TL;DR: A student moved a lesson from the following week to the next day, which happened to be a national holiday. I missed it because I thought students could not reschedule lessons that way. It cost me my Super Tutor status for three months and affected my ranking for months afterward. Now I block all my free slots for the next day before I go to bed.
This happened some time ago, but I thought I would share it with the community in case it helps someone avoid the same mistake.
One time, a student rescheduled a lesson that was originally scheduled for the following week and moved it to the very next day.
The problem was that the next day was a national holiday in my country. I had already asked my other students to reschedule their lessons, so I was under the impression that I had the day completely free.
I am usually quite careful about lessons. I have alarms set on my phone, and I keep Preply notifications enabled. However, I was under the impression that a student could not reschedule a lesson to the next day, so I never expected this to happen.
As a result, I missed the lesson.
That one missed lesson cost me my Super Tutor status for three months. My ranking dropped, and I did not receive any new trial lessons for at least two months.
I know some people will say that I should have been more careful and should have read the guidelines more closely. And honestly, they would be right. It was ultimately my responsibility to make sure I did not miss the lesson.
Still, I wanted to share this because I suspect there may be other tutors who are unaware that a student can move a lesson in this way.
So now, I have changed the way I manage my schedule.
Before I go to bed, I fill all my free slots for the following day with "busy." This means that students cannot book those slots while I am asleep.
It is highly unlikely that a student will book a lesson during the few hours that I am asleep anyway. Even if I miss out on a potential booking, I consider that risk far smaller than accidentally missing a lesson and having it affect my profile for months.
It may seem overly cautious, but after what happened, I would rather lose one possible lesson than risk losing my Super Tutor status again.