Here is the first review. I will continue posting in the coming days. Please comment if you have any reviews you would like to submit (positive or negative) and we will get these online for you.
I took the ITTP programme in 2011. I chose this course because of the high ratings it got in various reviews. Now I know the reason for such unbalanced ratings. I had no problems with the programme itself. As with many people who wrote a review on this website, I had a lot of problems, however, with the accommodation provided. Little did I know how small the room was. Picture this: when I stretch my arms out, they touched both sides of my room. And mind you, I am only 1.64m tall. Another person from my cohort who also took the accommodation provided had his bed collapse from under him on the first day and he is 70 years old. Luckily he did not suffer any injuries or Neville would have probably found himself in a lawsuit. I would also like to confirm that the bathroom ceiling was covered in mould, which was a major health hazard. During the course, I realised that among the people who took up the accommodation provided by ITTP, my room was the smallest, but, if you recall, that is not what I paid for. So I emailed Neville about it, thinking he may have mixed me up with a student from another course. Neville replied, and I quote: "You paid for the Small and Cosy Room. You have the Small and Cosy Room. The other Small room option (4,450) is in another part of the building but we are no longer offering those cheaper rooms." I then told Neville that I thought that was a fair enough reason but I would have appreciated it if this was what I was told in the first place instead of some story about how it was taken by another student and that by pointing this out I hope that it would not be repeated with another student in the future. And this was Neville's reply: "Thank you for your email. If the reason given was that it was taken then it was taken. We don't appreciate the insinuation that it was otherwise. We have a lot of students coming through the program, not only Onsite students but also combined students and we need to accommodate them too. We also have quite a lot of movement of accommodation options within the building and at other locations in the city. Now, I politely suggest that you please focus on your course studies and I trust this now clarifies everything. There is no need to respond to this email. Thank you." Excuse me, but I think that I, as a consumer, have every right to demand an explanation if I feel that something is not right with my purchase, and for Neville to tell me in no uncertain terms to shut up and accept his reason for taking more of my money is unacceptable. In addition, we met locals during our course and they all told us that for that price, we could have gotten much better accommodation in that area or much less. I was really lucky to have wonderful coursemates who made my experience there positive. So my advice is: take the ITTP course if you want to, the programme itself is great but please please PLEASE do not take the accommodation provided.
Ok, anyone considering taking the comments of HBlendon seriously, please please read this first.
ReplyDeleteHBlendon wrote:
'I am a former ITTP TEFL Prague student and I am writing this complaints to provide a place where people can review ITTP TEFL Prague without fear of their reviews being removed. It is also to alert other potential TEFL clients to a major review scam currently being run by Neville Thomas and ITTP TEFL Prague. What his company did to myself and my classmates was really poor, however that is not my problem now. My problem is his attitude and dirty games towards our complaints and subsequent online reviews which has made me really angry. '
That's not really true, is it HBlendon. Yes, ITTP has attracted some negative reviews, but no more than any other onsite or online TEFL course. Spend a bit of time looking and you'll see that all well-known onsite and online courses attract a fair balance of positive and negative reviews. That's normal.
What's not normal though is this:
Since about April 23 of last year we see a flood of extremely similar forum posts and reviews. All of them have similar titles, similar content, have something to do with a supposed scam ITTP Prague, or ramblings on about lousy accommodation at ITTP Prague. Whole "blogs" have even been created with the sole intention of writing one post - a negative review about ITTP.
All this since April 23.
Anyone with half a brain can see that all of these forum posts / reviews / one-post blogs were created by the same person or small group of people with some personal issue against ITTP or someone who works for them - clearly Neville, the joint owner of ITTP and widely respected in the Prague Education community as far as I and my colleagues are aware. Oh, and unlike you I have lived in Prague for 13 years so I think I can write with a bit more unbiased clarity ;)
Just look at the language used in the posts - there's not even any attempt to use different writing styles to make it look like they were written by different people. Have a look at the comments in the review that HBlendon quotes on his blog, for example - the language is so unbelievably unnatural for a genuine reply to a forum thread, it's laughable - they are such obviously staged replies, written by the same person that wrote the original post.
HBlendon (or whatever the person's real name is) quite obviously has some personal issue with ITTP and has decided to devote a large amount of time and energy into trying to discredit them.
My advice to anyone reading this - treat anything negative you read about ITTP written on or after April 23 with a very large pinch of salt.
P.S. No, before you ask, HBlendon, I don't work for ITTP.
Firstly i don't work for ittp.
ReplyDeletei can see these blog posts began in around april of last year so if i did work for ittp why wait until now to respond like this. i just want to get that out of the way.
i DO though study on the ittp online course and began doing so on friday last week and i came across this "blog" researching my online course options and i must write that pages like this one actually clinched the deal for me because i was sure that the posts were written by either 1 person or a few and the amount of energy spent on this assured me that the school existed so i wasn't going to sign up and pay and find out it was an online school scam. so i began the course with ittp on friday and so far very satisfied with all aspects of the package. i feel they deserve a plug here so here is their website:
www.tefl-tesol-online.com
I don't know anything about threatening site administrators, fake reviews or any of the other crazy half-baked claims on this page but I think that one should validate this as fact first or just simply being equivalent to the brown slime which seeps from the rear end of the male version of the cow species.
Lets take into account all of the info on this page which also appears on complaints websites where people can post without any verification at all, and of which posts were obviously also set up by the same person who wasted his or her time on this blog: Ittp-tefl-reviews.blogspot.com.
SHOCKING isn't it!!!
why, all the same claims listed on those complaints board websites are also listed on this blog too!!!
but, I did some sniffing around and noticed that the .co.uk version of this site (that's Ittp-tefl-reviews.blogspot.co.uk folks btw) has been censored by Google. They have taken off the written claims which appear on the generic .com version of the blog and on the complaints sites.
why was the .co.uk version of this site deemed unpublishable by Google? I don't think they close blogs just for giggles as they take free speech seriously so why would they take off the .co.uk version of this blog, citing legal reasons, if everything written on this blog were based on fact? Mmmm :-D
Ittp-tefl-reviews.blogspot.co.uk
... because if it is deemed unsuitable for Google to publish it then you know it's essentially a load of man cow seeping goo :-)