Transparency Promise

At Fluent City, our goal is to help you succeed in learning a language. However, if we aren't successful as a company, we can't do that! We know that things come up from time to time that may prevent you from learning a language with us and we definitely understand that, but in order to ensure that we can continue to have prices that are considerably lower than our competitors, we have the following policies:

***Class transfer or cancellation/refund requests must be made at least 7 days prior to your class start date. After this date, refunds cannot be given under any circumstance and we can't allow you to transfer your tuition to a different class.

***The cancellation policy for private and makeup lessons is as follows: 24 hour notice is expected for cancellation of any weekday (before 6pm) lessons. Otherwise, you will still be charged. Weeknight (after 6pm) or weekend private or makeup lessons cannot be cancelled.

LEGAL INFO: Please be aware that Fluent City and any of its professors are not responsible for any loss of property or personal injury. By attending any class, lesson, or event with Fluent City, you are waiving any rights to the liability of Fluent City and its professors and to any claims, suits, demands, damages, judgements, costs and expenses that you may incur.

We want the fundamental ways in which we run our business to be very transparent so that everyone can clearly see our intentions at any time. We make the following Transparency Promise to all of our customers:

1. As students sign up for classes, we start to make very detailed decisions about each one. The reason we have a policy that says that you can't transfer classes or request refunds after 7 days before your class starts is because we have to start honing in on the final count of students about a week before each class starts. We need to know the number of students so that we can make plans involving that specific class. If a student were to change to a different class after that point, or pull out of one altogether, we would be left in a position where we've reserved a spot for them that they aren't taking after all, which would cause our prices to go up to account for those kinds of losses. Having a strict 7-day refund/transfer policy means we will be able to continue to offer our high-quality classes for a very low price to everyone.

2. We promise to pay professors for any private or makeup lesson that we schedule them for, so it's only fair to them that students understand and adhere to our 24-hour cancellation policy for weekday daytime lessons and no cancellation policy for weeknight and weekend lessons. When you schedule a private or a makeup lesson with us, the professor is reserving his or her time to work with you. For prime weeknight and weekend time slots, professors might be giving up other plans or not take another gig or lesson because they are scheduled to work with you instead. That is why weeknight and weekend private lessons can't be cancelled. For weekday daytime lessons, our professors' schedules are usually a bit more flexible, but we think it is only fair to them that we have at least a 24-hour cancellation policy for weekday lessons.

3. All hours of a discounted private lesson package must be used within 6 months of purchase date. After that, you will be responsible for paying the difference of the hourly rate vs. the package rate. As of September 2012, that difference is only $10/hour.

4. We pay our professors hourly, so we have to charge for makeup lessons as they will be spending an hour of their time working with you, specifically, on the topics that you missed in class. More about how makeup lessons work, as well as what to do if you miss a class, can be found here.

5. We keep our prices as low as we possibly can while still being able to afford the rent for our classrooms and pay our awesome professors enough to keep them around for a long time. We promise never to raise our prices simply because our classes are in demand. We do offer sale pricing and discounts from time to time, but it is rare because our full price is already half that of most of our competitors (and our classes are twice as awesome)!

6. Specific professors for a class or a lesson cannot be guaranteed and we will sometimes have to schedule a substitute professor to cover a class. We do, however, work really hard to be sure that you have as much consistency as possible when it comes to your professor for a certain class. We take great pains to ensure that every professor that is hired is excellent at what they do, so rest assured that the person we assign to work with any student has gone through a rigorous hiring process before they are given teaching assignments.

7. The main office staff consists of Sam, Vanusa, Mandy, Deborah, Megan and Lia. All logistics dealing with class registration, payments, and private/makeup lessons is handled by Vanusa, Megan and Lia at hey@fluentcity.com. They do a great job of replying to emails in a timely fashion and we are extremely proud of the fact that we are always easy to get in touch with in the main office. We are also equally proud of the fact that we do our best to notify everyone in a very timely manner in the unlikely event of class cancellations or any changes that are important for you to know about.

8.We value the time, health, safety and security of our students and staff, so we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone who is disruptive, disrespectful, harassing, intoxicated, not properly dressed (shirts and shoes, please!), or who causes any kind of safety concern to any of our awesome students or staff.

If you ever have a concern that isn't being addressed, you can email Sam, the owner, at sam@fluentcity.com. Email is preferred as we are generally able to respond more efficiently (and quickly) via email, but our office number should you ever need it is 347-687-6896.

We are super excited to have you as a student at Fluent City and look very forward to having you in class!