Open Thread: GEOS Scuttlebutt

I feel sad for the person who claims to be working in Japan and "so much better than everyone", but rants and raves like a postal worker. If you have it so great, why are so bitter? That is an honest question.

The only people we need to badmouth are Special K and his troop of dirty managers. Not the average teacher or ex-teacher. Seriously, GEOS has screwed a lot of people, gai jin and nihon jin alike. While I did not teach in Japan, I have worked with people in NA that have and at GEOS schools. I have heard just about everything. Most importantly, though, is the ship is sinking and fast. Time to get out.

And everyone PLEASE tell your students, warn them. Do not listen to the GEOS crap warning about hiding closure news from them. Protect your students...You are teachers and the first line. They will hold it against you when Special K pulls the rug from under their feet...He will just hide in a hole somewhere, like Saddam Hussein did one day after his people died for him. And we all know what became of him...

like Saddam Hussein did one day after his people died for him. And we all know what became of him...

he was photographed in his underwear?

First GEOS falls apart, then the poor old LJ forum falls apart, grrrrrrrrrrr!

Look a couple of decades ago there were lots of highly viable record shops all over the world. Now most of them have closed. That is economic reality. People don't want the product in that pattern any more, so the traditional record shop dies. Sad thing, but there you go.

Are we supposed to feel more sorry for company's like Geos and their employees (NA and Japan) than we do for traditional record shops and theirs? Can't do that, I'm afraid. I feel less sorry for them and more sorry for the customer who doesn't wake up in time to save their money. Why? Because the product has always been crap, that's why. You can spin it this way and that way, but that's the bottom line. Why feel sorry for the demise of a business and the employees of a business that deliberately turns out second rate product?

Wasn't saying that exactly. Actually, I think that new hires deserve some sympathy, people who thought mistakenly that they could change things deserve some sympathy but that apart from that most are complicit to some degree in the marketing of second rate merchandise. I have some admiration for those that stick around longer than is in their own interests for the sake of existing students. However, what about the ones who are just signing on now? How do you feel about them?

Fair Warning To Recent Graduates

First of all, congratulations. If you are here seeking information about the ESL/EFL marketplace in Japan, this is fair warning. It is imploding. Gone are the days that anyone who could speak English, never mind that they possessed no background in TESL or teaching, could get a job in an "Eikaiwa" school. If you have just graduated with a liberal arts degree, for example, from College of the Grand Canyon, do yourself a favor and seek employment elsewhere.

But it's 4:45 AM in Japan now. Shawn, I would think, is fast asleep now.

I think the last poster meant to write "...might not fail overnight..."

Please keep posting what you know, GEOS Canada insider. Much appreciated by you and others for keeping us up to date on what is happening in the next major/ last region to feel the scrutiny.

GEOS Montreal (and GEOS Ottawa) have definitely been on this site. After we complained about , GEOS Montreal removed GEOS Australia from it GEOS network list on its Web site. Capetown also gone (there is your confirmation). New Zealand still up though if you click on it it gets a "Directory Listing Denied" warning..."GEOS Europe" links to the GEOS International site which is not operational. They have also removed references to "550 schools worldwide" and instead seem to focus on GEOS NA only! So much for supporting that super-massive network worldwide. And they separated the GEOS Asia region to make it look bigger by listing Taiwan and Korea in their own links.

Somewhere here in the wilds of North America, an ad was posted by a certain GEOS center on Craig's List. It was quite brief - something like this, "Seeking English teachers and Japanese teachers. Native speaker."

The only qualification to teach at GEOS, one gathers, is that the candidate be a native speaker. Terribly demanding requirements. Hey, one and all, meet the challenge!

That school by school listing is fantastic. Thanks. As to a sale of Canada, parts or whatever, the modus operandi to date has been to try and get a management buy-out. It is presumably quick and quiet. A public sale would accelerate the 'run on the bank' To repeat IMHO - the critical factor is fees in advance protection. Without fees in advance kept aside somehow, a new buyer is in fact buying a massive hidden debt. THe NZ guy had all the money kept aside in a government regulated trust account system which is clearly the strictest and safest in the world. THere are suggestions that the UK schools somehow kept some money back from Japan (Not confirmed, but implied in their statement) Australia not only had no money left, but had the unique advantage that the other schools in English Australia were bound by their association to teach the displaced students. So no sale - just a sucking sound (Shawn) Conclusion: Any talk of a sale depends on fees in advance being put aside. Despite repeated requests for information on a fee protection scheme in NA not a single poster has ever confirmed such a thing. Therefore you can conclude with 90% certainty that there are no fees in advance put aside in NA. Plus the fact that management are attempting to fight it out or dolly things up for a sale, suggests that there is no insider ready to step in and take over.
It seems to me with the limited information posted, as an outsider looking in that the odds have swung quite a way towards a closure of some sort imminent in NA. If I was a student I would be banging on the counter and carrying a placard until I got my money back. Starting with homestay money which should be immediately refundable. In all 'runs on banks' situations it is the hard-nosed, aggressive first movers who win, and the naive 'let's give them a chance' types who lose their money. If I was an agent I would have already put a few students in and withheld payment so that GEOS became a creditor to the agent. (More leverage) Or not send, or only pay in arrears. GEOS is desperate for students and would accept the students without payment. If I was a teacher I would demand all outstanding holiday pay. If I was an activity supplier I would get payment every Monday morning and threaten to tell the students if I did not get paid. If I was a trade creditor I would personally go in each week and pick up the cheque.
Don't forget that most of the big agents have stopped or dramatically slowed sending to GEOS internationally. (The Saudi government is very slow to react and these students are probably still coming) Despite all public denials, with weakening agent support the cashflow situation must be getting very very nasty now.
Mr K has done very well to sell the UK and NZ schools and actually did well to suck the money out of Australia. Assume the plan is pull all troops back to Japan and shore up the 184 left. He is behaving rationally actually now (Possibly forced to downsize by the banks??) It is a race against the clock. The sale of the UK schools removes all possible doubt that all the internationals are doomed. Exactly as this domino posted a couple of months ago except for not predicting the management buyouts. The exact way things work out may differ here and there, but the overall big picture is now for an almost certain closure or sale of all GEOS international schools. A small chance of some venture capital fund stepping in? - No, it is 2010 now, not pre-crash bubble days.

As for recent GEOS Canada postings, well, I can say they are legit. People on here, including me, cannot say everything on here even if it is an anonymous site. We have ties and people can figure out who made what comments. I will try to assist the GEOS Canada poster in the near future as a fellow insider, but a lot has been said already. Pay attention to it. GEOS Canada might now fail oevrnight, but things will happen...Sooner than

Love this Cloak and Dagger crap and all the backroom GEOS spies who have information but refuse to share it. Nonsense. Why bother posting such statements if you cant say anything?? You are not doing anybody a favor and you wont have a job anyway in a few days, weeks or months at the most anyway. The truth is clear as day, its because you dont know anything at all and you come on LJ to post your consipracy theories to find other pathetic morons to collude with your views. You need a breakdown to prove yourself right, so you can be all smug in your YMCA apartment in NA, nibbling on vegetables going, "I told you so". It makes me laugh.

Believe me, when there is a collapse, you wont be safe and wont be long until you are in the welfare line and dreaming of the good ol` days when you were making $8 an hour teaching goofy english to asians and arabs.

What am I doing ? Working. Trying to be a good member of soceity.

And wasting time at work amusing myself by
looking at the likes of you on the internet.
It's so charitable that folk make pillocks of themselves
in full view of everyone.

10:54 We are divulging information, but you are obviously not in the loop to understand. A lot has been said on here, but it seems to have flown right over your head. Try re-reading the inside info, if you can actually spot it. :-)

Domino on the ball. Mr K has been planning. GEOS back to its Japanese roots. In Oz those in the know were aware of intention to put Colleges on market Aprilish 2010 (see how Manly went early, Almost got sold Jan 10). In Oz things went wrong...too much cash sucked back to Tokyo too quickly...student numbers down latr 09, inexperienced "new" managers, governments snooping around post Meridien crash/Indian student moan time. Place just ran out of steam before Oz colleges could be unloaded.

And talking about unloading, will be interesting in future to see what peppercorn prices Mr K got for NZ, UK/Europe . Benefit for him will be a legal retreat from financial obligations in jurisdictions that can be a bit more aggressive than the Aussies.

Re management buyouts, just hope these new owner chums ain't put up personal guarantees on the businesses.

GEOS joke:

Q. What's the differnce between Napoleon and Montreal Uri?
A. Easy, Napoleon led the retreat back to Paris but Montreal Uri marched back to Tokyo.

One poster wrote that in Canada the teachers were entitled to vacation pay. Is that so? In the US, only full time employees in ANY business are entitled to a paid vacation. By definition a full-time employee must work at least a 40-hour week. For insurance purposes, by the way, anyone not working at least 30 hours is not eligible for medical insurance benefits. I am curious. What is the law in Canada regarding vacation pay and medical insurance?

This IS the Geos crash. It's just a different type of crash.
It's not going to go pop like Nova. But the end result is the same. Smaller company. Probably different owners. Way less schools, and no longer one of the big... 2 is it now?
We can't say for sure of course. But I'm sure they aren't selling the euro schools for peanuts. Which might keep things running til the deadwood is gone.

To those posters who think this is some kind of plan, I seriously doubt Special K planned any of this!

It may be a bad plan, but it is still a plan of sorts. , Unloading a couple of junk institutions is a success of sorts.

Yes.
Let's say they make a loss of $20 k per year. This equates to a tidy loss of $3.3m per year.

Where ever you work as an ESL teacher there are no benifts. It is a Crappy industry that so will only employ backpackers to entertain the students. There isnt much point getting higher qualifications because the cost is far greater than any remuneration you will get from an ESL school. This is why the quailty of the product is disentergrating before our very eyes.
No holidays!
No Insurance!
No Penal Rates!
No job Security!
No promotions!
Undervalued!
Why would anyone want to get into this industry anywhere in the world in its present form is beyound me.

Hi, you're wrong and here's why.

I started teaching around Asia for a bit with no qualifications (yes, including at GEOS). Had a lot of fun but most of what I did was dancing monkey stuff on eikaiwa wages. Came home to Australia and did my CELTA.

I taught overseas a bit more in Asia and Europe, immediately found myself getting better positions in better schools, being paid more and crucially working alongside people who actually knew what they were doing on the most part.

Came back to Australia again. Worked in Europe for a bit again, did my DELTA part time. Came home, got a job as an ADOS (full time permanent). Did that for a while, then got itchy to do some more training.

Started an MA in Applied Linguistics (still in progress). Got offered a job teaching in an Australian uni (my current job).

CELTA: about $2000 Aus. DELTA: about $4500 Aus. MA: will cost me about 10k or so when I'm finished.

Let's compare: I now make about 65k a year from my uni job, plus another 5 or 10 from privates. I also act as an agent and make commission from that (hence my interest in LJ). In an average year I make about 80k.

Compared to many of my friends from high school, I make more than some of them and less than others. I also get to go home at 4:30 every day, get good holidays and have spent the last 15 years travelling the world. Most of them have spent the last 15 years staring out of their window in the office dreaming about doing something more exciting with their lives.

A few of my buddies from way back are still in Japan, plugging away. Most of them still make 300 - 350k Japanese a month and still have no formal ELT qualifications. Apart from one guy who got himself a uni gig after finishing his distance MA, and now makes about 500k a month.

Whichever way you look at it, at every stage of the last 15 years choosing to gain further qualifications has helped me financially and furthered my career.

Oh, and by the way:

Where ever you work as an ESL teacher there are no benifts. It is a Crappy industry that so will only employ backpackers to entertain the students. There isnt much point getting higher qualifications because the cost is far greater than any remuneration you will get from an ESL school. This is why the quailty of the product is disentergrating before our very eyes.

*Wherever *benefits *crappy *that will only *isn't *renumeration *quality *disintegrating

@17.00　You forgot beyond! You are lucky to have the extra cash to go and upskill,most people who have been in the indusrty dont nor do they have the time. There are much better choices out there where you are valued and paid for that rather than expected to have the qualifications but the company isnt prepared to pay you for the effort. Sure in Japan it is just a job and no more, like most other countries.
FEEL FREE TO CHECK GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION cause I havent.

Thanks for the CELTA advertisement (in typical CELTA style). Unfortunately, CELTA is a big brand name and not necessarily accepted everywhere. Now back to the real discussion about GEOS...

* there are no benefits in Canada either, except in the province of Quebec where employers "must" pay part-timers in lieu of vacation pay. Best part, the school manager in Montreal makes every effort not to inform his teachers of such requirement to save a few bucks. And if the ask for it, he just delays and ignores you in typical GROS style.

You are on a GEOS thread, not a qualifications or DELTA thread.

Back to the more exciting and pertinent news and rumours of GEOS collapsing.

It was a law school student that made the inquiry. How is it that you can characterize him as "over the hill". The man had concerns that he might indeed be overqualified, but a person just getting out of law school is hardly washed up.

Read his other posts on GP and discover his true age. He has enquired about being a lawyer in Japan, enquired about going to school in Japan, and enquired about being an english teacher, enquired about childcare in Japan and explains he cant make it in America, so he will try and make in Japan. No english school in Japan will touch somebody with such a degree. The minimium is a bachelors not a Doctorate. The OP is willing to raise a child in Japan as a single parent while working for peanuts at a eikaiwa. Something is very wrong with that, those of us who live here can see that.

Yes, he is washed up. You dont go through all the years of hard work and expense to get a Doctorate in Law and your first job out of law school is teaching english in Japan...talk about damaging your future...and for what??? I doubt future employers in the legal field will be very impressed that your first job out of law school was "assistant language teacher" or "English conversation partner." Not a smart move at all.
In short, not only would he be shooting himself in the foot career-wise, he would also be stuck in a fairly boring job, throwing a fair amount of his limited salary toward day care and, before long, asking himself, "Is this why I went to law school?"

BTW....Japanese companies in Japan will NOT hire single parents...period. Its perfectly legal in Japan to ask applicants of their marriage status and/or if they have kids. If they discover you are a single parent, you are not hired. The thinking is....your child gets sick at school or daycare...you have to take the day off and go home and take care of your child. There is NO WAY you could do that working at an english school or any other company in Japan...you would be dismissed. I have never met a single parent working in eikaiwa or working in dispatch companies here or ever heard of one either. You dont make enough to live, raise a child as a single parent and pay for day care on a teachers salary. Not to　mention working hours at eikaiwa last until 9pm to 10pm and daycares in Japan close around 6pm....so it wont work. AND most daycares are closed on the weekends and on holidays.

We should start taking bets on the next GEOS school of country to fall. Kind of like a office basketball pool. My bet is GEOS Canada is next, with a couple of schools staying. Anyone care to differ?

1340 there is nothing to enjoy by talking about something extremely boring and juvenile like qualifications. The real dirt on the day-to-day collapse of GEOS is much more entertaining. ;-)

I bet it will take a few months, and probably a lot will have to do with lease obligations and summer enrolments, but GEOS Calgary and Toronto are doomed...Hawaii and one LA school may be gone soon...

@13:50 "boring and juvenile like qualifications". Well, I can well imagine that talk about qualifications might prove boring to you. I can smell that out. But "juvenile"? That is telling. It is certainly sophomoric for one to think that talk of qualifications is insignificant when it comes to teaching. By the way, you missed my point. I had thought it would require only a modicum of mental acumen to appreciate that my emphasis was on "fact" versus "fiction/rumor". I could have just as easily have said, "I would rather someone tell me ONE fact about GEOS than TEN rumors about it Get it now?

Fine then. But considering that half the people reading this will probably be out of a job soon it seems pretty damn relevant.

And you say that most people don't have the time or the cash. That is BS. Everybody has a choice. You can choose to spend your money or you can choose to stick some of it away and spend it later on things like training. You can choose to take on some extra privates to pay for it. You can choose do something about your precarious career choice or you can choose to stick your fingers in your ears and then whine like a bitch when it all goes horribly wrong.

I saved for a few months and cut back on the nights out to pay for the CELTA. And the main point to my post was that although I've spent about 15k on training and qualifications over the past 15 years its easily paid for itself many many times over. Sometimes you have to speculate to accumulate.

Don't like the CELTA 'brand'? Do a TESOL or something else. Here's a free tip for you though; make sure it has an assessed, observed practical component. Any course that doesn't isn't worth a damn. And yes, DELTA is industry-specific, and overkill for Japan too. In the UK, Oz or NZ though if you have one you'll never be out of a job again.

But anyway, back to the GEOS rumours and speculation.

To the person who made the "big announcement", and for which some of us were a bit skeptical (and a GEOS manager seemed bent on denying it)...You were right. Congrats on the good inside work. However you a little off in that . Of course this is understandable given the sorry state GEOS is in worldwide and the constantly evolving. But could you offer any insight in regards to your statement and knowledge of an impending announcement at GEOS NA? Canada? US? WE really appreciate you input...And you were correct.

Thanks and so now can you STFU? I'll hazard a guess you were the poster banging on and on about PROOF. If I gave you solid information on my sources and how I know what I know then certain people would face consequences they don't need to. Just trust me and go with the flow. Yes I was a bit off with the NA release. Check my post above on a clarification.

Also expect news on Seoul, the Taiwan and Hong Kong schools, Shanghai and Cebu. They're next to go. I'll keep you posted as and when I get the info.

Spot on with these loser schools. They could only survive on the money from Oz. Throw in Bangkok too.

Looks like we're in for an interesting week

Mr. Announcer has a "contact within GEOS Japan"? Oh, really. One wonders if he has his hands on a Ouija Board and a crystal ball. This omniscient announcer plays the part, singing" from the pulpit in infallible tones, but I smell just another self-indulgent, basement dwelling rat, all too immersed in his prognostication abilities. And now he tells us to "STFU", trust him, and "go with the flow." I am not shaking in my boots with the words of the Thought Police. Until there is real, credible fact, I am going back to reading tea leaves.

I have to laugh at the snide little remarks made about the announcer. Nobody else has been able to give any kind of real predictions. Do not know how legit this person is, but those announcements were a lot more entertaining and interesting than stuff like Geos stooges asking for solid proof when there is none yet or those endlessly going back and forth about eikaiwa being a loser job!

Yes, it is easy to predict that there will be more bad news out of Geos as the company crumbles away, but the announcements were more specific IMHO.

Anyway, you sound like angry children.

As a teacher at a GEOS Canadian location, I am extremely grateful for the insider. The manager doesn't tell us sh*t, and works hard to use us for every last free hour he can squeeze out of us. I know he will drop us, like he has others, when it is convenient for him and Kusunoki without warning. They could not care less about the teachers or students. The inside info enables me to keep abreast as to when GEOS Canada will collapse/ be sold, so I can hopefully have another job when the ball drops. Tight market here right now but a little warning from the insiders on here, not from my douche of a boss, will save my a*s. Thanks.

7:32 Thank you for a wonderful post. Number 5 is exactly from my experience, but I cannot go further than that. ;-)

GEOS Canada managers in particular do not have the right educational background, training or attitude to run their operations. And they also have a inferiority complex that causes them to make stupid decisions, especially in regards to working with people who they might perceive to be smarter and/ work smarter than them.

8:28 So you got let go from which GEOS or country? York sounds British or Australian.

The Australian operation was relatively well, but the overall GEOS company is a sh*thole.

Here is something of interest...Ms. Rita Chen's name has been removed from the GEOS NA agent site. She is the GEOS NA Marketing Director and was a co-signer (willingly or not) to the BS letter last December that said everything was alright in GEOS-land...until of course Australia collapsed. Her name has been removed from all the literature that used to bare her name, as well as no more letter or any other correspondence.

Has she flown the coop?

Is anyone able to post the letter that Ms Chen sent out? Who was the other signatory? Head Honcho?

It's just so strange that all these posts have not been met with any resistance from any NA Manager. The opposite is in fact true....NA staff posting info on how bad things are.

For the die hard loyalists, Special K's puppets/pets who have been knocking this site, we want factual information to state why things are so good in NA....as an earlier posting stated, we may have been a little off target with exact dates, but for the most part, a lot of rumours have resulted in fact.

The links on the Korean agent sites to the letters magically do not work anymore. And the letter links on GEOS NA's GEOS.net have disappeared along with Rita Chen's name. Convenient, isn't it?

You want it, you got it:

Source: http://www.grupogales.com/noticias/pdf/geos_29-01-2010.pdf

To our friends at Grupo Gales Educacion Internacional,
Warm greetings. This is Rita Chen, Regional Marketing Coordinator of GEOS North America. I hope this email
finds you well.
I believe you have recently heard about our schools in Australia going into administration and temporarily
closing.
I would like to take this time to assure you that our schools in GEOS UK, USA, New Zealand, and Canada
are NOT affected by this recent action.
All other GEOS regions are operated by separate companies and each region is independent financially.
You will see no changes in operations in GEOS North America, Europe, New Zealand, and Asia. You may
continue to send students to us without any worries.
Please click below for a joint statement from Mr. Uri Carnat, Regional Director of GEOS North America, and
Ms. Wendy Teraoka, Regional Director of GEOS Europe, addressing these recent events:
GEOS NORTH AMERICA and GEOS EUROPE:
Joint statement regarding Australia
If you cannot access the link, you may find the statement at this URL:
http://www.geos.net/pdfs/Joint-Statement-Re-GEOS-Australia.pdf
If you should have any questions or concerns about anything, please do not hesitate to contact me at any
time at .
Thank you very much for your continued support of GEOS North America and our global network. It is very
much appreciated.
Best regards,
Rita Chen
Regional Marketing Coordinator
GEOS North America
1350 Sherbrooke Ouest, Suite 800
Montreal, QC
H3G 1J1
TEL: 1-514-847-0841
FAX: 1-514-847-8305
SKYPE:geosnyc_rita
www.geos.net
Over 550 schools in 16 countries
GEOS... Opening a World of Opportunities for Over 30 Years
Boston – Calgary - Honolulu - Los Angeles (Costa Mesa) –Los Angeles (South Bay) - Montréal - New York –
Ottawa - San Francisco – Toronto – Vancouver - Victoria

More of the lovely Rita's corro is available at:

http://www.easygoing.kr/korean/community/article.asp?s_title=&readcount=...

if u can be bothered with such a long address! Page is copy protected.

The GEOS.net PDF has been removed. And I saw one Korean agency site that when you clicked on it nothing came up.

http://www.geosing.com.sg/images/Global%20Map.swf

Nice to see they still have the UK sites on there! AND the Aussie sites!!!

Just to show you how screwed up GEOS is, take a look at the GEOSCalgary.com and GEOSToronto.com Web sites to see how poorly designed and executed they are...Typcal GEOS crap.

Get a load of this...GEOS Montreal just posted on Craigslist. Not a terribly odd thing, except that they have been doing this much more often of late. Agents must not be coming through for them. But the kicker is they had the nerve to re-hash the "we have over 500 schools around the world"! Well, that is drop from them proclaiming over 550 just a short while ago. "All over the world". huh? The only thing all over the world is the mess of closures, teachers out of a job, creditors not being paid and students out pre-paid tuition!

See it for yourself: http://montreal.en.craigslist.ca/lss/1688664760.html

Can't read French? Keep scrolling.

I reported last week that a GEOS location in the US is looking for teachers, too. What many seem to have missed here is that GEOS NA normally loads up on teachers and ancillary staff during the summer months. Why? Well, in the summer a number of travel/study agents abroad (who have agreements with GEOS) send large numbers of students to North American schools during that time. If this happens again this summer, that will be a shot in the arm for GEOS (although margins are low). Often the summer rush can DOUBLE the student population at a given center. Thus, more teachers are needed. At this time of years, the GEOS schools know how many students are coming fro the summer. If GEOS gets the usual numbers this summer, don;t expect any GEOS schools in this region to go away until after August.

Can any GEOS teachers or staff update us on students numbers currently in their classes or schools? You can project how well they are doing by April numbers in NA. From what I have seen, class sizes are down considerably year-on-year, but that is only one location.

The summer will be the big test, and they might survive, but as someone said they will just now begin to feel the effects of the December announcement with contracted students graduating. And that does not take into account the big damage done with agents in February because of Australia collapsing.

Are we going to just forget the way the Australian GEOS Mangagers screwed over their staff and clients in late 2009 and 2010 by falling on their backs and waggling their legs in the air to that "nasty" Mr K and then just keeping their close mates at the school in the know about the oncomiing disaster? Are we going to forget how they slid away from the schools with their entitlements intact and left their staff to lose out? Nah, we ain't going to do that. When we meet these people on their way down in the industry, let's remember and let's act. And let's encourage the administrators and liquidators and government agencies to keep their sights and their blow-torches on these wimpy managers. GEOS Managers? Bottom of the pile, and I mean it.