Job Discussion Forums

[ken]

Hello, I've read a lot about owning a Smith's School of English franchise, however, has anybody actually worked as an English teacher at these schools, aside from owning one? Any good experiences or bad?

[Iwantmyrightsnow]

Try out these forums. There seems to be good reason why people heap crap on Smith's.

http://www.gaijinpot.com/forums/read.php?f=30&i=544&t=263

http://www.gaijinpot.com/forums/read.php?f=30&i=290&t=290

[PAULH]

As for with Smith, I have been monitoring their net activities for the last month or so since the trouncing given to them on GP.
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First, they redid various parts to their main website. Interestingly enough, one change was that if you remember there was a guy named Scott Crowe who was listed as a manager on the website at the time of the heated debates of GP. He is no longer listed on there except as to mention his selling his school.
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Also in the revamp and as well leading into my next point on them, they have switched into a "hiring teachers" modus operendi. They have been peppering websites with advertisements for hiring teachers. This is logistically impossible, most schools(franchises) are too small and run by the owner/teacher themselves. I can only speculate that it is a new con tactic by Smith to gather either cheap/free labor for flyering, or...
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That this is a way for him to avoid being removed from ignorant websites for scamming with franchises. None of the companies with ESL/EFL websites that he is advertising needing teachers for can verify the need he expresses. As well the ads reflect more the peeking of interest in franchises(indirectly). Additionally this also allows him to argue to prospectives that he is actually legitimate ("I've got adverts in X and Y + places... therefore you must see I am legit").
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Since these adverts are in the employment section and are asking for workers(not selling businesses(though thats exactly what he's doing), it makes him safe from critics and watchdogs... perse.
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So he has revamped his website to reflect his desire for gather information about "prospective teachers'"/his cult victims IMO.
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Also the person listed as posting the advertisements is someone by the name of Derek.
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I am pretty sure it is Mark Smith. Again because I know he would never intrust such advertising to anyone else. He always did such himself. If Derek is doing it, then he is a Mentoree level person and everything he posts is verbatim of what Smith desires him to.
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Smith's curriculum products now include a listening materials. But since he still lists the same curriculum parts that I gave you copies of, its safe to assume he just used his computer to burn cd's of someone in his organization speaking line for line the stuff I sent you. No brainer to see how that's pretty stupid. As well still no mention of it being purchased by students(ie students still get nothing themselves).
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Something else worth mentioning that is as well something he is trying to do to legitimize himself, he has created the following website:
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http://www.japanenglishteaching.com/
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The reason I found is because I do google searches for Smith's School of English and I add various key words to see what comes up.
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This makes 4 websites Smith currently has devoted to scaming. 2 Smith direct ones, the schoolbrokers website, and this one.
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All of them are hosted by a canadian firm. Interestingly enough(remember how Smith was bragging about how many hits his site was getting?) The company that does his websites also provides services that cause his websites to get featured more and reflect hits counts on big search engines that are not factual and due to bots.
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The company that hosts his websites(viewable here: http://www.orionsweb.net/clients.shtml�) is based in Canada. Having them in Canada prevents quite a few legal problems he might encounter otherwise with his scamming here in Japan.
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Back to the posting of ads for his scams. In some ways his desperation reflects the quality of sites he is posting on. Not only is he posting on ESL sites, he's posting on job sites that focus on people who look for get rich quick schemes, job websites having nothing to do with ESL, ESL websites that are as dubious as him, etc etc.
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Another tactic he is trying to employ is search bumping. That is, to post as many websites as he can to dilute the chance that people will see GP's discussion about his school due to it being sent to page 2 or later in a search. Thus when I have posted on forums of GP I've tried to make sure to mention(when appropriate) Smith's School of English. Otherwise GP would drop back to the 3rd page or farther when searching Smith's.
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Also I don't know if you noticed or not, but the forum that smith made through his lackey disappeared within a week and a half after the thread calmed down. As I knew it would. Smith created it simply in an attempt to shut down the discussion. He realized after we snared him in his own lies that his posting was doing more damage with every word he typed. Thus to save face he realized the best thing was to go back to what he'd been doing before.... keeping quiet for the most part. When I was in his hell, he bragged more than once that part of his success was due to his keeping a generally low profile and that other companies etc would shrug him off. Yet his ego gets the better of him. Its his main weakness.
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[bearcat]

Another forum can be found also discussing Smith here:

http://www.letsjapan.org/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=1259&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

On page 2 of the discussion I posted a theoretical summar of the events that occured/time line. I am copy pasting it here to help give people a better feel for Smith's actions:

(Posted: Mar 20, 2004)

This is my theory of the whole of the two threads on GP. Please note it is a theory though. But the evidence to support it seem pretty good:

1. Someone posted wanting to know about Smith on GP

2. I and others responded what we knew (seeing the website etc) or our opinions about putting money into such a thing.

3. Smith (who seems to have an ego the size of australia) reads these and gets upset and worried. Decides to post as traviss and pretending to be someone just learning about the company etc to help switch away from the bad stuff about the company. Uses data or pseudo facts (that means usually a lie) to persuade the arguement. He assumes most people would be too stupid to persue discovering the ruse of his information. At the same time due to his inflated ego, he cant help to as well put a little attack into the poster(s) to attempt to make them go on the defensive and further waylay them. Also around this time (Feb. 24th to be exact) Smith goes to sites like eslusa.org and posts his misleading sales bs.

4. His posting on GP backfires on him due to people showing what he was saying to be incorrect (ok lets just say it here... a lie).

5. Smith realizes he's dig himself into a hole. Last post on that thread with a seeming stop was Feb. 27th

6. Then forum thread 2 begins on March 4th in the teaching section. Others respond and then I respond about the discussion in the SOHO section


7. Thus enters the "hitman" into forum thread 2 on March 5th(stirrs up romantic notions of the mafia doesn't it...... not). The language hitman used told me it wasn't traviss and most likely was either a manager or franchisee, though hitmain never really revealed the truth of it. I theorize as well that hitman was instructed by Smith to begin posting there as well.

8. hitman pretty much digs himself into a hole as well. Though not as deep and smelly as traviss.

9. Forum thread 2 on GP gets locked on March 8th and before hitman answers questions on curriculum etc.

10. People begin posting more on forum thread 1 that traviss posted on since the thread was still open (and I mentioned it to be on here). This includes myself and I suspect traviss didn't like that very much.

11. traviss returns to his antics on the thread on March 13th. Attempting to laud the changes he made to his websites and the other sites that he advertised on (though he forgot eslusa and others still) He attempted to say "See you helped me nya nya nya" like a little child.

12. traviss also decides to go after paulh. I suspect this was traviss/smiths ego again at work. I don't think he liked having it mentioned that he didn't/doesnt have a clue about education. Thus he decides to use an arguement unrelated to education (and another switch style attack) to offset the growing unanswered and embarrassing issues of his company.

13. Again, backfires. paulh and I respond accordingly. And I begin post I think traviss is Smith.

14. traviss responds again and his posts begin to get erratic.

15. survivorfan posts new to the thread (and not really putting two and two together yet about traviss yet). Thinks its personal attacks soley and then gives his account with dealing with Smith.

16. traviss then starts his post with compliment to survivorfan then goes on the attack on him. survivorfan put him in his place and traviss leaves off of him after that.

17. traviss continues digging his hole... this time with a backhoe. Gets summarily trounced more by paulh than by me.

18. traviss makes his last post and adresses it to sidereal who hasn't posted since September 14th and never even responded in the thread about smith after that first initial post. That was the epitome of traviss' stupidity, ignorance, and just plain "being a few fries short of a happy meal" So far, this is the last we have heard of traviss on gp. I hope it will not be. The more he posts about smith the better I think..... better to keep people from falling prey to it.

19. About two hours after traviss' last post Eric the franchisee posts and tells people to go to his website forum (his main page to his smith website btw doesn't have a link to the forum either thus making it pretty hard to "discover") I am 100% sure this was collaborated with traviss to simply be another waylay attempt to the thread.

20. Eric doesn't respond to any posts after that of questions on GP nor has he gotten posts yet on his forum. (BTW his forum has been coming up as unavailable recently). I don't hold much water to that forum having anything of value ever. I wouldn't even put it past this group to eventually post messages from other members of the group to look like perspective suckers in the hopes of luring real victims.