Verbling chaos
My Verbling "adventures" (more like nightmares) continue!
So, finally got in contact with my Japanese teacher and I now know what happened, no thanks to Verbling.
So, some time ago, Verbling was acquired by a British company (which I think was bought recently by yet another company) and teachers on Verbling started getting emails about doing a background check. When my teacher tried to do it at that time, the website didn't work properly and she noticed plenty of other teachers didn't have the badge that said they had done the background check, so she figured it was optional.
Then Thursday, her account was deactivated without prior warning, so all her students' lessons were cancelled (which I experienced as I mentioned in my previous post). She got an email later that day telling her it was because she hadn't completed her background check. She sent Verbling's support emails and is still waiting for a reply.
Now, I did my own little research and found a thread on Reddit about this background check. Turns out many teachers were against it, as it was done by a third-party website they had never heard of before and said website asked them for their social security number, which many were understandably weary to share with an unknown entity. They initially expressed concern about the background check on Verbling's own Teachers forum, but instead of alleviating their concerns, they just deleted the posts.
It also seems that ever since Verbling was acquired by the British company, the relationship with the teachers advertising their services on the website deteriorated. Teachers were not allowed to say anything bad about Verbling to their students, were not allowed to give their students other means to communicate with them, the teachers got less money if students decided to buy 10 or 20 lessons at once (I thought Verbling covered the difference when I bought in bulk for the discount but seems it wasn't so), etc. Basically, it was "be faithful to Verbling and don't question us, or else".
Now, teachers on Verbling are not employees of Verbling. They set their own rates and their own hours. Without them, Verbling is nothing. So I don't understand Verbling's logic in deactivating accounts without prior warning, putting a tone of restraints on teachers and offering an option to students that makes it that teachers get paid less. All while students are left completely in the dark about what's going on, including no explanation as to why our lessons were cancelled so suddenly.
The Reddit thread I found also had a comment from a few days ago that simply said: "The Purge as begun." So it seems that there are quite a few students that probably got all their lessons cancelled, and all we get in return is Verbling credits (no refund) and no explanation.
I know most of my followers are not on Verbling or even take language lessons, but I urge you to reblog this as I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who panicked a little when they got all those messages about lessons being cancelled and were unable to contact their teacher on the app.
