https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/DWX0XEmKQIT9PumEPKn8cA
Source: JobTube, Arianna J., Freya W., Josh B.,
Here was the announcement, of which the main idea was:
'All six campuses in WEBi English Beijing have stopped operating due to renovation or system upgrade. There is no way to recover student membership fees or employee salaries. On September 25th, Gao Sihai, Vice President of WEBi English, made it clear that even if people go to court, they will not be getting money back.'
Employee Wages and Student Refunds
In the news, a student who spent 348,000 Yuan to purchase WEBi 's two-year English course said that he went to the school on September 28th to request a refund but was rejected by staff, for not having a financial and official seal. They requested him to return on the 8th of October.
Subsequently, the news staff interviewed Li, a Beijing employee of WEBi English, and learned that all employees in Beijing were not paid a full salary for one to three months. Li said she received only 2,000 Yuan in July, and was never paid again until October, when she received 2,200 Yuan. When speaking about tuition fees, Li said WEBi probably had no money to refund 3,000 students, as it would total 30 million Yuan.
Response from Online Customer Service
On the evening of Oct. 7th, the news staff consulted the online customer service of the official website, but received no response about the curriculum and time arrangement in Beijing. The news staff also browsed the TMALL Shop of WEBi and found out there were still a lot of offline experience classes on sale. And then, the customer service said that due to the company's development plan, Beijing would only do online courses, but Guangzhou Campus would still be operating normally.
As of now, WEBi officials have not given any formal explanation.
评论：
49
Darryl
Wait a second... 348,000 Yuan for a two-year English course?
33
Lance 🇺🇸🇨🇳
348,000 for 2 years? How can they charge that much? And who is stupid enough to pay it!
22
Luke
Business as usual, on both ends. Naive customers, snaky businessmen.
16
Inna
its too much for 2 years! Instead of spending that money in china, with that money you can learn English in another English speaking country, much better. Woow too expensive
16
Mike (MK)
This is not an English school, it’s an English training center for adult learners.
11
周良心 ZHOU LiangXin
Actually, it is 30,000¥ for two years. I was a teacher at Webi for almost 2 years. No one paid so much. Only if EVERY class was VIP... private class.
10
💗G·Lynn💗
We don't have a lot of way to learn English. If you go to the bar,they have a lot of foreigners definitely ,but they just want they want,another way is to go aboard,we need to pay more than 250000rmb a year, it's too much ! So going to English center is the best way to learn English.
7
Rick
In addition to Beijing, yesterday staff in Tianjin were told they are also closed.
5
Bush 布什👾
My wife previously signed up at a web school in Suzhou, her teacher could barely speak English and the revision homework was usually always grammatically incorrect. Before we got married she had to meet with my parents so it was important she could speak a little English. We paid 50,000 for one year after a month we asked for a refund and we explained why and showed them that the English they were teaching was wrong. They refused a refund... We lost our money...
4
robJ
Will other schools of this type follow?
What do you think?
3
Shaun
As a foreigner with an Asian heritage it is unsurprising that this happens as training centers sometimes need to hire foreign faces because Chinese students think a foreign face means their English is superior to someone who looks Chinese. Most of the foreigners hired are either second language English speakers or just foreigners who don't have the correct education or qualifications to teach English.
3
Mike (MK)
Training centers are designed to make money, not provide a quality education. The standard of Chinese tutors is way below the standard of a Chinese elementary school teacher which isn’t very high. The difficulty in recruiting legal foreign teachers when training centers are now under close scrutiny means centers struggle to provide a basic service. Chinese citizens are becoming more aware of the training center issues and are demanding refunds if they do not have native speaking foreign teachers.
2
Joe Thige🌸
What happened in Beijing if verified to be true is sad. That said, training centres by virtue of their organisational management are expensive to run. Having worked for WEBI for close to 3 years, I would say the model was excellent though high turnover of both local and international staff create fear in the learners and thus the downward spiral to bankruptcy. That said, franchising education without proper oversight can lead to abuse and compromise especially in the modern for profit hit and run investment management model.
Regards
1
Mark d
Web English ahs closed many training centres in Hangzhou. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/NEnWRr_vuXGe6Cz2xqw_xQ
Mike (MK)
Tuition centers sign up students for as long as they can, for as much money as they can get, all the payments are front ended, which means the centers need to continually recruit new students or retain existing students to maintain cash flow. As companies open new centers, the existing successful centers are put under pressure to support them until they break even, this puts further strain on a business with many weak links.
Mike (MK)
Companies like VIPKids who provide on-line tuition are also under scrutiny for native speaking foreign teachers, because on-line tuition can be provided anyone in the world. They make the ridiculous claim to work with 70,000 tutors, maybe they are counting all the teachers who have left the company.
Yuri🇿🇦
They moving away from adults to kids, but it’s a little too late as the kids market is saturated with long established centres. Bad planning And no real business plan on their part.
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