Landi
Landi Review
Landi (website is down) is connected to ABC360 and they are hiring now. They teach Chinese children in individual or classes of 2 students that last 25 minutes. The kids are aged 4 -10. Teachers must be able to commit to at least 12 hours per week. They want native speakers including South Africans with a bachelor’s degree. They pay between $8 and $25 USD per hour (although the $25 figure is from 2 years ago and I cannot confirm it as of April 2021).
Please leave your comments and reviews of Landi.
14 Comments
Busisiwe Buthelezi
Please help me to apply at Landi
Busisiwe Buthelezi
I am trying to join Landi with my email address they said is not valid i don’t know if they don’t want gmail
Mike Lait
Landi are now paying a flat base rate of $8.00 per 50 Min if I Remember correctly. lol
Pearl
I did an interview with them and I didn’t get hired. I have 6 years of Online teaching experience as well as 2 years of classroom experience. I taught in China at a training school. My demo was good, I used TPR, My background was kid-friendly, I even had props and a pig puppet. The interviewer didn’t even know how to pronounce my name. I think I pissed her off when I talked about the idea that teachers from different countries with the same qualifications get different hourly rates and it’s unfair. I guess with this company, you will get in trouble for raising valid points. Congratulations to those who got hired.
Juli
I got I job interview with them about 2 weeks ago. Due to covid they had to cut rates so they offered me $4 per class and if I’m always on time I get an extra $1 per class. So I would earn $10 per hour. They are really strict with their rules but they do state that you would have 80% booking rate. Even with that sed, it was bot worth it for me.
Bob
I have been working for Landi for about 18 months now so I am able to give an honest review.
Positives:
– They always pay on time (sometimes it might be delayed due to a holiday but they always let you know a month or so in advance)
– I have never had a problem with the amount, they get it spot on
– The kids are generally a good bunch, a few bad apples but if you hassle the staff enough (and the parents care) they get sorted
– Pay for me is $20 an hour (paid $8 per 25 min slot + $2 bonus for being on time, doing the full 25 etc.), I almost always get the bonus (done on a weekly basis, if you’re late to one class, you miss the bonus for the week) and have only missed out a couple of times where it was my fault. You can appeal if there are issues to do with the platform and they are quite reasonable with this.
All was going smoothly until a couple of weeks ago when they changed the contract (optional at the moment, but new teachers will get it automatically I think)
The new contract takes away a lot of flexibility, whereby I can’t just take days off willy nilly (working two jobs which sometimes clash, it is a lifesaver) like before, you can only request 3 times a year and they have reduced the number of days. Great if you can offer that stability as you get extra bonuses etc. if you don’t have time off. Those on the old contract have seen a reduction in bookings. I have gone from 20-21 (25 min slots) per week to 18 recently which is not the end of the world but if it keeps dropping I might have to look elsewhere as, at the moment, I can’t move to the new contract.
Bob
Just to update, they cut the pay by about $3-4 an hour which resulted in about $200 less a month. I no longer work there. A shame as I had regular students and a reasonable number of hours.
Lynne
HOW Many hours can one work? Is there a limit? Does the company book or does one need to market oneself? Do you work for another company now? Which one? Thank you for your time.
I am new to online. I have lots of years in the B&M classroom, and all the other qualifications. Are their any particular companies that might cater to those new to online? I would want the ability to use my laptop vs. a phone. I also would prefer company that books at least I have enough experience that I might be able to market myself. I have read all those nasty things about those who get parent bookings are the blond haired blue eyes people. I am not into stereotypes. I am an older teacher. I have heard that some companies do not care for older teachers. I will say that I do not look my age. I do not have wrinkles. I worked hard to prevent that issue.
Bob
Apologies for the late reply… When I was new to online with only face to face experience, Landi took me on. I had regular bookings and did 15-20 hours a week. You can realistically do around 3 hours a day on weekdays and more on weekends. I don’t think they worry too much about age. The only reason I left was due to the drastic pay cut.
I am now at TutorABC which is not a reliable source of income and have very few hours during the week. Last month for example I had a full day on Sundays, all the slots offered (6-7) and this month that has reduced to 1 class and then none last week. They are OK for what I need which is to supplement another income. You can get $300-600 easily enough.
A lot of companies are hiring too many teachers so you need to choose carefully and do your research. Another I signed up for in June was BlingABC. I am on the books there and passed the interview but have not been assigned a single class in 4 months.
Dwayne
What? There are no comments for Landi or ABC360? Good or Bad?
mikedveenstra@gmail.com
No comments here yet, unfortunately. There are some comments about ABC360 on the main list.
Here is a great one:
“Just in case anyone wants an update, I ended up working for ABC360 for about 2 weeks. Here was my experience:
Pros:
– lots of students. I had at least 2 students every day and was often 60-100% booked for the day
– decent pay. I was offered $14/hour plus incentive pay that would have worked out to $30-$110/month. You could go up by $1-$2 every 6 months to a cap of &18/hour
– there was a new teachers’ Skype group where people shared helpful tips and there were often staff members on duty to help with troubleshooting
– students of all ages. I was assigned to the young learners group but I got young teens and even a couple adults. It was a nice variety, although sometimes I had to watch my tone of voice to I didn’t come across as condescending to the older kids because I was talking to them like a 6 year old.
Cons:
– the attendance thing was super obnoxious. The whole process was infantilizing. Having to check in 30 mins before class starts means you’re working for free, and the ‘click me’ button 5 mins before each class was super distracting because it would make a loud noise. On the other hand if you don’t press the click me button then they might mark you absent so you had to remember to check in case it didn’t beep for whatever reason
– the rushed pace. Classes are in 20 minute slots instead of 30 minutes. They’re technically supposed to be 17 minutes long. But between pressing the click me button and trying to fill in the class feedback, I was always running late for my next class
– class feedback – they wanted: 3 words with dictionary definition + official phonetic pronunciation, 3 sentence corrections, and a <30 minute voice recording to the student. In my orientation they said you have to be good at multitasking so you can do the class feedback while teaching the class and I did get better at it, but I was always spending time at the end of the day to go back and finish up my class feedback. It was simply an unrealistic expectation used to get free work out of you.
– a general air of distrust and micromanaging. They said that they have a policy that if a student complains for any reason they get a free class. So the burden of defending yourself from false complaints falls on you. You had to screen record every class. You had to take speed tests every time a student's connection got choppy, or have the staff call you on QQ and do a line check. You had to take screenshots of all messages between you and the student. And you still often got bad feedback that you then had to ask the staff to remove from your profile and you'd have to email them the evidence of the false claim. It's exhausting to have to be on guard all the time like that. You don't know if a student is just looking to give you negative feedback, and the service doesn't check for patterns of bad feedback with the students, only with the teachers.
– scheduling – again in favour of the students over the teachers. Like I mentioned a student could book you up to 10 minutes before a class started, but they can also unbook you less than a day in advance. I'd often check the night before and see my schedule totally full, then sign in the next morning at only have a couple students. That really sucks because you randomly find yourself with gaping holes in your schedule and you only get paid for booked slots.
– the platforms. Classes can take place on QQ, Skype or their proprietary platform. The proprietary platform was not great software but it was ok. The problem was having students back to back on different platforms. You have to add them on QQ ahead of class time (which is what I used the 30 mins attendance check in for) and then it's a video call so you can't use screen sharing features like writing on the lesson slides or other interactive features
Now the biggest reason I stopped working for abc360 is that they wanted 15 hours/week from me and I just didn't have the time. I would have tried to stick it out longer if not for the other cons, but I didn't like the stress of being mistrusted, the time crunches, the unpaid work and everything else on top of the high hours requirement.
Would I recommend ABC360? Yes, in very specific cases:
– if you're not a native speaker, this gives you access to lots of classes
– the pay is comparable to other Chinese companies (I don't know about for non-natives though)
– access to lots of students. I expect I would have built up a pretty regular student base in another couple months
– you don't mind doing work on time that you're not getting paid for (finishing class feedback, adding students on skype and QQ)
– you don't get stressed out easily or angry/annoyed easily (the stupid click me button, remembering to record all your classes, remembering all sorts of protocol for proving your innocence in the face of negative feedback)
– you want a lot of hours. The minimum was 15 hours but you could easily work 30+"
From user "Chriama" on March 29, 2017
Karen
After you applied how long does it take for them to get back to you?
Estee
I applied twice and never hear back from them. I have a degree, teaching certificates from Cambridge University, three years online experience and is a native speaker. I guess there is something else wrong with me.
John
I applied and was hired within a week. Was told week by week, “start next week”‘ for 6 weeks along with many others.