By Nana Chang Hau Yi & Winnie Suen Wing Yu

The cost of online tutor agencies are too high and wages are low for  the tutors, says many tutors who work for online agencies.

Online tutor agencies have become increasingly popular in recent years. As a result many online tutoring businesses have done well and have been hiring more part-time tutors including university students. The agencies serve as middlemen and connect the online tutoring businesses and tutors. But now many of the tutors say that the agencies have been gouging them when it comes to pay.

The most popular online agencies such as, HKTA and Tutor Kingdom, charge the fee for the lessons in first two weeks of first month of the tutor as commission fee. According to the Employment Agency Regulations under the employment ordinance, the maximum commission of an employment agency from a job-seeker should not ex- ceed 10 percent of the job-seeker’s first month of salary.

Employment agencies are companies that recommend suitable jobs to their clients, while on- line tutor agencies refer tutor cases to the tutors. As the properties of online tutor agencies are similar to employment agencies, some tutors argue that the charge of those tutor agencies is unfair to them.

“ We have no choice as commission of all the agencies are high. “ – Yannie Tze 

However, most of the agencies such as HKTA and Ectutor, said they act as an online trading platform, which provide a place for registered tutors to provide tutors services and trading with students clients. They emphasize their sole responsibility is to pair tutors with students.

According to Ectutor, Ectutor is a service provider and tutors are clients, but they are not employee and employer.

Government should take action

University students have been frustrated with the arrangement.

“We have no choice as commission of all the agencies are high,” said Yannie Tze, a Hong Kong Polytechnic University student who started working for online agency TutorGroup two years ago. She said it is difficult to find students, therefore they need to seek for help though those agency, even she thought the commission fee was too high.

Stella Mak, an university student who have joined online agency HKTA three years ago , said the agencies should have the same regulatory compared with the employment agencies. The service of those agencies is to recommend students to tutors, which is similar to the nature of employment agency, “but they claim that they are different from employment agencies in order to get more commission from tutors,” she said.

Some online tutors agencies may even charge tutors extra fee that more than they mentioned in the online website as commission fee, the tutors usually only gain a few in that month.

Michael Cheung, 20, a university student who signed up with an agency in 2013 said the agency has charged her more than HK$3,000 for having tutor class for 3 students, while he finally only earn HKD$1000 in the first month.

while he finally only earn HKD$1000 in the first month. But he said she will not take action against the agency. “We do not have enough bargaining power to argue with the agency about the commission fee. There are too many tutors in the market, it is easy for the agency to find other tutor to replace us,” Cheung said.

Annie Suen, one of the HKTA tutors, looked shocked when she was told that it is illegal for employment agencies to charge job seekers more than 10 per- cent of their first month’s salary.

“If I have known earlier I would have refused to pay such a high fee to the agency, it is not fair to us,” Suen said. Cherry Cheung, who was a tutor of Ectutor said the government had certain responsibility toward this matter. “Not only they should set up a law to protect the online job seeker, they should also do more promotion on teaching job seeker how to protect their right.” she said.

Ivan Chen, a university student who be – came a tutor, said the problem is with the law. “The law didn’t cover the tutor agencies, so they can escape from the regulations,” he said.

No specific law

Although many student tutors had reflected the high commission fee problem to related government department, at the moment, there are no regulations specific to online recruitment agency services.

“ We do not have enough bargaining power to argue with the agency about the commission fee. “ – Michael Cheung

Our Voice reached out to the Lab our Department by email for comments on the problem and received the following reply.

“The online tutor agencies need to apply for an employment agency license or not, it depends on whether there is an employee-employer relationship between those tutor and customer (student and their parents),” replied the Labour Department of Hong Kong. They further explained, if the tutor is a self-employed person and provides a service to his/her customers, then the Employment Agency Regulations are not applicable to the online tutor agency.

Wong Ching Yin, an assistant director of audit for the head of the Labour Department, said that when the department receives such complaints they will investigate immediately.

“If there is sufficient evidence that the agency or company suspected of violating the relevant regulations, we will take further action including prosecution,” Wong said by email. “Maybe only when all part time tutor fight for their right and have the procession, will the government look into the problem seriously,” he said.

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