Outschool

Not working at all

Signed up, paid and the video link didn't work, no way to contact anyone, no online help that dealt with the problem of the online classroom not working. Now going to have to go through a long drama of getting a refund and my daughter has missed her class. very annoying.

Easy to use and sign up.

Love Outschool

Love Outschool! Used it for many years!!! Every class the kids have taken has been great! Fantastic teachers. Not a single complaint with teachers or classes. However, my biggest complaint is paying for the classes. They now require you to buy “credits”. You buy these “credits” to pay for the classes. This convolutes how much you are actually paying for a class-by design…. And, also want monthly credit subscriptions. Ugh, I despise it so bad that I quite using Outschool. I miss the way it used to be when it was just stated a specified dollar amount for each class.

Amazing teachers

Amazing teachers, kids were engaged.

Don’t Waste Your Time

Unfortunately it’s more of a money machine than a legitimate teaching platform. The teachers are encouraged to act more like mindless robots than humans with thoughts and opinions. The teachers are also not vetted by real humans. Applications are instantly accepted or rejected by an algorithm, so don’t get the idea that the person talking to your child has been approved by an actual human who cares. They haven’t. Spend your money elsewhere and spare your child the wasted time.

We love using Outschool

We love using Outschool. My elementary-aged son recently took a geography class he loved and got so much out of it!

Outschool continously provides access…

Outschool continously provides access to high quality, live tutoring and classes for my students!

Variety!

I love that there are so many class choices for so many different subjects, everything from nature classes to sports to math. I love that you can pay for each class as needed, they don't lock you into a membership, unless choose a membership.

I love that Outschool is able to…

I love that Outschool is able to provide both my kids with a unique, personalized learning experience. Once upon a time I battled with IEP meetings and school teams for crumbs of accommodations but with Outschool, the school experience has been built around my kids needs. My child with dyslexia and adhd has lively, inclusive classes she can participate in and my high achieving teen is taking literature courses that rival anything I took in college. I love how they’re thriving!

I love Outschool for my child

I love Outschool for my child. He gets very attached and they are very patient with him. Great vetting process

Outschool has been an amazing source of…

Outschool has been an amazing source of outsourcing educational needs but in a fun engaging way.

Wonderful teachers on Outschool

Outschool has been wonderful for our family, particularly with the variety of elective classes my grandchildren have attended. Both of them love art, and they have learned color theory, drawing, different techniques of painting and composition with some incredible artists who teach on Outschool. My oldest one is working on a portfolio to apply for a fine arts magnet school, and these instructors have really helped her focus and refine her work.

Terrible company

Terrible company, terrible customer service. Platform is also unclear to use. We never got to take the class that my daughter was keen on because it kept being cancelled. Signed up for a month's membership that we never got to use. Cancelled it, and then got charged for the individual classes, even the one that didn't run. Predatory company, providing no value, very poor customer service.

Outschool provides a safe and…

Outschool provides a safe and interesting learning environment. Communication with the teachers has been great and my learner loves the variety of classes available.

Beware of their new predatory…

Beware of their new predatory subscription billing practices. I was an early adopter and a power user of Outschool from the very beginning. In fact, their team previously reached out to me for consulting on user interface improvements, and I spent hours voluntarily promoting their platform and classes across Facebook groups. Having supported their brand so heavily makes their current lack of transparency feel like a profound betrayal of a loyal customer. My student has not taken an educational class on the Outschool platform in months. Despite complete account dormancy and zero services being rendered, Outschool continued to automatically charge my credit card $40 per month without sending any explicit notifications or alerts regarding the ongoing billing of a completely inactive account. For newbies, Outschool used to drop a student automatically after 3 consecutively missed classes. They also didn’t charge you a “membership” fee. You paid for individual classes. Now, as a direct result of their "silent renewal" practice, I have accumulated a massive backlog of 240 unused credits. This backlog represents three full months of recurring $40 payments for which my family received absolutely NO educational services. Furthermore, Outschool's new policy dictates that if a user cancels the membership to stop the bleeding of future charges, they completely forfeit any remaining, paid-for credits at the end of the billing cycle!! This business practice is designed to capitalize on busy families who forget to cancel a service they are no longer using. It is inherently deceptive to continuously pocket consumer funds month after month when platform data explicitly shows zero user engagement, zero class enrollments, and a mounting pile of unspent credits. I’m calling on Outschool to refund my $120 dollars.

It was just not easy to understand how…

It was just not easy to understand how to use the credits and it was really costly

I have a love-hate relationship with…

I have a love-hate relationship with outschool. We utilize outschool primarily to provide our kids with classes that are not offered in their current public schools (languages, etc). We absolutely love the teachers we have, but it took a few trial and errors to find teachers and programs that justified the cost. Outschool loses major points for their policies and procedures regarding sign-ups, refunds, pauses, and membership credit uses. It's intentionally designed to be confusing and misleading, they absolutely count on people not reaching out to customer service. I'm currently frustrated with OS right now, because 1 child is about to move up to the next level of his language class, it has extremely limited seats. (Important info: We have a membership which currently covers the two classes they're enrolled.) We enrolled for the next class as soon as the instructor posted it, even though it does not begin until over a month away. We were charged immediately for the weekly credit rate against our membership. It tells you this nowhere on the sign up page, and it now makes us short on credits for the two classes we're enrolled in. So it forces us to either upgrade the membership to a much higher, more expensive tier, or pay higher per credit prices to cover the shortage. After reaching out CS to find out why I was charged, I was notified of the policy that is elbows deep in some not-easily accessed T&S somewhere on the site. They offered to make a "one time exception and let me withdraw from the class and they'd refund me". But this doesn't work, because then we risk the class filling up and we lose the spot or the class being canceled because not enough people signed up. I wouldn't mind if we had to pay a small credit deposit to hold our spot, but getting charged the weekly rate, every single week until the class starts over a month from now? It's, scummy and scammy. This honestly may be the straw that breaks me and sends us to other platforms.

Great

Great teachers

we canncel the memship

we canncel the memship, but they still automatically charging.

Predatory practices

The variety of classes is wonderful. We had some great learning experiences for both my Kindergarten learner and my 6th grader. This is why I kept my stars at 3... I chose to cancel our subscription because my children were ready to take a break from online learning; I thought I had canceled and wouldn't be charged again. Oh man, was I wrong. Cancelation apparently means NOTHING to Outschool and they continue to charge for classes AFTER canceling. So if you're considering Outschool for the variety, be sure to withdraw your child from a class AND cancel or they will continue to charge you (for months).