WALL Street English (WSE) Guangdong branch recently responded to a complaint from a student in Shenzhen who claimed that all face-to-face lessons were modified into online lessons and created a bad learning experience, Shenzhen Economic Daily reported. WSE Guangdong suggested that the learning package bought by the student includes both online and face-to-face lessons. The student surnamed Xiong, an entrepreneur in Shenzhen who wants to improve his English, has spent more than 100,000 yuan (US$15,190) on lesson packages from WSE since 2017, based on the report. “They said it would be face-to-face lessons on a one-to-one basis. After I paid the tuition, it turned out to be online lessons. I am extremely unsatisfied. I feel I did not learn much from it,” said Xiong. Xiong also said that he was persuaded to pay more money to be a VIP student. Sometimes, lessons were canceled when teachers suddenly said that they were not available. Sometimes, teachers did their own things during lessons, according to Xiong. A staff member with WSE said that they signed a total of three contracts with Xiong, and two had concluded. The staffer suggested that Xiong was aware of the fact that the category of the lessons included both face-to-face and online ones. The company also said that they didn’t receive any complaints from Xiong and is willing to address Xiong’s issue. Xiong also observed that teachers from WSE encouraged him to recommend people to buy lessons. “As a reward, they will provide 20 percent commission,” said Xiong. Concerning this, WSE said that this is a new program rolled out after the COVID-19 pandemic under which students who trust their brand have a chance to become their partners and independent operators to earn some economic gains by recommending lessons to friends. Founded in Italy in 1972, WSE has set up 39 learning centers in 11 cities in China including Shenzhen, Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou starting this year, based on public source information. (Wang Jingli) |