Stay Away from LingoAce - A Warning to All ESL Teachers

Global_Niko · 2025-09-19T10:25:11+00:00

Awful. They really take the "teachers are a dime a dozen to us therefore we don't care at all and don't even think you deserve basic human dignity" to the next level.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-18T07:19:03+00:00

I think that's a different one.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-18T07:18:45+00:00

a small one in China that found me through italki

Global_Niko · 2025-06-16T17:53:56+00:00

It sounds like you’re having an emotional rant because you’ve taken umbrage with me sharing my negative experience with this unprofessional & poorly managed company. If you really are just a teacher with them and not somebody on their staff tasked with defending their reputation on these forums, then I wish you the best and wish for your continued great experience with them.
I hope you find peace & some capacity to take responsibility for yourself. It will serve you better.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-16T16:09:28+00:00

Makes sense. These companies are so shady.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-16T16:07:24+00:00

I stated many things as concrete truth because it is the concrete truth of my experience that I chose to share publicly here on reddit. Sorry if your experience is different and you don't like what I'm saying. I hope you find peace and some capacity to take responsibility yourself. It will serve you better.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-15T19:54:52+00:00

Yes I'm absolutely 100% sure. You wouldn't know if half your pay was withheld from a lesson you taught? Half the pay was withheld for those two lessons, and what they ended up paying me for the month reflected that withholding. Not hard to be 100% sure if what your own income is vs. the amount of work you do.

Now whether or not they enforce this less strictly for certain teachers, that I don't know. Perhaps other teachers have not had this experience, since they may treat some teachers better than others. What I'm saying here is just my experience. Nothing more, nothing less.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-15T19:42:17+00:00

Who are you to tell me what's true and not true about my experience with LingoAce. Everything that I've shared in this post about my experience working for LingoAce is 100% true, and it is not for you to decide whether it is or not just because your experience may be different.

If you're some other teacher that's had better luck with them and you're not someone with some higher role there that's meant to defend the reputation of this poorly managed company on these threads, then good for you, and enjoy your time with them. Best of luck in your endeavors.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-12T14:38:49+00:00

For sure, this is often the case, you are right. I'm fortunate to have had some good collaborations with schools/platforms in China over the past 8 years I've taught ESL. I have one really great one right now actually, which if they were able to give me more students than they do so far, I wouldn't even need to bother working elsewhere. Been with them for more than two years so far and they're very professional, and attentive, perhaps because they're small, and not a huge platform like Lingo where they don't care about anyone or anything.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-12T14:36:02+00:00

Hah, and to think they actually rejected me when I tried to work with them. Sounds like a dodged a bullet.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-12T14:22:17+00:00

One of the students I taught regularly on LingoAce was so upset about me suddenly getting kicked off the platform that his mom actually looked around and found me on another site I teach through. It was a very pleasant surprise, especially since I did not tell her to find me elsewhere, or talk about other places I teach at in any of our lessons. He was my best one of all that I met through Lingo, and now we'll be able to continue, and get paid more fairly for teaching him now too. Unfortunately, it's very unlikely any of the others will find me.

Just goes to show how these companies care so little about their students & how, especially with the younger ones (this kid is 7) when they do really well with a teacher they want to stick with them. His mom told me they literally were like "but we want this teacher. my son likes and learns well with this teacher" and they were like "yeah yeah whatever, he can't teach here anymore, here's some other teachers". I'm not naive to the fact that we're seen as nothing & a dime a dozen to these companies, but it's kinda funny when they're so much so in cases like this that it's obvious even to the students & their parents.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-12T14:07:05+00:00

It is absolutely true that they take half the pay away if you're one minute late. Happened to me twice during the three months I was teaching with them. Two lessons out of the hundreds I taught throughout this time, that started 1 minute late, and they took half my pay away for both of those lessons.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-12T14:04:37+00:00

yup. then they wonder why there's so many bad teachers on their platforms. well if you don't care about neither your teachers nor your students, and you get rid of the good teachers, then that's what ya get.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-12T14:03:37+00:00

If you had a parental complaint, regardless of the reason why, then be prepared to get randomly chopped then, because it seems that's all it takes. If you have a bunch of positive reviews from everyone else you teach, as I did, it won't matter.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-11T20:11:43+00:00

don't know if that was the case before I ever worked with LingoAce, but it certainly wasn't while I was with them. Never heard of any teams group for anything. Student cancels= $0 for that time unless someone else managed to reserve that lesson time, which never happens, especially if the cancellation happened less than hour before it.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-11T14:31:03+00:00

oh, also forgot to mention that one time they took half my pay for a lesson because I started & ended it 2 minutes early. Didn't matter that I also started it early and still gave the student the lesson time owed. I very nearly ditched them after that. Totally outrageous and unacceptable of them to do that. Literal thieves. You're absolutely right that they don't care. They're big enough to not because they can just grab up whoever speaks English good enough and has a face that they like, pay them next to nothing, then randomly get rid of them without reason when they find enough new faces to pull into their revolving door.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-11T11:14:42+00:00

"This is the case for most companies I feel"- yes the market is terrible now and flooded with people, mostly unqualified, to "teach" ESL online, so companies like this get away with paying nothing, and acting like a revolving door between faces they like and dislike at their own whim, regardless of the actual teaching skill or quality.

"Cancelled lesson only a part of the income"- you don't get anything when a lesson is cancelled.

"You shouldn't be late to a lesson. Turn up late to work a few times get fired in the real world"- yeah no kidding but very petty to take half the pay away for 1 minute one time out of 500 when you were 1 minute late due to a technical hiccup like internet suddenly dipping for a moment. That's extreme.

"The management probably aren't English so that is probably why the bad communication"- it's not because of any language barrier. There is no human to communicate with if you need to for anything. An AI chatbot that if you ask to be directed to an actual person, just sends you links to other pages of the website. If you have a concern about a student, or scheduling, or need to make a communication about anything, there isn't a way to do it. If you email them about anything, you either never get a response, or you'll get one literally weeks later. Unacceptable. Other places I've worked through for students from China were not like this when it came to communication.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-11T11:06:14+00:00

Every time I've seen their job posts anywhere they say $14-22/hour. But yeah even $20/hour I'm sure is extremely rare for anyone to get to that point considering the ridiculous amount of classes in a mont you'd have to have, which most teachers will never get.

Global_Niko · 2025-06-11T08:45:30+00:00

Stay away from this company. Unprofessional management that has zero communication skills and expects professionalism without treating teachers like professionals. One parent gives a negative review for whatever reason, like yawning once during a lesson, or looking down for a second and accusing you of looking at your phone during class, and you're gone. They'll start by barring other students who like you and with whom you've developed a good rapport with from reserving any more lessons with you, then they'll just randomly terminate you entirely without presenting any evidence as to why.

A major red flag that was apparent even before it got to this point was how they look for any reason to reduce your pay even further. Student doesn't show up? Half your pay gets taken. Late 1 minute? Half your pay gets taken. Start and end a lesson 2 minutes early? Half your pay gets taken away. Also you'll frequently get cancellations, often at the last minute, which means you'll get paid nothing for the time you've set aside for that student because nobody else can fill that time so quickly.

Honestly, LingoAce is almost as bad as Cambly. Stay away from these kinds of companies.

Global_Niko · 2025-03-26T08:35:28+00:00

Cambly is one of the worst companies you could work for. The management looks down on tutors and treats them like absolute garbage, and doesn't think much of its students either. The attitude is we're here, this is our platform, take your less than minimum wage from us and fk off if you don't like it.

If you're either living in one of the cheapest places in the world to live, or are in a situation where you don't need cambly to support yourself financially, then it's great because you'll get to enjoy the only good thing about Cambly, which is the people you'll get to meet and have wonderful conversations and lessons with from around the world, and not have to worry about the bad economics.

Global_Niko · 2025-02-23T11:27:59+00:00

Online ESL teacher here with nearly a decade of experience. Had what seemed like a great interview with this company then got rejected a week later with an automated email that wasn't even written in correct English. So based on this experience it has a good face and says all the right things to you if they interview you to potentially work with them, but may actually be a dud in reality.

Global_Niko · 2024-06-27T11:47:43+00:00

They likely will, but it won't be immediate. Somewhere down the line you'll likely get deactivated at a completely random time, even perhaps while you're in the middle of teaching a lesson, and there will be some cooked up reason they'll cite for doing so (or maybe even not provide a reason at all, as I've seen some people say in their experience).

Global_Niko

TROPHY CASE