u/ramechung

Hey everyone, wanted to share an update on the situation with my long-term student who retroactively dropped their 5 star review to 3 stars following a minor scheduling boundary.
After stepping back and cooling off, I decided against any reactive moves before their holiday. No angry messages, no petty responses. Just space to think clearly.

Here’s what I’ve decided:

I’m going to teach the next scheduled lesson and address it briefly and professionally at the start of the class. Not to demand anything, but because I value open communication and don’t want to carry it silently into the session.

The script I’ll be using:

“Before we get into today’s lesson, there’s just one small thing I’d like to mention so we can start with a clear understanding.

I noticed that after our scheduling issue, your review was updated to 3 stars. Of course, I completely respect that your review is your own honest opinion, and I’m not bringing this up to ask you to change it.

I completely understand if that was done in the heat of the moment because you were frustrated with the scheduling mix-up. I just wanted to be honest and say that it was a little disheartening for me. We’ve spent nearly a year learning together, and I’ve genuinely enjoyed being part of your learning journey. Because of that, I was sad to see our time together reflected that way over a scheduling matter.

I really value the lessons we’ve shared, and I also value open communication, so I felt it was better to express how I felt rather than keep it to myself. Thank you for listening, and I’m grateful you’re here today. Now, let’s jump into today’s lesson.”

After that, I’ll see how the lesson goes and decide whether to continue from there.
Thanks to everyone who weighed in. It genuinely helped me think this through.🥲

Hey everyone, just dealing with an incredibly frustrating situation on my profile right now and wanted to see if anyone else has run into this or has any advice.

I had a regular student who left a really long, glowing 5-star review a while back praising my lessons. Recently, they asked for a last-minute scheduling change that I genuinely couldn't accommodate because my calendar was already full. I was super polite about it and offered alternative slots, but they clearly got upset. Literally minutes after our chat ended, they went into their account and edited that historical review. They dropped the rating from a 5-star down to a 3-star, completely wiped out the entire detailed paragraph they had previously written, and replaced it with just the single word "helpful."

The timeline is an obvious retaliatory footprint, and the contradiction of dropping two stars while leaving a positive word is just ridiculous. I've already opened a ticket with support and sent screenshots of the before-and-after text log, but I'm worried the agent will just hit me with a canned macro saying they don't interfere with student feedback since the word itself doesn't violate any specific content rules.

Has anyone actually won an appeal based on a clear timeline and edit history like this, or does support usually just ignore the context if there's no profanity or hostile text? I'm trying to figure out what my realistic chances are here, or how I should even handle a public response to a 3-star review that literally just says "helpful" if it stays up.