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Marketplace Terms of Service​

Last updated: April 3, 2023

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) regulate your use of the TutorOcean Platform, located at www.TutorOcean.com – operating on desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones. When these Terms mention “TutorOcean”, “we”, “us”, or “our”, it refers to the TutorOcean company you are contracting with.

BY ACCESSING THE TUTOROCEAN WEBSITE OR BY UTILIZING THE TUTOROCEAN SERVICES YOU AGREE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS OF SERVICE AND ALL EXHIBITS, ORDER FORMS, AND INCORPORATED POLICIES. THE TUTOROCEAN SERVICES ARE NOT AVAILABLE TO PERSONS WHO ARE NOT LEGALLY ELIGIBLE TO BE BOUND BY THESE TERMS OF SERVICE.

1. Scope of TutorOcean Services

    1. Students are fully responsible for selecting the right tutor for their needs. Before hiring Tutors, Students are strongly advised to review and consider each tutor’s self-reported credentials, education, and teaching experience, along with reviews from other students.
    2. For children under the age of twelve, all tutoring sessions should be supervised by one of the parents or a legal guardian.
    3. As the provider of the TutorOcean Platform, TutorOcean does not create, own, provide, manage, deliver, or supply any Listings. Tutors are responsible for their Listings. When Students and Tutors make, or accept a booking, respectively, they are entering into an agreement directly with each other. TutorOcean is not and does not become a party to such contractual relationship, except as specified in the Payments Terms.
    4. For Tutors: if you choose to use the TutorOcean Platform as a host, your relationship with TutorOcean is limited to being an independent tutor, and not an employee, agent, joint venture or partner of TutorOcean for any reason, and act exclusively on your own behalf and for your own benefit, and not on behalf, or for the benefit, of TutorOcean.
    5. To promote the TutorOcean Platform and to increase the exposure of Listings to potential Students, Listings may be exhibited on other websites, in applications, within emails, and in online and offline advertisements.
    6. To accommodate Tutors and Students who speak different languages, web content and Listings may be translated, in whole or in part, into other languages. TutorOcean cannot guarantee the accuracy or quality of such translations and Users are responsible for reviewing and verifying the accuracy of such translations. Please contact the TutorOcean support at support@tutorocean.com for any request in changing translations.
    7. Due to the dynamic nature of the Internet, TutorOcean cannot guarantee the continuous and uninterrupted availability and accessibility of the TutorOcean Platform. From time to time, TutorOcean may restrict the availability of the TutorOcean Platform or certain features thereof, if this is necessary in carrying out site maintenance measures that would assure the proper or optimized functioning of the TutorOcean Platform.
    8. TutorOcean may arrange to collect payment from students on behalf of tutors. Although students must have a valid payment method on file before booking sessions with tutors, TutorOcean does not guarantee payment will be successfully collected from students; nor is responsible for any losses or damages to tutors due to non-payment by students for any reason whatsoever. Should TutorOcean not be able to collect payment from a student on behalf of a tutor, it is the sole responsibility of the tutor to try to collect payment from the student.
    9. The TutorOcean Platform is an online marketplace that enables registered “Users” (Students and Tutors) seeking tutoring services to connect, communicate and transact directly with those seeking to provide tutoring services (“Listings”). Tutors are considered as independent contractors hired by Students, thus Tutors determine the methods, materials, and all details of the sessions.

2. Site Usage: You agree that while using TutorOcean services you agree to:

  1. Not use the Services to share inappropriate content or material (involving, for example, nudity, bestiality, pornography, graphic violence, or criminal activity)
  2. Not engage in activity that is false or misleading.
  3. Not infringe upon the rights of others.
  4. Not do anything that violates the privacy of others.
  5. Not help others break these rules.
  6. Not transmit (a) any material, non-public information about companies without the authorization to do so; (b) any advertisements, solicitations, chain letters, pyramid schemes, investment opportunities, or other unsolicited commercial communication.
  7. Not engage in spamming or flooding.
  8. Not arrange communications, accept payments, or book sessions outside of the TutorOcean platform for students that you receive from TutorOcean.
  9. Not do anything nasty or illegal.
  10. Not do anything that exploits, harms, or threatens to harm children, yourself, our service or anyone else.
  11. To allow all your communications (oral and written) and content to be monitored live, recorded, and reviewed for quality control by TutorOcean employees.
  12. Follow all instructions and recommendations from TutorOcean employees.
  13. Reply to all messages from students and TutorOcean employees.
  14. Reply to all messages from students and TutorOcean employees in a reasonable time frame as determined by TutorOcean.
  15. TutorOcean enforcement policy: If you violate any of the terms of service, your account may be temporarily suspended for any length of time, or terminated at the sole discretion of any TutorOcean employee.

3. Use of Services and Your Responsibilities.

You may only use the Services pursuant to the terms. You are solely responsible for Your and Your End Users’ use of the Services and shall abide by, and ensure compliance with, all Laws in connection with Your and each End User’s use of the Services, including but not limited to Laws related to recording, intellectual property, privacy and export control. Use of the Services is void where prohibited.

  1. Registration Information. You may be required to provide information about Yourself in order to register for and/or use certain Services. You agree that any such information shall be accurate. You may also be asked to choose a user name and password. You are entirely responsible for maintaining the security of Your user name and password and agree not to disclose such to any third party.
  2. Your Content. You agree that You are solely responsible for the content (“Content”) sent or transmitted by You or displayed or uploaded by You in using the Services and for compliance with all Laws pertaining to the Content, including, but not limited to, Laws requiring You to obtain the consent of a third party to use the Content and to provide appropriate notices of third party rights. You represent and warrant that You have the right to upload the Content to TutorOcean and that such use does not violate or infringe on any rights of any third party. Under no circumstances will TutorOcean be liable in any way for any (a) Content that is transmitted or viewed while using the Services, (b) errors or omissions in the Content, or (c) any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of, access to, or denial of access to Content. Although TutorOcean is not responsible for any Content, TutorOcean may delete any Content, at any time without notice to You, if TutorOcean becomes aware that it violates any provision of these Terms, or any law.
  3. Recordings. You are responsible for compliance will all recording laws. The host can choose to record TutorOcean classroom meetings. By using the Services, you are giving TutorOcean consent to store recordings for any or all TutorOcean classroom meetings or webinars that you join, if such recordings are stored in our systems. You will receive a notification (visual or otherwise) when recording is enabled. If you do not consent to being recorded, you can choose to leave the meeting or webinar.
  4. Prohibited Use. You agree that you will not use, and will not permit any End User to use, the Services to: (i) modify, disassemble, decompile, prepare derivative works of, reverse engineer or otherwise attempt to gain access to the source code of the Services; (ii) knowingly or negligently use the Services in a way that abuses, interferes with, or disrupts TutorOcean’s networks, Your accounts, or the Services; (iii) engage in activity that is illegal, fraudulent, false, or misleading, (iv) transmit through the Services any material that may infringe the intellectual property or other rights of third parties; (v) build or benchmark a competitive product or service, or copy any features, functions or graphics of the Services; or (vi) use the Services to communicate any message or material that is harassing, libelous, threatening, obscene, indecent, would violate the intellectual property rights of any party or is otherwise unlawful, that would give rise to civil liability, or that constitutes or encourages conduct that could constitute a criminal offense, under any applicable law or regulation; (vii) upload or transmit any software, Content or code that does or is intended to harm, disable, destroy or adversely affect performance of the Services in any way or which does or is intended to harm or extract information or data from other hardware, software or networks of TutorOcean or other users of Services; (viii) engage in any activity or use the Services in any manner that could damage, disable, overburden, impair or otherwise interfere with or disrupt the Services, or any servers or networks connected to the Services or TutorOcean’s security systems. (ix) use the Services in violation of any TutorOcean policy or in a manner that violates applicable law, including but not limited to anti-spam, export control, privacy, and anti-terrorism laws and regulations and laws requiring the consent of subjects of audio and video recordings, and You agree that You are solely responsible for compliance with all such laws and regulations.
  5. Limitations on Use. You may not reproduce, resell, or distribute the Services or any reports or data generated by the Services for any purpose unless You have been specifically permitted to do so under a separate agreement with TutorOcean. You may not offer or enable any third parties to use the Services purchased by You, display on any website or otherwise publish the Services or any Content obtained from a Service (other than Content created by You) or otherwise generate income from the Services or use the Services for the development, production or marketing of a service or product substantially similar to the Services.

4. RESPONSIBILITY FOR END USERS. You are responsible for the activities of all End Users who access or use the Services through your account and you agree to ensure that any such End User will comply with the terms of this Agreement and any TutorOcean policies. TutorOcean assumes no responsibility or liability for violations. If You become aware of any violation of this Agreement in connection with use of the Services by any person, please contact TutorOcean at support@tutorocean.com. TutorOcean may investigate any complaints and violations that come to its attention and may take any (or no) action that it believes is appropriate, including, but not limited to issuing warnings, removing the content or terminating accounts and/or User profiles. Under no circumstances will TutorOcean be liable in any way for any data or other content viewed while using the Services, including, but not limited to, any errors or omissions in any such data or content, or any loss or damage of any kind incurred as a result of the use of, access to, or denial of access to any data or content.

5. OBLIGATIONS FOR CONTENT. TutorOcean will maintain reasonable physical and technical safeguards to prevent unauthorized disclosure of or access to Content, in accordance with industry standards. TutorOcean will notify You if it becomes aware of unauthorized access to Content. TutorOcean will not access, view or process Content except (a) as provided for in this Agreement and in TutorOcean’s Privacy Statement; (b) as authorized or instructed by You, (c) as required to perform its obligations under this Agreement; or (d) as required by Law. TutorOcean has no other obligations with respect to Content.

6. Eligibility, Users Verification.

    1. To access and use the TutorOcean Platform or register a TutorOcean account, you must be at least 18 years old, and hence able to enter legally binding contracts.
    2. For Students who are younger than 18 years old, a parent or legal guardian must be present when the Student signs up and when they are in session with a Tutor.
    3. Verifying an User’s credentials is complicated on the Internet, and we do not assume any responsibility for the confirmation of any User’s identity. In any event, to ensure transparency and prevent fraud, and we may, but no obligation to (i) ask Users to provide a proof of government identification or other types of information intended to help verify the identities and backgrounds of Users, (ii) screen Users against third party databases, and (iii) where we have adequate information to identify an User, obtain reports from public records of criminal convictions.

7. Account Registration

You must register an account (“TutorOcean Account”) to access and gain full access to the “TutorOcean Online Classroom.”

    1. You can register a TutorOcean Account using an email address and creating a password, or through your third-party social networking accounts, such as Facebook or Google (“SNS Account”).
    2. During the registration process, you must provide veritable and current information. We strongly advise you to always keep your TutorOcean Account and public TutorOcean Account profile page up-to-date.

8. Privacy

  1. To help you get the most out of our platform, we collect User submitted personally identifiable information (“PII”) and non-personally identifiable information (“non-PII”) when you use the TutorOcean Platform. We may collect information you provide when you create or edit your profile, upload content (photographs, images, videos, essays, lessons, etc.), provide profile descriptions or comments, participate in interactive features of the TutorOcean Platform, connect or communicate with us via third party social media sites, send us an email, request technical support or otherwise communicate with us or communicate with other Users through the TutorOcean Platform. This information is retained by us solely for the purpose of documentation and software development.
  2. TutorOcean is committed to protecting your online safety and privacy. TutorOcean will not be responsible for errors and omissions (E&O) for any user of our system.  As a user, you acknowledge that TutorOcean will not have liability for any damages to you or to any third parties due to data breaches. PII and non-PII are never shared with anyone except for the following purpose: among TutorOcean staff for software development and communication, or as legally required.
  3. We reserve the right to have non-exclusive and royalty-free license to Tutor photographs/images/videos/text/documents that are uploaded to Tutor profiles, for the purpose of sharing/promoting/advertising tutor profiles on any/all TutorOcean’s social media accounts* (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, or other), and in referral emails or any/all other means of sharing/promoting/advertising.*Corresponding privacy policies apply
  4. Explicitly, phone numbers, email addresses, website, and social media accounts are not allowed to be included in any of the fields displayed on your profile.

9. Tracking Technologies

  1. TutorOcean uses technologies such as cookies, tags, and scripts, to analyze trends, administer the TutorOcean Platform, track users’ movements around the TutorOcean Platform, and gather demographic information about our Users as a whole.
  2. TutorOcean uses cookies to help enhance user experience based on User attributes like your location and account preferences. No PII is stored in our cookies. You have the option to disable or delete cookies at the individual browser level at any time, but please note that this action may limit your use of the TutorOcean Platform
  3. TutorOcean collects certain information automatically and store it in log files, and combine with other information that are collected from Users. Such information may include Internet protocol (IP) addresses, browser type, internet service provider (ISP), referring/exit pages, operating system, date/time stamp, and/or clickstream data. This is for enhancing services that you receive, and to improve marketing, analytics, and/or site functionality.
  4. By agreeing to TutorOcean’s Terms of Use when you first sign up as a tutor or student, you give your consent for TutorOcean to collect the above-mentioned information.

10. Email

  1. By signing up as a Tutor or Student, you agree to receive promotional and administrative (i.e. updates) emails from TutorOcean from which you can unsubscribe at any time.

11. Service Fees

  1. TutorOcean may charge fees to Tutors in consideration for usage of the TutorOcean platform. If changes to service fee policies are made, the revised Terms will be posted on the TutorOcean Platform; and updates will be made to the “Last Updated” date at the top of these Terms.

12. Payments

  1. Tutors
    1. TutorOcean pays its tutors out via Stripe, therefore in order to get paid for your tutoring sessions, you will need to create and connect a Stripe account. In order to connect your Stripe account to the platform, go to your Payment Gateway in your Dashboard.
    2. TutorOcean processes all payments from students on your behalf 48 hours after a session is complete. Within 24 hours of being processed by Stripe, the payment will appear in your Stripe Dashboard via your Payment Gateway. You can see your payment history by clicking on “View Stripe Dashboard”. Once processed by Stripe, the payment will take up to 7 days to reach your connected bank account. An exception is made for tutors outside Canada who use the session package or assignment review features, or if a student applies a coupon/credit to their session. In this case, the payment will be processed by PayPal on the first business day of the month. 
    3. PayPal payments to tutors are processed on the first business day of the month. A minimum balance of $40 USD is required before a PayPal payment is initiated. Payments are handled as “Paying for an item or service”. TutorOcean pays the processing and currency conversion fees as a sender. When a tutor receives money, PayPal charges the tutor fees and deducts the fees from the sent amount. The fees vary from country to country. See Fees | Merchant and Business | PayPal US
    4. As required by the Canadian Revenue Agency, TutorOcean collects sales tax on all services rendered to tutors residing in Canada.
  2. Students
    1. Students can pay for tutoring services via credit card or debit VISA/Mastercard. In order to connect your credit card to the platform, go to your Payment Methods in your Dashboard. Payments are held 48 hours before a session occurs, however are processed 48 hours following the conclusion of a scheduled session. If a session is requested with less than 24 hours until its start time, payment will be held at the time of the booking request.
    2. All paid sessions will incur a minimum $0.50 charge regardless of session duration. All paid sessions that are extended beyond the original session time will incur a $0.50 processing fee for each extension period.
    3. Students will see a processing fee applied to booked sessions. This applies to all sessions where a credit card is used for payment. Students who book a session using a coupon, gift card or use existing credits in their account will not incur this charge.
    4. Students are not allowed to stack (use more than one) coupon or discount code at a time.  Only one coupon or discount option is allowed per tutoring session.  TutorOcean has the right to reject coupons or discount codes at any time, at their own sole discretion without any notice required.

13. Refund Policy

  1. If a student is not satisfied with a tutoring session, a request for a refund must be made within 24 hours of a session ending. The request must be made by submitting a support ticket to support@tutorocean.com. All refund requests will be investigated and approved or denied at the sole discretion of TutorOcean. In the instance where a refund request is approved, payment to the tutor will be cancelled. The amount of the refund will be determined at the sole discretion of TutorOcean and will be returned to the student’s original method of payment within 5 to 10 business days. TutorOcean is not responsible for issues beyond our control and will not approve refunds for: bad internet connection, incompatible devices, blocked browser access, etc.
  2. If a student purchases a package from a tutor, but does not use all of the package, they may be eligible for a refund. The amount of the refund will be reduced by the amount of any discount that the student received for any sessions taken using the package.

14. No-show Policy

  1. Tutors
    1. If a tutor is absent from a session, the session will be credited back to the student if:
    2. The student ends the session early and marks the tutor as a “no-show”. In this case, the amount of the session will automatically be returned to the student’s original payment method within 5 to 10 business days.
    3. The student does not mark the tutor as a “no-show” and a request is made by the student within 24 hours of the session ending. The request must be made by submitting a support ticket to support@tutorocean.com. The amount of the session will be returned to the student’s original method of payment within 5 to 10 business days.If three or more sessions are missed by the tutor, the tutors ranking will be affected in the search engine results and they may be subject to a bad review.
  2. Students
    1. If a student does not show up to a session, their session and any associated fees will be forfeited and paid out to the tutor. It is at the tutor’s discretion to reschedule and make up the missed session.
    2. Students may reschedule or cancel a session up to 24 hours before the scheduled start time. Students who cancel a session less than 24 hours before the scheduled start time, show up late or miss a session may be billed the full amount of the session. Tutors, at their own discretion, may offer to extend a session or reschedule a session at no extra charge to accommodate students who cancel a session less than 24 hours before the scheduled start time, show up late or miss a session.

15. Technical

  1. Online Classroom
    1. If a student and tutor experience technical issues in the online classroom, and the session runs for less than five minutes, the student will be refunded the full amount of the session. The tutor will not be compensated for this time.
    2. If a student and tutor experience technical issues in the online classroom, and the session runs for more than five minutes, the student will be charged the prorated amount until the session ends. The tutor will be compensated for the prorated amount.

16. Disclaimer

  1. The views or opinions expressed by Tutors or Students are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of TutorOcean.

17. Feedback

  1. TutorOcean encourages both positive and negative feedback to better improve the TutorOcean Platform. You can submit your feedback to support@tutorocean.com. We are always willing to listen to our customers.

18. General Provisions

  1. If you have any questions about these Terms, please email us at support@tutorocean.com