Singapore Expats

Hi
This is warning for expat parents who care about your child education.

I warn you there are habitual fraud by a certain local tutor.
She made several e-mail addresses and several accounts in this forum and good at pretending to be different persons.

What happened to us is like this.
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1. This tutor pretended to be other person (expat parent)and telling us she is hiring "a wonderful tutor" which is actually herself and lead us to hire her.

2. This expat parent(tutor herself) who hire the same tutor pressured us into paying her more, including the deposit to block her slots, pretending that she had other jobs lined up that she was sacrificing for us. She made up "other clients" to make it like real story.

Also later this expat parent (herself) even suggested us to pay her bonus, too.

3. This tutor was demanding one after another and it became pain for us.
She asked for more tuition, threatening that my child is a way behind her study and have to spend more time with her. She requested all my daughter's free time for her tuition. She asked us to raise her rate and prepaid for her private reason almost every time.

4 She made us to lose trust on her by herself like this,
She did not perform her job in good faith as a tutor.

She was often late, cancelled suddenly (thus ruining our child's schedule, though she pretended to have her best interests in mind), always talked to us about money - didn't give us the monthly reports she said she would give us, -didn't gives us educational material which she made us pay, and more.

Furthermore, she never admitted fault when she was late, but instead tried to defend her poor business practices.

On top of everything else, she charged higher prices than market rate.

5. Finally she proved herself that she is criminal.
She cut communication with us and disappear without paying us back deposit.

So we had to go to police.
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I didn't know she is a fraud in the beginning and then we think she contradict herself for some points and lose trust on her and later we found out she is a habitual fraud.

She seems to think it is right to deceive and con and take money from expat parent.

Only recently I found out she is still fishing expat parent in this forum and make Facebook group as well.

She often came up topic like homeschooling or local syllabus or entering local school.

Please be careful.

Thanks for the heads up kio. This sounds familiar, we may have encountered the same tutor. I've just pm'd you.

x9200, I actually sent kio a PM yesterday morning (Sat) around 11 am requesting the user's ID of the tutor/persons in question. So far they have not replied.

I am due to meet with a female home tutor tomorrow and she has been very convincing but these posts are ringing huge alarm bells. I am due to hand over a deposit tomorrow. Please can someone PM me ASAP and tell me what her name is? Or at least her initials? I have PM'd a couple of you but not yet had a reply (I know it's late...).

Thank you so much in advance.

I didn't know that home tutors required deposits. I've never paid a deposit when I had tutors for my two kids. In fact, it's the first I've heard of it. Caveat Emptor.

We are taking our 7 year old out of his International School here SMS. Things have been going from bad to worse. So the home schooling is 3 hours per day, 5 days per week instead of school. So a big commitment so I thought a deposit was reasonable. Apparently 1000 sgd paid up front. You supposedly get 500 back after 6 months and the rest after one year.

I've just done some rudimentary digging. These three names/FB accounts/email addresses keep coming up. I have a nasty feeling it's this woman. Gawd I hope I'm wrong. So odd as I've not looked at this board for months (no offence!).

pupsiecola wrote: You supposedly get 500 back after 6 months and the rest after one year.

As the Sex Pistols coined....


'Do you ever feel like you've been had?'

Sounds reasonable to me. I would pay a deposit, which is a relatively small amount when you consider International School fees, to secure the services of a good tutor. Turns out the only thing she was good at was having multiple aliases and accounts all over the place. Thanks for the "support". (Am reminded of why I've not been back for 6 months!!).

JR8 wrote:

pupsiecola wrote: You supposedly get 500 back after 6 months and the rest after one year.

As the Sex Pistols coined....


'Do you ever feel like you've been had?'

pupsiecola wrote:Sounds reasonable to me. I would pay a deposit, which is a relatively small amount when you consider International School fees, to secure the services of a good tutor.

Just because it is 'relatively small' versus something unrelated, doesn't make it just.

A deposit (IMHO) is usually held to encourage performance of contractual undertakings.
- Not trashing a hire car
- Returning those ice-skates you just hired
- Not taking a spot at an international school, and then failing to pay the fees.
etc

What is this tutors risk? What skin does he have in the game? Under what circumstances would you forfeit the deposit?

pupsiecola wrote: Turns out the only thing she was good at was having multiple aliases and accounts all over the place.

Just the kind of person you'd wish to be holding a 'deposit', and teaching your children.

pupsiecola wrote: Thanks for the "support". (Am reminded of why I've not been back for 6 months!!).

If you just want/ed people to agree with you, as opposed to try and make constructive observations, you might consider whether you are suited to the internet.

Oh I've been using the internet for well over a decade quite happily (obviously aside from the odd up-themselves types who confuse constructive comments with being just plain rude, insensitive or up themselves)

This site has a bit of a reputation for having it's fair share of those. I usually post on a much more fit for purpose site. Tell me, are you by chance male? And vertically challenged...? Oooh let's see what replies I get...

And for the record, I had obviously already by this point, before I did the deal, found out from my own research what this woman was up to. Maybe not so gullible as you seem to think. (And have met others who actually handed over money and engaged her services).

JR8 wrote:

pupsiecola wrote:Sounds reasonable to me. I would pay a deposit, which is a relatively small amount when you consider International School fees, to secure the services of a good tutor.

Just because it is 'relatively small' versus something unrelated, doesn't make it just.

A deposit (IMHO) is usually held to encourage performance of contractual undertakings.
- Not trashing a hire car
- Returning those ice-skates you just hired
- Not taking a spot at an international school, and then failing to pay the fees.
etc

What is this tutors risk? What skin does he have in the game? Under what circumstances would you forfeit the deposit?

I don't know of this particular arrangement but this could be a case very similar to yours in bold by me above. The tutor should have her or his time arranged and booked accordingly so if her customer stop showing up or cancels the appointments frequently this is a clear loss for the tutor as not only she can not book someone else in this place but also can not work to earn her money within the arrangement.

x9200 wrote: I don't know of this particular arrangement but this could be a case very similar to yours in bold by me above. The tutor should have her or his time arranged and booked accordingly so if her customer stop showing up or cancels the appointments frequently this is a clear loss for the tutor as not only she can not book someone else in this place but also can not work to earn her money within the arrangement.

Hmmm... perhaps more of an 'opportunity cost' than an outright loss, IMHO.

But if you as a parent act so haphazardly with your child's education, what hope is there?

Yes, it is formally an opportunity loss but if you are good it is also some real money. I don't know the tutor market but one of my close family member is a therapist and works on appointment bases. She is almost fully booked and unreliable clients are a problem especially that there are less and more popular slots with a waiting lists for the later.
Unfortunately a deposit seems the only way to secure the contractual undertakings where the potential damages are in the range of a few hundreds dollars only.

x9200 wrote:Unfortunately a deposit seems the only way to secure the contractual undertakings where the potential damages are in the range of a few hundreds dollars only.

Hmmm... interesting.

To me it would signal a lack of trust/mutual-respect, and hence the opposite of how I'd wish to treat a new customer. Quite the reverse: 'Seek and though shalt find'.

But that said, I'm sure she does what is appropriate in the circumstances.