Complaint Review: Dr. Tae Ha - Fresno CA

Although I tried to resolve this with humility and with efforts to maintain professionalism, I feel compelled to now provide my side of the story.  

Between mid-July to mid-Sept, Ive had several serious health issues that I had to endure. This is by no means meant to curb any blame from myself. No excuses. However, because of this I essentially was MIA, compounded by the fact that I did not have access to my phone for over a month towards the end.  This resulted in me losing touch/communication with 3 of my students, with all of whom I have provided resolution.

Since then, I have made changes to my payment policy to help avoid this kind of situation in the future.  Keith C was one of those students. I had apologized, provided refund, and even offered some career guidance/pearls. Even offered my services free of charge. And, despite my efforts he has continued to take on a vindictive approach, and has made significantly defamatory comments that warrant immediate responses. 

I want to mention the fact that I have had over 100+ students as a tutor, with no issues of this sort in the past prior to mid-July.  I also want to mention that I currently have more than 10 active students, several of whom have been with me (including some of their siblings) prior to even COVID.  And, I continue to work with new students on a weekly basis. Keith repeatedly stated that he has seen many similar complaints/reviews on Thumbtack. I want to clarify that these are from the same people I have mentioned above and provided resolution to, or they were regarding something completely unrelated. In fact, upon resolution my Top Pro/account status had been reinstituted by Thumbtack, with Thumbtack continuing to be my most consistent platform for working with new students

Keith has blatantly made several false statements, even about my demographic/educational background.  For instance, he states that I told him that I went to Yale Med and graduated at the top of my class, and that I am a practicing physician.  That is entirely incorrect. I told him exactly what Keith even copied and pasted, into this complaint, of my bio info, which clearly states that I went to Yale Undergrad, OHSU Med School, and that I was a surgical resident. This is all clearly stated in my biography. I bring this up as an example to show that Keith does not seem to be interested on the facts and coming to a resolution, but instead actively wanting to cause further harm to me.

Also, although absolutely unprofessional in Keith’s attempt to bring in my personal/medical history and my past, completely unrelated, career history, I must address the issue of why such personal information came up in the first place. During the course of trying to seek resolution with Keith, I brought up personal issues that in hindsight should not have even been discussed.  However, I volunteered some information about myself to show empathy towards Keith after he told me that he had to redo DPM graduate school because he had failed some classes, and had been bullied.  In response, I told him my setbacks during the course of my residency career such as being let go from my program many years ago due to alcohol issues (not related to patient care), for which I humbly got treatment, and now with over 2yrs of sobriety under my belt. This was all said in confidence with the hope of providing support to him, to impress upon the fact that we can all stand back up from setbacks.  Now it seems that my good intentions are being used against me. And for him to comment on my mental health in such a ungrounded, defamatory and despicable manner is beyond understanding. How can anyone say such things without ill intent?  

Finally, the reason I contacted Keith yesterday was because I wanted to let him know that I had consulted a lawyer.  This was only after he stopped responding to me altogether.  We fully resolved our situation on Oct 21. Of course, this wasn’t before he accused me of sending him checks that could retroactively take money out of his accounts if he deposited it, which was even preceded by him telling me comments such as he would bet his life on it that the billpay checks I sent him would not even reach him in the first place. Once he finally convinced himself that the checks were real, he stopped responding.  I texted him just twice between Oct 21 till yesterday asking him if we had complete resolution, because Keith had told me that he would “take care of all the complaints” that he had made about me once he had received his refund. Furthermore, I told him yesterday that we can just squash everything but all that I ask is for him “to do the right thing.” Once again, no response and then I read his rebuttal.

I apologize about the long-winded nature of this response, but this all needed to be said after reading Keith’s most recent rebuttal.  

This man did contact me after he stole $100 from me for tutoring services he never gave me. He must've realized just how powerful the internet(specifically Ripoff Report.com) is and how a reputation of a Medical Doctor and an internet Science Tutor that steals money from college students would be depremental to any future endevours he would try to accomplish. He did offer to resolve the issue and did in fact return the money he stole from me 2 months after the incident. He also told me he is experiencing several mental health problems including depression, sucide, and has admitted to ingesting very large amounts of alcohol to cope with it.

He also informed me he had been fired twice from his residency program in NY because of emotional problems and the suspicion of his alcohol abuse. His mannerism seems to me that he is suffering from serious mental health complications. He told me he was quitting medicine and tutoring and will be going back to law school and will never teach again. When he returned the money to me he told me that the issue we had is over and our dealings would end.  He has recently contacted me again(today: 11/9/2020) to threaten me with a lawsuit against me becuase of defamation based on the report I filed with this website(which described the original incident of fraud).

Since you can not erase the past when you do bad things to people, this is the case for this sitaution. Instead of learning from his mistakes and leaving me alone, he is continuing to use scare tactics such as threatening me via text messages. Unfortuantaly it is clear that this individual is suffering from mental disease and simply wont leave me alone as he continues writing large paragraph text messages of all the things he is going to do to me(sue me, etc...) because of the Ripoff Report I orginally filed against him when he originally stole my money from me. If anyone ever comes across this guy for any tutoring I would advise you not to get involved with him for any reason, and not give him your personal cell phone number as he is using mine to harass me continously.  

Shortly after filing this claim, Dr. Ha admitted that he failed to communicate with me during his time of need. He offered to complete the contract or refund my money in full. I chose to be repaid as the tutoring was no longer necessary at that point. I accepted payments and was paid off fully in a very short amount of time. Dr. Ha was humble, took full responsibility for his actions, has apologized profusely, was gracious and polite to me during our conversations to resolve the issue. My daughter loved him as a tutor and the tutoring that he did provide helped her tremendously at the time. I would hope that Ripoff would consider this and remove this complaint from my account. 

 There has been a huge misunderstanding, but Kim is absolutely correct in needing a refund. I was unable to hold up my end of our agreement due to multiple health concerns. I sincerely apologize, and we are in the process of getting that refund back to her. Kim will provide an update once completed. Thank you for your time and patience.