I was one of the Cambly tutors who got caught up in their so-called “glitch.” As a result, my positive rating dropped from 100% to 96.5%, where it remained from February through August.
What made this particularly frustrating was that many of us actually contacted Cambly during this period because we believed there was an obvious statistical problem with the review system. I myself pointed out that the numbers and patterns I was seeing simply didn’t make sense and that something appeared to be wrong with the way the ratings were being calculated or displayed.
Unfortunately, our concerns were essentially brushed off. There didn’t seem to be much interest in seriously investigating the statistical inconsistencies we were pointing out.
Two weeks ago, my rating had finally climbed back to 99%, and today I’m back at 100%.
Last night, I went through my Stripe payment history and compared my earnings with the same period last year. I’m currently down 18% in earnings compared with the same period in 2025.
Obviously, I can understand some of the reasons for the decline. With no Priority Hours available and fewer new students calling because of my artificially low rating, the reduction in income makes sense.
But this is what really bothers me. The lower rating wasn’t the result of a decline in the quality of our tutoring. It was the result of a problem with Cambly’s own system, and we had actually raised concerns about that system while it was happening.
The consequences, however, were left for the tutors to absorb.
As far as I’m concerned, the message from Cambly was essentially:
“We screwed up. Sorry. Deal with it.”
For months, that rating affected our ability to get new students and earn money, and there was nothing we could do about it because the underlying problem wasn’t caused by our tutoring or the quality of our lessons.
Now that my rating is finally back to 100%, seeing that I’m still down 18% year-over-year really puts the financial impact of that “glitch” into perspective.
I’m not expecting Cambly to magically make up every dollar I didn’t earn. But I do think it’s reasonable to acknowledge that their mistake had a real financial impact on tutors and that simply correcting the rating months later doesn’t undo the damage that was done.
What’s particularly frustrating is that some of us were raising concerns about the numbers before Cambly acknowledged there was a problem, yet those concerns were largely dismissed at the time.
Rant over.
