The Truth behind China’s TEFL Scam Sites

Discussion about jobs in Asia inc. Middle East

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John V55
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The Truth behind China’s TEFL Scam Sites

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Imagine my surprise when I lazily googled, "Who is China Foreign Teachers Union scam site affiliated with" and found myself at the top of Google’s page 1 with a short off the cuff post I’d written nearly three and a half years ago over a cup of coffee.

viewtopic.php?t=7875
Maybe Google likes me, or is it something I said?

There is no doubt Asia and specifically China is awash with scammers. Should that come as a surprise? There is a reason that scammers still send out emails telling the stupid that they’re willing to share $1m with them if they’ll pay them $100 to set up a bank account. :lol: Why do they do it? Because there are no end of stupid that believe them.

Although it stopped years ago, my favourite was the Middle East oil magnate who assured me he’d pay £8,000 ($11,000) pm for me to come back from Asia to London and teach his son English. Well you never know, perhaps he couldn’t find any English speakers in England? :roll:

If companies can convince the greedy that they can earn big money in developing countries, it follows that many will take advantage. Do you want to earn £1000 ($1300) a week with a 150 hour TEFL certificate in a developing country? Or are you still stuck at the sun, sea and excitement stage of TEFL? There’s a scam for everyone and gullibility coupled with greed is what the scammers rely on.

Oh the hypocrisy, as based on western servers scam pages on Reddit, opnlttr, wordpress and ruqqus lash out at scam recruiters. Are you worth a minimum of ¥25000 (£2,800, $3,800) pm in a developing country whose cost of living is a half or third of that in the west? The fantasies often rise to ¥40,000+! What are you, a professionally qualified headmaster looking for a TEFL job? The lure of these spam pages is that they do expose scam recruiters and warn of dangers, yet they’re not spending the amount of time and effort linking into each other and doing that for altruistic reasons.

Personally, I find it amusing that those greedy TEFL teachers are also those who get scammed by equally greedy recruiters. Yet maybe some are just gullible and believe that a 150 hour TEFL certificate attendance course can earn them in a developing country what a professional school headmaster would earn in the west? Later in the deportation centres is where gullibility meets greed and both realize what stupidity is.

From the China Foreign Teachers Union newsletter page, December 2019: "After 10 years of battling with hackers on a weekly basis, corrupting links, we decided to give up our website and set-up a new online platform on ruqqus.com or reddit.com after the new year." No CFTU, your site is so spam ridden that Google has given it an authority of 0.2, which means it barely exists anymore for SEO purposes and the same goes for the majority of your affiliated spam link farms.

Here are my tips for prospective teachers in China.

1) Do your homework and find out the legal requirements for teaching in China. In a surveillance society, if you can’t meet those requirements don’t chance it.

2) The majority of scams occur at the bottom end of TEFL in the private sector. Try to avoid them and stick to government schools.

3) Browse websites such as ‘seriousTeachers.com’ and the ‘Tefl.net jobs’ page and find out the going pay rate in the area you want for the sector you’re interested in. Give or take a little, that’s the going rate, not what you’d want it to be.

4) Recruiters (agencies) are not social workers, they’re profit making businesses. Never mind what everyone else is getting as long as you’re happy with what you get.

5) Stay away from TEFL spam pages promising help. The majority of individuals promoting them have already been scammed and greed is why they got scammed in the first place.

6) Nobody gets rich out of teaching. If an offer sounds too good to be true it probably is so give it a miss.
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