There are some good teachers on Preply. But their video platform is pretty bad, which causes frequent interruptions ans bad sound & video quality. This is an especially big problem if the teacher (or the student) has a poor internet connection, which is often the case with teachers at the cheaper half of the spectrum (and it's not just the connection—I've been in places with an unstable connection where Zoom or Meet works great but Prely not at all). The thing I dislike the most though is how they're constantly try to find ways of taking your money without paying the teacher. In this way, they're different from other platforms like airbnb, upwork, uber etc. For example, after you've paid for classes WITH A SPECIFIC teacher, those classes disappear after a month if you haven't scheduled them. And and while they love sending you lots of emails reminding you of this and that, they "forget" to remind you that the classes you've paid for will go away. I'd be OK with it if the teacher got the money, but no, (s)he loses out too, Preply pockets it all. Likewise, you can use your balance with a teacher to book a trial with another teacher, but for the teacher it's an unpaid gig. Preply pockets all the money. No wonder they're constantly pushing you to try other tutors. I have a strong dislike for companies whose business model depends on cheating their customers. Right now I have a good teacher at Preply, but when I'm no longer learning with her, I'll be trying Superpeof, Italki or some other service. I'm never going back to Preply again. EDIT: I know Preply will give their standard response and say that "that's how the subscription model works" and that "it's in the Terms & Conditions", so let me reply to that. Of course it's in the ToC. That's where all dodgy companies hide things they don't want their customers to know. And no, that's not how most subscription models work, because I subscribed to a particular TUTOR. I've got people on retainers in Upwork and that balance expires every month but if I've not given the worked tasks to do (s)he still gets that money (and upwork take their usual platform fee). Upwork doesn't claim all that money for themselves because no work was logged—that would be ridiculous. I bet that money feels good in the moment but I sincerely wonder how many customers you lose because of it.
