Experience with online coaching

Where I live, I can't find a chess coach for lessons in person so I'm considering lessons over the Internet.

If you have had lessons over the Internet/Skype, can you share your experiences with me? Good/Bad/Meh

Worked with two over ICC and the phone for lengthy (1-2 years each) durations of time. Really good experiences, both.  Stopped lessons for financial + motivation reasons but would have stayed on with either of them even though I'd never meet them face-to-face.

Both of these instructors were very good "socratic method" teachers who wanted you to come to your own conclusions while they nudged you when you went wrong and forced you out of your comfort zone. Both of them used lessons to go about fixing my often-made-errors as well as "unclogging" the gunk in my "thought process" plumbing INSTEAD of just broadcasting loads of information and expecting me to absorb it like a sponge.

So I was probably quite lucky.  From what I've heard, a majority of players who claim to be able to teach online often are just strong players who either can't teach/ don't put enough of their heart into it.  I once got a free "trial" lesson from a NM coach on  a new "rival to chess.com" site and he just played two blitz games with me and asked what openings I played ... and then told me to play something else ==> a terrible fit given what I wanted + liked in a coach. Not to mention he answered a phonecall in between and I could hear him messaging other people online while talking to me. So ... yeah. :)

So bottom line, shop around and if you are willing to pay, do not skimp as the good ones charge just as well :)

Thanks Shivsky. You hit on my main corncern .. how much attention you actually get on the phone/Skype as compared to in-person lessons. Along the lines of "solve this problem while I check email, text, play minecraft".

If I could ask you one more question, what type of assignments were you given by the two coaches?

That concern of dealing with a "distracted coach" is ZERO if you did your homework ( asked around, read testimonials or talked to former students) before approaching one for a lesson.  Chess coaching is surely a "luxury expense" so the rotten apples really don't survive for too long in this free market. (though I've known atrocious scholastic "live" coaches in my city who literally prey on clueless parents who just didn't know that their kids were settling for sub-par instruction because they didn't bother to ask around!!!)

So shop around .. ASK for a free trial lesson (like I did) and you'll be able to see how well the two of you work together. 

To your question:

Both of my "good" coaches treated me like an adult (as opposed to creating homework-ish items for me) in that they asked that I work on my chess "actively" and "deliberately" and always bring to the lessons the following:

- questions and concerns about games I recently played ( I had to make sure I was really playing each week inspite of work and other responsibilities as I had to show them something! :) Plus both of them were on ICC and would often monitor in-progress games I played ... one would very quickly give me hell when I managed my time poorly as they could see my move timestamps! :) )
- positions I read + ended up playing that I just could not understand ... either I was too stupid to understand the author or the author was one of those "strong player but writing not friendly to sub-2000 club players" types :)

- recommendations for books to look up

- or in the rare instance : some tweaking to my existing opening repertoire so that I could have more fun and play positions I felt more comfortable playing.