Why we sell packages, and why the first session is free

Two commercial decisions shape almost everything about this product. Both are worth explaining, because from the outside one looks generous and the other looks like a lock-in, and neither is quite that.

The first session is free, in full

Not a fifteen-minute "discovery call". A whole session, with a real tutor, on the subject you came for. No card, no deposit, and no automatic rollover into anything.

The reason is simple: nobody can tell from a profile whether a particular tutor will work for a particular fourteen-year-old. Photographs do not show it. Ratings do not show it, because a rating is an average over other people's children. The only test is the session itself, and charging for the test discourages the thing that most needs to happen.

If it does not go well, you owe nothing and you can try someone else. That is the whole policy.

After that, packages

Once you continue, you buy a block of sessions rather than one at a time. This is the part that reads like a lock-in, so here is the actual reason.

A tutor planning a term needs to know it is a term. Sequencing a Diploma subject — deciding what to cover in what order, what to hold back for the mock, when to start past papers — is a plan across weeks. A tutor booked one week at a time cannot make that plan, so they do not; they turn up and help with whatever homework is due. That is a useful service and it is not what this is.

The package is what makes the planning honest. It is also what lets a tutor turn down other work to hold your slot.

What we do about the risk

A block of sessions is a bigger ask than a single hour, so:

• You have already had a free session with that exact tutor before you are asked.
• Unused sessions are refundable. The ledger computes the refund from what was delivered — it is not a number an administrator types in, and it is not "at our discretion".
• Tiers are visible on every profile before you book anything, including the trial.

What we deliberately do not do

We do not sell single paid sessions after the trial. It sounds friendlier and it makes the product worse: it recreates the week-to-week arrangement the packages exist to avoid, and the tutor quietly goes back to helping with tonight's homework.

We would rather be clear about the trade than offer an option we think is bad for the student.