Job Discussion Forums

[MESL]

I recently met an American who worked for Buckland for a semester. He and his Chinese wife were very impressed with how well Buckland takes care of his employees.

If you�re having a lot of problems with FAOs, or if you�re new and concerned about all the horror stories on the message boards, Buckland�s outfit might be a haven. Most of his schools are in small towns and have very few foreign teachers, so you�ll likely be isolated, but it�s a tradeoff.

[xiguagua]

[Trebek]

One of my good friends (Aussie not Chinese) has been working for Buckland for 5 years he has nothing but good to say about the group.

[MESL]

I typed �Don�t work for Owen Buckland� into Google. No results. So I typed �Don�t work for Buckland.� No results. I tried �Avoid Owen Buckland.� No results. I checked the first 50 results for �Owen Buckland� and didn�t find a blacklist report.

After I blacklisted a Korean recruiter / hagwon owner, his former employees started coming out of the woodwork to share horror stories about him. Within a few months, his website was down and he�s never been seen or heard from since.

So if Owen Buckland is The Great Satan, why is it after 10 years and 1000 teachers, no one has blogged about him with such headlines? Where are the hordes of disaffected and cheated foreign teachers he took advantage of? And why haven�t they come out in force the way foreign teachers usually do against the worst recruiters / managers/ owners in the ESL industry? Where is the consensus negative voice among people who have dealt with him?

It appears that out of those 1000 former teachers, at least 900 don�t have anything to say about him, good or bad. Perhaps 50 have declared he�s one of the best employers they�ve ever had; the remaining 50 insist he�s one of the most villainous businessmen in China.

My theory at this point is that a handful of very persistent opponents, probably less than half a dozen, have kept up the rhetoric longterm on the message boards, maintaining the appearance of him as a shady character. But they don�t have anything substantial enough to say about him to create a credible website and get enough hits to be picked up by a search engine.

[danhoopes]

I've been with Buckland for around 7 months, no complaints to speak of. Got the luck of the draw and was sent out to a pretty well-run school in Hunan, great FAO, great staff, no issues.

Buckland's always paid on time, made every effort to enforce my contract (school wasn't providing a computer like my contract stated, it was sorted out) and generally made sure I was happy here.

Even though I've got a bit of experience and a decent handle on Chinese these days, I'm still with them, mainly for the security and the flexibility they offer. On top of that, the pay (which others have noted is a bit on the low end of things to start) does go up, as well as your ability to choose prime locations before the rest of the herd gets assigned.

I don't know what people expect out of an agency like this that Buckland doesn't do. In my experience, simply not being a complete idiot has sufficed when it comes to having a smooth relationship with Owen and his company.

[xiguagua]

[Pinkpiglet]

Don't think you looked that hard mate
https://eslwatch.info/en/articles/asia-articles/141-china-in-asia-article/8298-my-experience-with-owen-buckland-china.html
https://eslwatch.info/en/articles/asia-articles/141-china-in-asia-article/12185-china-scam-watch.html
http://www.eslteachersboard.com/cgi-bin/review/index.pl?read=46599

[rocket man]