I've never accepted payments from a different country before, so I've been looking into it a bit, but I can't get a straight answer about if I need a business account to accept payments from Preply.
If you use Wise for your Preply payments, do you have a personal account or a business account?
I am an English tutor on Preply, specialising in children. Considering the safety concerns online for children, I expected to have a very watchful eye on me. In fact, after the first encounter with a family, who seemed to me as though they were working for Preply, I applauded the company for performing it's due diligence.
I also acknowledged the fact that I don't know for sure if they were working for Preply or not. Their behaviour was odd as if they were hiding something and their story lacked personality and was very generic. However, that does not prove anything... but... then the second one was more brazen.
The second contact I received that I suspect was a test, was after I received two emails about "the importance of responding quickly to messages". This student was named "Lightning" as if to hammer in the point. Amazingly, I did have my phone nearby and I did actually respond to them within an hour. "Lightning" acknowledge my speed, then disappeared.
By now, I felt as though I had been playing the game decently and that (if they were indeed tests that) those were indeed reasonable tests.
Yet, today, I had another suspicious trail that I can't help but wonder if it was yet another test. One technical problem after another. The video feature didn't work. The audio on my end was violently echoing. The screen-share didn't work. The whiteboard suddenly closed. Of course it was just the technical issues, the student's language skills were borderline fantastical. I left the class feeling like I just failed a pop quiz on "how I respond to technical difficulties during a trail lesson."
Has anyone else experienced this? This sense that a student who is contacting you or who has a trail lesson with you is actually an agent (or chatbot) for Preply?
Of course, one must be able to answer "why would a company invest that much time and effort into investigating their workforce?" Maybe it is to feed information to their sorting algorithms. Since I am a new teacher, they haven't very much information on me and I haven't any reviews. That theory, though, is so full of holes that I can't fully believe in it.
What do you think? Am I a paranoid nut job or is Preply testing me?