Let's Japan.org Debunking Eikaiwa and Ramblings in Japan

Debito has it:

With the absolutely regrettable news of the bankruptcy of Geos Corp, I must tell you that your salaries for the time period between 2010, March 16th to 2010. April 21st Will NOT be paid to you. There isn’t any cash left. We will work on a way for you all to collect some of your money back through the government. We are still unsure of the procedures to do this.

In response to its customers not getting enough information about their lessons in the aftermath of GEOS' bankruptcy, GEOS has posted a brief FAQ [PDF] dated April 24 in an attempt to explain things. Here's a quick summary.

For a company that sells English lessons under the pretense that it will allow you to communicate with the world, G.communication has been very poor at communicating with its staff and customers. The Asahi shimbun reported yesterday that although g.communications set up a toll-free number for students to call, people are finding that it's almost impossible to get through.

As I wrote previously, Oh to have been a fly on the wall at GEOS. You already know the obituary:

The failure of major language-school operator Geos Corp. occurred because the company didn't trim unprofitable branches fast enough at a time when the industry was facing a drastic drop in students, people in the industry said.

Adamu at MutantFrog has taken the time to graph the numbers for the foreigner language market in Japan. If you've been following developments, you know that the numbers are bad. That said, he has an optimistic take on what's in store in for eikaiwa.

When Nova went bankrupt in 2007, two central themes of the collapse were the large pre-payment of lesson fees and the inability of Nova to provide refunds. The fallout was so large, the media dubbed Nova's collapse as the largest consumer wipe-out since the end of the Pacific War.

If you saw the GEOS press conference on TV this evening, one thing was very conspicuous by its absence: Kusunoki wasn't there. In his place was Kazumi Suhara giving the bad news.

According to the Jiji Press, Kusunoki didn't attend because he wasn't prepared to file for bankruptcy while some of his executives were. A GEOS lawyer at the press conference said that due to divisions within the company, bankruptcy proceedings went ahead without the consensus of the board.

Add GEOS to the list of eikaiwas that have gone bankrupt. GEOS filed for bankruptcy today, temporarily closing its schools until the 23rd when G.communication, the company that picked up the scraps when NOVA went bankrupt in 2007, will take over part of GEOS's business.

GEOS will close 99 schools (PDF), while keeping 170 schools and 66 GEOS kids (PDF) schools in operation.

Whoever wrote The ALT Scam on the Fukuoka General Union blog is probably feeling vindicated right now. The Mainichi Daily News reports:

Public schools here [Kashiwa, Chiba] have been unable to start their native speaker-taught English classes this school year after the city's board of education was accused of violating labor laws with foreign language teachers.

Discussion about GEOS continues here. Two recent developments within GEOS appear to be the sale of three schools in the UK and the planned closure of 84 schools in Japan between May and November.

News of the sale of the UK schools is here: