A NOTICE released by a staffer from an English-language education company, Web International (Webi) English, which said that the company’s Beijing branch would soon announce bankruptcy due to its financial predicament, went viral recently on Chinese social media.

Webi English Shenzhen has eight training centers. At present, six of them are still arranging classes for students but will not allow course selection, while the other two, the Haiya center in Nanshan and the Longhua center, have temporarily suspended business, the southcn.com reported.

A staffer from the center in Meilin, Futian, told the reporter with the website that they were not closing the store yet and were negotiating with teachers to give lessons.

Another staffer in Shenzhen surnamed Chen said that the company was seeking financial help. “They have not paid us our salaries for nearly one month. We might leave after finishing the work on hand unless they successfully secure funding,” said Chen.

It has been said that course fees, normally around 30,000 to 40,000 yuan (US$4,233-5,644), are paid in advance by students. Some have even paid tens of thousands of yuan. After the message was delivered online, a group of students applied for a refund. However, most of them have failed to get any money.

What concerned most of the students was that they made the advanced payment with credit cards, meaning that even if the company were eventually closed they would still have to pay off the tuition.

Several financial institutions that had been in cooperation with the company, including Mucfc.com, China Guangfa Bank and Du Xiaoman Financial, have all urged Webi to address the issue appropriately to protect the students’ legitimate rights.

However, customers were advised to continue to pay their loans given the negative consequences of failing to pay off loans on time.

At present, Webi English Shenzhen has released a notice offering three solutions to students, namely resuming classes by offering online lessons, signing agreements to drop out of the courses and seeking other institutions to cover the lessons.

However, they did not give a specific time period for these solutions.

On Saturday, Gao Weiyu, founder and CEO of Webi English, published a letter to its staff responding to the case and claiming it was due to capital chain rupture.

Webi English, founded in 1998, has 154 training centers in 62 cities under three education brands.   (Wang Jingli)