Veteran TEFL teachers all know the name of I-To-I.com from way back in 2007 when this British company was getting the most posts on the first TEFL blacklist (see below link) and after two years of continuous complaints that tainted their reputation so much that nobody would even accept their sales calls, they started up a new company called OnlineTEFL.com and stopped advertising under the I-to-I name for 2 years, and learning from their past mistakes they got fewer complaints until around 2012 when they launched a really sneaky and unethical "TEFL Internship" program that basically robbed 50% of teacher's salaries. By 2015 they were filling up the TEFL forums with complaints again. This below was taken from a reddit review site that explains their deceptive but brilliant fraud...
"These people are the pond scum of the TEFL industry with one of the loooooooooongest histories of cheating newbie teachers. They became famous when they were exposed in 2015 for their "Teacher Intern Program". This was a devious scam where they put teachers into real jobs but told them they were going to be interns for 90 to 180 days at "reduced salary". So if a teacher had gone direct to the employer they would have gotten a $3,000 monthly salary, but because OnlineTEFL or I-To-I placed them as a "TEFL Intern" their salary was only $1,500 and OnlineTefl.com would pocket the other $1,500!"
So Rex the owner, a clever Brit dusted off the I-To-I brand after having a hacker delete, corrupt, or "redirect" all the old scam links and went back to advertising as I-to-I again with a brand new snazzy website that fooled all the newbies and business picked up again. But the old veterans were not fooled and avoided them like the plague. The VP of Sales was a friendly but frazzled woman named Margaret or Marjorie (I cannot recall at this moment) and she actually broke down and admitted to my colleague who went to her office and demanded a refund for a really horrible TEFL course they falsely claimed was endorsed and used at Oxford University, that she was paid a very low salary but a high commission and had a growing family to support. She was so compelling that my colleague felt sorry for her and when the owner gave him a refund to end the scene he was making at the U.K. office, he gave her half the money and told her to buy new shoes for her three kids.
But the deceptive sales not only continued but spread int other equally dubious programs like guaranteed job placements for anyone who bought their expensive TEFL course. If the graduate of their course did not get a job offer within 30 days of graduation they were promised a refund That gimmick worked great for the first few months. The problem was that graduates would get mystery calls from "private numbers" or equally mysterious emails offering them really low-payiing jobs in horrible places like Mongolia, Morocco, Haiti, Bolivia, etc. But since the "job offers" were made within the 30 days, nobody was entitled to a refund. And when the next job offer arrived for China, Korea, or Poland the newbies would jump on it not realizing the Brits would be slicing off 25% of their monthly salaries for themselves. Btw... here is a piece of old TEFL history https://internationalteflreviews.wordpress.com/ and this one goes all the way back to 2007: https://teflblacklist.blogspot.com/2007 ... -tefl.html
By 2016-2017 all these deceptions were starting to be exposed with the veteran TEFL teachers in Asia and complaints were being posted faster than Rex could have his hacker delete them. The China Scam Patrol, China Scam Busters, China Foreign Teachers Union, and China Teachers Alliance all blacklisted the two entities TEFLOnline and I-To-I. And that is why today they advertise as LoveTEFL.com to escape the shadows of their shameful reputation. And thus, the cat and mouse game continues. https://www.reddit.com/r/TeflReviews/co ... d_warning/
Rex did not invent the TEFL name game. That honor goes to a Chinese woman who only uses fake Chinglish names Rebecca Tang, Rosie Tang, Rose Tang, Roseanne Tang, and Rachel Tang who as you read these very words advertises under 15 different alias names, despite being arrested for fraud 3 times in the last 10 years. If you are interested in keeping up with the TEFL name game scammers i suggest you keep these below links handy and check them about every 45 days. Fortunately TEFL.net is run by an honorable guy who seems to be doing a good job of protecting users on this forum with a long thread warning everyone of the scammers as they are exposed. Add Joe's list to these here;
https://reddit.com/r/TEFLscams
https://ruqqus.com/+TEFLBlacklist
https://reddit.com/r/tefl_tips_traps_scams
https://www.docdroid.net/ZU9pFSI/cftu2020blacklist-pdf
https://reddit.com/r/ChinaScamCentral
https://www.docdroid.net/kRwv0oN/ctablacklist2020-pdf
