1) you posted your response a month later and they are probably not glued to the blog – no surprise there

2)That would be because they are SMART! As soon as they put their real name up I believe that you and your legal team would try to pounce on them like a 500 pound tiger on a bag of catnip! Just like you tried to bully Alex. Not to mention that they need a recommendation from your company because they took your course…Duh!

I publicly admitted there were problems with a course and suggested that the complainers contact me for possible compensation. Its happened before–a trainer screws up, so we have given discounts and/or additional free courses. People have gladly taken us up on the offers. But in this case… silence.

I would love to hear any viable explanation other than calling me names. LOL

I also believe that the only reason you are back on Alex’s blog again is because your sales are down. Why else would you run an ‘October Special’ on Dave’s ESL giving away free Mandarin classes for your courses in China (something that is dirt cheap there, anyway)? As usual, I believe that TI would rather result to cheap advertising gimmicks rather than address any serious issues of quality. Please do us all a favor, Bruce, and spend more time improving your courses. Trawling and posting on every blog in the galaxy is something that real CEOs simply don’t do.

Like we should believe you because you said it, right!

We are all trolls unless we speak good about you!

it leads me to believe that these posters are nothing more than trolls. In other words, more of the same.

http://china.eslteachercafe.com/topic476-tefl-international-103-day-stay-in-china.aspx

http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic28935.html

We have a few crazed (jealous? sad? pathetic?) stalkers that enjoy simply making up crap about us.

We have a few CELTA zombies who like to criticize us because we are… not CELTA.

The two groups above who criticize us are almost NEVER our actual graduates or actually have anything to do with us. That is indeed alarming and disturbing.

We have much easier admissions procedures than CELTA courses because I believe CELTA scares away many potentially good teaches with its Draconian interview process. In my opinion, people are smart enough to know if they want to take the course and we are smart enough to know if they pass. Its a crazy concept, I know.

We have people who have taken our course and sometimes know me personally that actually enjoy the course a great deal.

Fair summary?

http://www.eltworld.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=17228&sid=bc089867765c1525f9a4115e6d4dfe96

[EDITED- You can read it all there, so don't see any need to repeat it here]

So if they’re already employed in public schools, how could a free conference make Bruce enough money to fill a stadium?

Good analogy…driving and drivers permits. I got out on the street legally with a learners permit. Wasn’t until I got that permit that I could. Guess thats what Bruce does…provide learners permits. Doubt anyone would let someone let a person with just a learners permit drive a race car, but they might let them start off driving an old VW Beetle.

Maybe I misunderstood something, but if the people are teachers, then presumably they’ve completed Bruce’s course, so how do these teachers continue to make money for Bruce unless they are happy with the course and spread the word to non-teachers?

I’m confused, can you explain it to me please?

It’s very easy to be on solid legal footing with this. Simply change to:

“I believe that TI seems to view teachers as potential money making customers more than anything else.”

“then I believe that TI stood to gain enough money to fill a football stadium.”

IMO, “I felt that the whole thing …

Bruce: I have never called your conference a scam. Those are YOUR words and you are reading more into that part of the post than what is actually there — perhaps a Freudian slip on your behalf? I do believe that it is largely tied the potential money generating opportunity there and that you are not just the simple do-gooder that you were making yourself out to be in your previous post on the topic.

People who have taken our course rarely are here complaining. Now if our course were so bad, wouldn’t these boards be filed with actual complaints!

Permit me a little amateur psychotherapy. You seem to be starting with the assumption (conscious or not) that there is something you can do to make all the criticism stop. That is not going to happen, not even if you narrow that down to fair criticism. That is life, and even more so since the internet came into it. Not accepting that one of the responses to criticism is just to let it be leads to the kind of anger that you are showing, and can lead further to nervous breakdowns and/ doing things that are underhand or you later regret in order to make the criticism stop.

If you believe the comments are libellous, please ask a lawyer to look at them and tell me which parts are libellous under which law (any country’s law is okay) and I will edit or remove just those comments. I don’t see how something as subjective as “creepy vibe” can be libel, but then I know very little about the law.

Again, I also believe that accusing someone of giving free conferences entirely (rather than partly) as a money making scheme doesn’t make much sense, but it is precisely because that is obvious even to me who has never been to one of them that I don’t see the need to actually delete that comment.

“TI stood to gain enough money to fill a football stadium.”

“I felt that the whole thing had a somewhat creepy vibe about it, too – like Microsoft pushing Windows and Office discs in the name of saving developing countries.”

These comments are so over the top and unfair that, yes, I really do believe you are failing in your job as the owner of this site. These comments probably are libelous. They certainly are bull$#!*.

HOW UTTERLY STUPID IS THAT?

Last time I checked, every conference I go to not only charges me tons of money but also loads me up on promotional materials.

Any accusations that our free conferences are money makers are absolutely LUDICROUS.

If you don’t want to answer the question from Teflista, don’t.