Advertising Tutoring on Gumtree web site Summary 1. Gumtree allowing advertising of essay mills(writing for students) on Tuition sub section 2. Giving priority to essay mills above genuine tutors 3. Writing for students is totally against all university rules and regulations 4. Gumtree rules do not allow writing for students adverts yet allow thousands of such adverts. 5. Useless advertising medium for individual advertisers as business paid advertisers dominate the sector with thousands of adverts every hour. These comments refer specifically to the Service sector business section sub category Tuition but may be applying to other sectors of the Gumtree advertising web site also. I am a university level private tutor. The free advertising option no longer applies to advertising as a tutor in the sub category tuition section therefore all adverts are paid for. However, there is priority given to business account advertisers on Gumtree. These are people who are paying monthly for multiple adverts. These multiple adverts take priority over all other advertisers and are hourly flooding the tuition section of the web site. The business account multiple adverts I am referring to here are being placed on Gumtree tuition section and are specifically advertising writing dissertations, theses, assignments, reports, coursework to enable students to cheat. These companies are commonly known as essay mills. These adverts have nothing to do with the key search terms tutoring, tuition, tutor which the section is supposed to be for. The writing dissertations, theses, assignments, reports, coursework for students is totally against all university policy. There is currently a government petition available to sign called Ban the provision and advertising of 'essay mill' cheating services. Quote-“'Essay mills' provide custom written essays for students to cheat with. Prices range from a couple of hundred pounds for a single essay to over £6,750 for a PhD dissertation. This undermines the high standards of universities and is unfair to honest students - but is currently legal. The Irish government has announced a new law that would make it illegal to provide or advertise contract cheating services. New Zealand and 17 US states already have such laws. We call for the UK Government to pass a similar law to stamp out this unacceptable practice.” Any tutor placing a single advert for genuine for tuition services at prices £5.99 to £10.99 are immediately followed by a minimum of 5 and possible 20 adverts from one dissertation writing business dominating this tuition sub section and the individual advertisers single paid for advert is down the page or off the front page immediately or within 20-30 minutes. The sub section specifically designated to attract tutors advertising has been taken over by one company advertising multiple adverts for writing dissertations, theses, assignments, reports, coursework to enable students to cheat. They have hijacked the word “tutor”. They do not provide a tuition service. There is an opportunity to pay more to Gumtree to have the individual advert at the top of this tuition sub section and kept there for a minimum of 3 days at for example £59 for London area. From my own experience this also is a total waste of time and money for the individual advertiser. On counting the number of so called top adverts in this tuition sub section for dissertation, essay, and coursework writing for students today there were at least 30 in the top advert placing. Therefore the logistics of this are- searching on a mobile phone results show just 2 adverts on the top placing therefore the individual advertisers advert would show on a rotating basis 1 out of 15 time search if lucky. Gumtree rules on their web site as of 25 January 2019 “Services not allowed on our site. This applies to paid for and free services - essay and dissertation services” Yet as of January 25th 2019 there are 5,350 ads for dissertation writing in Academic Tuition & Classes The word tutor has been hijacked by the dissertation writing businesses (essay mills) who are using the Gumtree website tuition section for their own private advertising web site. There is no space for genuine tutors now on Gumtree and any private tutor should not be paying money to be given, not only, low priority but absolutely no priority or in fact no chance of a fair presence to advertise a genuine service which they are prepared to pay for. There is never a refund I have found. In fact when I have complained to Gumtree in the past then it is my email address which is banned.