Wall Street English is in the quagmire of bankruptcy
When many young people who are not well-off are confused, they choose loans in order to improve their chances of getting a better job search.
Once the training institution has a problem, they have to accept the pre-paid exclusive "deceptive package."
Experts suggest that in the ex post supervision of prepayment, you can refer to ofo's handling method, that is, relevant parties require major investors to formulate a repayment plan and make corresponding commitments.
At the same time, consumers need to consider market risks and trade cautiously when facing large prepaid expenditures.
Wall Street English, one of the "Big Three" of adult English education, has recently fallen into a quagmire of bankruptcy. It is less than two years since the last giant, Weber English, fell.
Step by step into the "training loan" abyss
In the past five years, in order to learn English, Shandong girl Li Beibei (pseudonym) has repeatedly loaned 190,000 yuan in total.
In 2016, Li Beibei, who was looking for a new job, found that most of the jobs involving English majors had higher salaries, and she had the idea of learning English.
One day the sales staff took her to a campus of Wall Street English in Shandong and recommended to her the level3-level8 elementary English at a price of 40,000 yuan. Faced with high expenses, she could only take a loan to study.
About two months later, she hadn't officially started studying, so the salesman called to ask her to renew.
The salesperson said, "If you want to earn a living in English in the future, it will definitely not be enough to learn level 8. Now there is a discount. If you pay more than 50,000 yuan, you can learn level 13, and you can work in English after you go out."
Li Beibei, who was in a period of confusion at the time, was eager to improve herself and hoped to make more money in the future, so she renewed her fees and officially started classes, but at that time she was suffering from depression and it was difficult to study.
After another two or three months, the salesperson recommended her to Wall Street English to be a local pusher responsible for collecting customer information. He needed to collect 200 personal information every month. This was very stressful for Li Beibei, and it became more difficult to learn. , She frozen the course for 9 months.
Half a year later, she was fired because of poor performance.
Subsequently, she unfrozen the course.
The salesman came again and advised her to upgrade to VIP, so that someone would help her learn one-on-one, and the current discount would allow her to upgrade to a level 13 VIP with very little money.
At that time, Li Beibei, who was unable to study, seemed to have grabbed a "life-saving straw" and loaned another 10,000 yuan.
"He lied to me." Two or three months later, the salesman left.
The new salesperson told Li Beibei that her VIP actually only covered level 7.
After discovering that she was deceived, Li Beibei asked for a refund. New Sales said that if she gave her a refund, she might lose her job. She encouraged Li Beibei to pay more than 10,000 yuan to upgrade to a level 13 VIP and promised to help her study.
"The loan is too heavy for me to continue my life." At first, Li Beibei, the first salesman, taught Li Beibei to "cash out" with a credit card, and the salesman said, "Everyone does it."
At that time, the salesperson helped her handle a personal POS machine, and she could "set up" the money by directly swiping Li Beibei's credit card.
During that time, she continued to repay the loan in this way. Until 2019, she was overwhelmed with a debt of 190,000 yuan.
At the end of 2019, Li Beibei went to apply for a refund.
Wall Street English said that some of the courses that have already started cannot be refunded. In fact, she has just started to learn some of these courses, but only 80,000 yuan can be refunded.
The company promised a three-month refund. In 2020, the new crown pneumonia epidemic suddenly struck, and it was delayed until the end of 2020 before the money was withdrawn.
Li Beibei's experience is not alone.
When many young people who are not well-off are confused, they choose loans in order to improve their chances of getting a better job search.
Once the training institution has a problem, they have to accept the pre-paid exclusive "deceptive package."
Ten million yuan in wages owed to employees
After the training institution fell, the unlucky side stood with employees. On one side, they were the “discarded sons” of the institution, and on the other side, they might need to be questioned by the trainees.
On August 12, Amy (a pseudonym), the principal of a Wall Street English campus in Shanghai, suddenly received news of the closure of the campus and forced all employees to quit within 48 hours.
At that time, the teacher was giving lessons to the students as usual, and Amy said, "I was stupid when I knew this at the same time as the students."
Amy has renewed the third labor contract with no fixed term. According to the normal development path, Amy will work here until retirement.
On August 13, she took the teachers from the school district to a labor arbitration.
The staff of the arbitration tribunal revealed to them that earlier, Wall Street English had applied for bankruptcy proceedings and suggested that they file a lawsuit in court.
However, the signal that Amy received from the headquarters has always been that the company is developing well.
In early August, Amy's boss also told her that they would move to a new school site closer to the city center.
In the past three months, Wall Street English is still recruiting new employees.
In fact, since last year, Wall Street English has been in arrears with employees’ wages. There have been cases where employees’ wages were 25% off, halved, or only basic salary.
It wasn't until July 16 last year that the situation slowly began to improve.
In May of this year, Wall Street English began to default on wages again.
On July 30, the company's top management responded to the arrears of salary via email. The email pointed out that at present, there are really investors considering investment, and the company's top management is also working hard to obtain short-term loans to support the company's development.
Amy said, “The company also makes us sell like crazy. If the sales are good, investors will be happier and more money will be injected in.” Course sales will continue until the closing day on August 12.
Every money from each campus goes directly to the Wall Street English headquarters.
According to Amy’s memories, after July 16, 2020, the company required all stores to collect cash and remit it to its Chinese account. To a certain extent, this account is “only in but not out”. It is also difficult to withdraw a small deposit, let alone tuition of tens of thousands of yuan.
On August 5th, a person in charge of Wall Street English in Shanghai also told the principals that he could collect the money first, not out of the contract.
Individual campuses will only issue contracts after August 11.
Amy explained, “Some students have paid the money without a contract and cannot defend their rights.”
Amy said that he added a national rights protection group for Wall Street English employees. The group initially estimated that the salary owed to employees was about 10 million yuan.
Among them, the monthly salary of an ordinary foreign teacher is about 16,000 yuan, the monthly salary of a senior foreign teacher is about 25,000 yuan, and the basic salary of a principal in three months is about 75,000-100,000 yuan, and a higher-level regional principal is about 150,000 yuan. .
In addition, many people have not paid the five social insurance and one housing fund for 4 months.
August 25 is the deadline for the company to leave employees.
However, on August 20, the provident fund accounts of unresigned employees were directly sealed.
Experts suggest requiring major investors to formulate a repayment plan
The sudden collapse of Wall Street English, an established institution, unexpectedly occurred to many people.
Wang Peng, an associate professor at Renmin University of China, said that the Wall Street English problem was caused by internal and external factors.
At the same time, before the epidemic, Wall Street English was mostly based on offline stores, and the adult English education and training market represented by it had high marketing costs. This also meant that the proportion of investment in curriculum development and faculty was reduced, and the investment in the entire industry There is a problem with the output model; on this basis, the epidemic is the "last straw" that caused it to fall.
The well-known economist Song Qinghui said that the main reason for the sudden collapse of Wall Street English was its lack of core competitiveness.
Facing the current two major issues of difficulty in refunding fees for trainees and difficulty in obtaining salaries for employees, Song Qinghui suggested that consumers and employees of education and training institutions should apply to the local consumer rights protection association for mediation in a timely manner, or maintain their own legality by filing legal proceedings or applying for arbitration. Equity.
Li Beibei also considered suing, which requires money, time and energy, as an office worker, she can't afford it.
Even if the lawsuit is won, it may still be difficult to execute.
Many ordinary consumers face the same dilemma as her.
Currently, Li Beibei has paid off the loan through hard work and with the help of his family.
She also hopes to tell her own story so that more young people can avoid stepping on the "pit" and face the "training loan" and do what they can.
Over the years, regulatory agencies in many places have repeatedly resorted to new measures to deal with the misappropriation of funds of education and training institutions, and the running away of funds. One of the more critical points is the supervision of prepaid funds.
For example, it is stipulated that the time span of one-time fees for off-campus training shall not exceed 3 months; in some areas of Shanghai, the pilot program pays after class; and the establishment of a prepaid fund monitoring platform, however, educational institutions are still unpredictable.
Tang Dajie, a guest researcher at Wuhan University, said that the main reason is that merchants have committed some non-compliant and illegal behaviors; the current publicity and enforcement of prepaid management regulations are not in place. At the same time, prepayment involves many industries and presents a wide range of aspects. Characteristics, this is very unfavorable in terms of supervision.
Currently, all localities are still continuing to explore relevant governance plans.
Tang Dajie suggested that in the ex-post supervision of prepayment, you can refer to ofo's handling method, that is, relevant parties require major investors to formulate a repayment plan and make corresponding commitments.
At the same time, consumers need to consider market risks and trade cautiously when facing large prepaid expenditures.
Faced with the current situation, many people have begun to "bad-mouth" the adult English training industry.
In Wang Peng's view, the potential demand in the adult English training market has decreased.
Different from the early days when China first entered the market, the first is that the work of foreign companies and multinational companies is no longer as good as everyone thinks; the second is that the new generation of middle-level or elites are receiving better and better English education from childhood, and they no longer need relevant information after joining the market. Training.
Song Qinghui said that at present, the adult English industry is indeed facing a "bad" situation. On the one hand, the adult English boom has long receded and the market has cooled down again and again. On the other hand, the scale of adult English has basically reached the bottom, and online (English ) The impact of education.
Tang Dajie believes that this market still has a certain potential for development, and the new generation of young people entering the workplace are more eager to learn. At the same time, as China's economy continues to move towards high-quality development, consumption continues to upgrade, and international exchanges continue to increase, so this is A growing market.
China Youth Daily·China Youth Daily reporter Zhao Limei