We want every student who uses Sherpa to be completely satisfied with the quality of teaching that they receive.

We aim to keep the highest standard of tutoring on the site and will intervene if any tutor has multiple complaints against their account. Of course, there will always be instances where a student feels they have not received the quality of teaching they would expect from Sherpa, or possibly the tutor did not turn up to the booking!

Tutors can provide a partial or full refund of the lesson fee from their account so ensure you discuss it with them first.

We have designed a formal dispute process for students to follow if they feel like they have not received a session to the standard they expect from Sherpa, or if the tutor misses the lesson completely and has not yet agreed to a refund.

This request must be created within 48 hours of completing a booking, to allow us to pay our tutors in a timely manner.

First, the student can log into their account, and navigate to the completed bookings page.

From here, you can dispute a lesson charge by clicking the "three dots" button to reveal more options. Click "Request a refund" to start the dispute process.

You need to fill out the reason why you’re looking for a refund, as well as a choice of a full or partial refund (50/50 split or other combination).

Please provide as much information as possible for the possibility the dispute is passed onto our team for review.

When a student misses a lesson with no prior warning at least 12 hours before, it is up to the tutor's discretion whether they are willing to provide any sort of refund. This is because of the preparatory work involved and the time put aside to teach a lesson which must be compensated to a degree.

In the case of an emergency or urgent mitigating circumstances, tutors are usually understanding provided it is a first-time offence and is not repeated - but they must be notified as soon as you are able through the platform messages.

If your request for a refund is successful, you will receive the refund paid into your account within 5-10 working days. You will also receive regular email updates with the status of your request.

In the rare circumstance where the tutor declines the refund request, the request will be passed onto the Sherpa team who will review the request and decide on an outcome. If a dispute has been opened, the tutor cannot be paid for the disputed lesson until it is settled by the tutor or our support team in the case a full refund is refused.

We pride ourselves on the standard of tutors on the platform and take complaints of poor-quality tutoring very seriously. We hold the right to review each request on a case-by-case basis through any investigative means available to us using our expected performance framework as a guide. The result can be a full refund, a partial refund split to the nearest full £GBP or no refund at all.
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If defective software that we have supplied for the Online Classroom prevents you from being able to take part in a lesson with a Sherpa tutor that has been paid for, Sherpa Online will refund the cost of the session to the student. We will only do this if the bug in the classroom is proven to lessen the quality of the lesson so much that the student does not benefit at all, and if the bug is reproducible and provable by a member of Sherpa Online’s staff.

We will not refund or compensate for any issues with lessons that are due to the users' network quality, hardware problems or software problems which are outside of Sherpa Online’s control.