My student asked to reschedule or cancel after the 24 hour cut off. What should I do?
We have a 24 hour rescheduling and cancellation policy to protect tutors from being messed around. However, sometimes tutors wish to make exceptions and allow late changes, for example if it's the first time that the student has asked or they have a true emergency. Doing this may be good for your relationship with the student.
If you wish to allow a late change, you'll need to reschedule/cancel yourself on the website as your student will not be able to do this. If you do this, we suggest you politely mention to the student that you will not be able to do this again because last minute cancellations mean you lose income.
If you do not wish to allow a last minute change, it's important you communicate why in order to reduce the risk of relationship damage. You can copy this:
Unfortunately, there is a 24 hour cancellation and rescheduling policy (stated across the website), which is needed in order to provide tutors with reasonable working conditions. If a lesson is cancelled late, I'm unable to quickly find another student for the time assigned, so I lose income. Last minute cancellation requests are quite common and I'm unable to make exceptions for some and not for others.
If something changes and it turns out that you can attend the lesson after all, please contact me as soon as possible.
I hope you understand and I look forward to seeing you again soon.
OR if they've already missed the session and then asked for it to be rescheduled or cancellled, you could copy the above, removing the sentence 'if something changes...'