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Sunday 21 April 2013

China’s Commercial Parasites Like OnlineTEFL.com Resort To Shameful Censorship To Hide Truth From Foreign Teachers

What you don't know CAN hurt you!

There are over 50 ESL and TEFL Forums and Message Boards on-line and 39 of them have been identified as commercial front operations to collect contact information of foreign teachers looking to work abroad.  Those that operate the forums care little about the welfare of the teachers but care a lot about what they can sell to them.  The products and services they peddle behind their “We want to help you” facade include TEFL courses, visa services, job placements, travel packages, housing accommodations,  books, tapes, and even Christianity!  The fact is not one of these forums are honest enough to just say “Hey guys we sell ______________ if you need it!”
 
But one such forum has recently decided to start hiding, deleting, and censoring anyone who posts truthful and factual information about the dangers and actual earning potentials of the hottest teaching market today – China.  We are talking about OnlineTEFL.com which recently deleted eleven articles that directly warned teachers about…

China’s Toxic Air Pollution In Winter Months

China's Hidden Hepatitis Epidemic (At least 12% of population is infected) http://www.tefl.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=5835 and http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article and http://www.echinacities.com/news/Yoshinoya-Caught-Re-Using-Rice-Not-Disinfecting-Dinnerware and  http://www.ivillage.com/hepatitis-hidden-hazard/4-a-510488 

The New Strain of Bird Flu  Embassy Communication To U.S. Citizens 

The Story of An Australian teacher arrested in China for defending his home from intruders http://www.echinacities.com/news/Australian-Foreigner-Locked-Up-For-a-Year- After-Fending-Off-Intruders? 

Beijing Tap Water Not Safe



Where to Find Blacklists and Whitelists of China School and Agents and Get Free Copies of China's Labor Laws In English CFTU Free Info For Expat Teachers 



All of the above stories were well documented with many links including those listed above.  Nobody contested or even challenged the validity of the information posted.  The truth was ugly and made selling China to teachers ugly – so it was just deleted.  The CFTU protested and was ignored, and the posters who put up the original articles were banned without any explanation.  Here is just one of the many links that disappeared one fine day: http://www.onlinetefl.com/tefl-chalkboard/observant/posts/12089-15-tips-for-foreign-teachers-bound-for-china-about-jobs-contracts-risks-pay-amp-fun which was posted by user “Observant” a 7 year ESL veteran Teacher in Asia.

Long story short, they only want people (aka sales prospects) to hear that China is a safe and great place for teachers to work, when in fact 79% of expat foreign teachers working in China said they would never do it again now that they have worked in China for at least a year (excerpt from 2012 CFTU annual report).  Simply put, health and fraud alerts are bad for business – their business.   They further try to convince teachers abroad that if they want to work in China, they simply MUST have a TEFL certificate (preferably theirs) when in fact, that is just a blatant lie.  Less than 10% of expat foreign teachers working in China today have a TEFL certificate and it is NOT required and seldom even asked for.  Again, the truth is just not convenient for sales.

 

Here’s the kicker... their website offers “paid internships” in China when in fact these are really salaried positions available which they decide to call an “internship” so they can pocket  50% of the total wage as a commission.  Quite clever indeed.

But having to resort  censorship and deletions on their own forums when someone posts a simple fact like “Foreign teachers are the lowest paid foreigners in China and if you have a student loan to repay, you can earn three times more money in Japan or Korea with far less scams to worry about.”  Instead of doing the honorable thing and posting a rebuttal, they simply delete the entire post!  Keep in mind this OnlineTEFL.com is not from North Korea nor China but rather from the U.K.!

Those who want copies of the articles that were censored can send us an email at ChinaFraudPatrol[at]Gmail.com since we saved copies of them from cache before they were zapped.  OnlineTEFL.com should be ashamed of their Nazi tactics as they are deliberately hiding real dangers from their own clients and others future victims.  

One last thing... Please beware of "TEFL REVIEW" web sites since online.tefl.com owns three such sites of their own and when you see them you will realize right away they are shill sites that blow their own horns and make every competitor look like amateurs or shysters.


8 comments:

  1. After reading this blog I will boycott anything and everything that OnlineTEFL.com sells. How dare they decide what I should and should not know about China! Anyone who is thinking of working in China should be told everything - the good, the bad, and the ugly. Thanks for exposing these creeps.

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  2. Amazing what a little blog can do! After I read the OP three days ago I visited the OnlineTEFL.com site and could not find the links that were deleted as claimed by the OP. But today, I visited the site and I see that the links were restored! I wonder if they also unbanned the writers of those posts as well?


    At least someone at onlinetefl.com still has some integrity. Perhaps only one unethical website administrator should be blamed instead of the whole company.

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  3. Well now... I think where there is smoke you will probably find fire and I goud it at Dave's place (see below which I cut and paste here to share)

    I just want to make sure teachers - both current and prospective know the truth about TEFL Certificates in China (and most everywhere else too!). Contrary to their slick and sly sales pitch, YOU DO NOT NEED A TEFL CERTIFICATE TO TEACH IN CHINA! There are over 19,000 schools operating in China and almost 15,000 employ one or more foreign teachers. Less than a dozen of them (mostly private international schools in Beijing & Shanghai) actually even ask about TEFL training. TEFL Certificates are NOT mandatory. Anyone who has ever taught in China knows this. But maybe if they told the truth they would sell less TEFL Training courses eh? See this link:

    http://internationalteflreviews.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/beware-onlinetefl-com-is-a-sophisticated-scam-in-progress-targeting-work-abroad-teachers/

    Further, even if China did require a TEFL certificate (playing devil's advocate here) the onlinetefl.com certificate would be as useful and valuable as toilet paper since it is not internationally accepted nor recognized - even in China! So unless you have money to burn, don't waste it on a company that relies on lies, a flashy web site, and self-created "review" sites to peddle a piece of paper and a "course" that relies on automated software that you use online. The below excerpt is from a 2010 article found at the below link that talks about TEFL training "accreditation". Anyone lured by the lies of onlinetefl.com, should read the entire article...

    6. Accreditation
    It is difficult for anyone to understand the confusion that is TEFL accreditation, especially when the main guarantees of quality of the Cambridge CELTA and Trinity CertTESOL are their own names. This means that it is very difficult to be able to work out which other courses are of a similar standard. It is, however, possible to spot the dodgy courses by what they say about accreditation. Some courses don’t mention it at all, which is never a good sign. Others claim to be accredited by organisations that do not ever accredit TEFL courses, e.g. IATEFL and TESOL. In fact, any mention of organisations like these is just smoke and mirrors to convince you of quality which doesn’t exist. Other tricks include claiming to be accredited by an organisation that doesn’t list that school on its website, setting up their own accreditation organisation that only or mainly accredits themselves (look for how many schools the accreditation organisation website lists), using organisations that will say that they accredit anyone for a fee (look for lots of unconnected qualifications or qualifications like online degrees on the accrediting organisation’s website), and even listing accreditation organisations that don’t seem to exist at all! Any links to online universities or those apparently based in obscure island nations should also of course be avoided.

    http://edition.tefl.net/articles/training-articles/avoid-tefl-course/

    I am going to guess that onlinetefl.com is not the only scam using this "Mandatory" bullshit to sell their online course, but it is the only one that I spent time with on the phone. Yesterday, I got an email from one of their former employees "suggesting" that I do my own "investigation on line" and I did. What makes these people most hideous is that their telemarketers are targeting unemployed people who are desperate for work with even more horseshit - "If you can speak English you can teach English". Anyway just wanted to clear the air as these clever cons wasted about 4 hours of my time on the phone.

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  4. These assholes are also scamming people under the name of i-to-i as well. I suppose that now that they have been outed, they will start using a new identity soon. People should avoid on-line training completely - just to be safe.

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  5. What a great scam they have going here. I visited their web site and I must say, I would not have suspected anything foul. I can understand why they deleted all those negative articles and links. I guess more than governments censor!

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  6. Be sure you know about their internship scams as well. These are very diversified fraudsters with a woman name Helen Hargreaves running the show in London.

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  7. UPDATE: These folks have apparently hired a hacker to remove all the negative posts about them on line. Three months ago there were 53 links to complaints and now we can only find a dozen. It appears that these are very bold, devious, and resourceful con artists.

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  8. China is notorious for thieves! Every job I had offered were from someone on your list. Ivy Wan, especially selling Shanghai University jobs with high pay. I emailed her back after reading your post, and mentioned that "Black List" is next to her role as a recruiter. Have not heard back from her. My advice to anyone seeking work in China. Check out the schools first, they should be aware of their new openings.

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