Finding Legit Tutors and Lessons on Craigslist

Craigslist is a great place to find tutors and receive lessons on various areas, particularly in academics. But, you need to be very careful to avoid scams.

Local or PayPal

Begin searches in your local areas first. If you live in New York City, do not try to find tutors in Boston or Atlanta just because the descriptions appeal to you. Many of the scams from Craigslist occur through people you never meet, so if you can find one in local area, that would be best. Now, with big cities, I recommend you to meet the person in a public place for monetary transaction. This is important because there will be some people who do not reside in that city, but pay money to put up fake ads. You may find this hard to believe, but many will spend extra $20 to rip couple hundred dollars from innocent people.

With online transactions, stick with PayPal. PayPal is safe for most of the cases, and all you need to provide is your email address. That's right - no address, phone number, and other personal information. PayPal sometimes deducts the fee for transactions, so make sure to decide who will pay for the transaction fees (you or the other person).

Validate the Experience

Especially for education, you will often see people with descriptions like "xx number of years in tutoring" or "Bachelor Degree from..." While there are number of tutors who provide truthful information, do not rule out that there will be ones who lie about educational backgrounds. For one thing, how can you know for sure that the person is honest about the education? You can't. But, you can ask for testimonials of the person's tutoring and ask for any reference or fellow student that you can contact to determine legitimacy.

Also, with standardized tests, make sure you to ask when was the last time he/she took the test. A major problem with older tutors is that they lure you by providing exceptional tutoring experiences, but they may not know how to adjust to the updated test. For instance, if your tutor is not updated to current SAT, he/she will not realize that there are 3 different types of sections in the SAT as of March 2005. You also should not impulsively hire a student tutor because not all students can teach well. So, both older tutors and student tutors have pros and cons.

Watch Out for Payment Scams

If your tutor or possible client sends you an email that mentions a) foreign country, b) excessive payment that requires you to "pay for the rest," and c) personal address after a) and/or b), then you should delete the email and not respond. These emails are always scams, and there is a great way to confirm this. When you click on the "Full Header" on your email, you will see a popup that has bunch of numbers and words. You are looking for IP address in the line "Received: from." Gmail, for the reason of "security," does not allow you to do this if other person's account is Gmail, and vice versa.

Now, since you know the IP address, you need to find its location. You can use IP2 Location, a website that detects IP addresses' locations for free. If the address you find turns out to be different from what was mentioned, then you now know for sure that the email is a scam. Take these advices and be careful! This type of reasoning (except #2) actually applies to Craigslist in general, so use it wisely.