted to discuss guitar or vocals. I said guitar, but she ended up spending 75% of the time taliing about vocals. She said that I should feel comfortable singing, because "signing is as natural as mast***ation." So I tried another teacher. The company couldn't figure out why I couldn't see my balance online or why I couldn't use the scheduling feature, so it took about 10 emails to schedule an appointment. I told them I just wanted to schedule one appointment, but they signed me up for recurring weely appointments. The teacher called to set up a time, and I said 11:00. He said ok, but that he might have to bump me for a regular student of his. I offered to switch times, but he said he preferred my original time. Sure enough, two minutes before my appointment was to start, he texted me to reschedule.

I asked the company for a full refund, but they refused. Nothing about this company works or is at all easy, and my two teachers were unprofessional.

Take lessons use to offer a monthly subscription. They discontinued the monthly subscription and now charge for each class individually. It’s not worth paying for the classes individually because you have different students in the class at different levels so the learning experience is compromised.