Founder Matthew Rusk
FounderForum Replies Created
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My personal advice would be, yes we do have incidents when clients request refunds (often for reasons of falling out with the person that they have bought them for…girlfriends/boyfriends breaking up etc.). In terms of the commission that isn’t a problem, business policy is that if you generate income from the lessons than commission is created, if you make no money then no commission is created – so in this case if you were to refund a client then I would refund you the commission on that clients lessons (or more likely deduce the refund amount from the next months payment). The more likely thing we find that happens if that the receiver doesn’t claim their lessons for months/years and turns up one day demanding their lessons…I would therefore recommend a 3 month expiry date to take your first lesson. That said it really is something to play by ear as lets say Student A is suddenly admitted into hospital it seems very harsh to prevent them from taking their £100 worth of lessons as they didn’t make it to their first one due to serious illness etc. Interested to hear what other teacher think/have done this year:)
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Always up for Skype skills swap:) I think a lot of teachers would be benefit from this as well – I will speak with a few teachers to see if they are interested:)
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My advice would be to do 1/2 the lesson price +£10 for each student. So if you charge £30, then each student pays £15 + £10 = £25 per hour, meaning that you earn in total £50 per hour for two students, or £75 per hour for three students. Pretty much the same as what Eliza says above:)
Though I also take into account who is the bill payer, so if it is two siblings (meaning the parents are paying for both) I would charge it at the normal rate since to the bill payer it makes a big difference if it is £30 or £50 (so a £5 saving for each student doesn’t make much of a difference since they pay for both). With three students I wouldn’t imagine that is a problem, though other factors come into the equation for example what will you charge if two of the three turn up for a one lesson etc.
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It is a great topic to open up – worth reading through this previous thread as well (https://musicteacher.kinsta.cloud/community/groups/music-teachers/forum/topic/christmas-voucher-policies/) as it has some relevance:)
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Just on the CRB check – now known as a DBS check – I can confirm that the last time I spoke with a lawyer that for private music tuition lessons it is not a legal requirement to hold a valid certificate to be able to offer to teach young students or vulnerable adults. That said I would thoroughly recommend that all teachers obtain one, not only as it is a mark of professionalism but also as something that can be added to the websites to help encourage more parents to get in touch for lessons with their children. DBS checks can be obtained from here (https://www.gov.uk/disclosure-barring-service-check/overview).
