SayABC

SayABC Reviews

SayABC (stopped operating in March 2021) is online education company in China for group lessons as a part of VIPKID. Teachers teach groups of children (4 students aged 5-12) during a 3 month course. Their curriculum was partly developed by National Geographic. They want native speaking teachers with a bachelors degree and an ESL certificate although they are a bit flexible, they prefer US accents. Teaching experience is preferred but not required. All the classes are from 6pm-9pm Chinese Standard Time (GMT +8) Monday to Saturday. Each class is 40 minutes and you can work as little as you want or a maximum of 24 classes per week.

They pay up to $28 USD per hour (with bonuses).

Please leave us your comments and information about SayABC.

View Comments

  • It is now official Sayabc will cease operating on March 26th 2021. This is an extract from a broadcast email sent to all current and former teachers with Sayabc.
    " Dear Teacher,
    We hope you and your family are well and healthy. We write to notify you that for business reasons, SayABC has made the difficult decision to cease operations for business reasons as of March 26, 2021 (Beijing Time)."

  • Teachers on reddit are saying this company has gone under. They cannot access the website or get a response from admin. Is this company still active?

  • I am happy with SayABC and ve had no problems with the. They is now searching for new teachers and offer $15 per 40min classes.
    APPLY HERE: https://t.sayabc.com/recruit.html#/apply?source=1&via=REFERRAL&rc=E35265
    REQUIREMENTS:
    1. Passport Holders of: USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand
    2. Be equipped with computers with fast internet connection and audio/video capability
    3. Hold a Bachelor degree or above
    4. TESOL/TEFL and teaching experience is a plus

    What they OFFER:

    1. Up to $22 – $19 per 40 min class. Base pay: $13 – $15 USD and Incentive: $4 USD per class based on attendance and productivity.
    2. Start teaching quickly! – 10 – 14
    3. $ 8 Successful Trial Class
    4. Interactive platform with pre-uploaded National Geographic lessons with 4-6 students per class.
    5. Set your own hours – No Min Hours!

    • Are you able to make the kids raise their hands to speak or do they just speak out of turn when they want?

  • SayABC started off as great place to work but since the spring of 2019, it has gone significantly downhill. The pay has decreased. They have removed classes from the teachers who have been there since the beginning and gave classes to new teachers with lower entry pay. They have also gone to 6 students per class format via their platform which is difficult to manage. You must set your availability and work the paired days as agreed. Any missed days, and the class is given to a new teacher. The "system" will not reassign you students although they say if you open your slots it will. I had my slots open from May through Sept....every day and time avail...no bookings. I did not renew my contract. The fireman are slow to help. Any issues are typically the teachers fault and they are dinged for it. The company is very unforgiving and harsh. I now work for Qkids and am fully booked. The time off is lenient and there is no prep prior to class. Way better company where teachers are valued.

  • SayABC has been one of the more professional companies to work with. I had ongoing work until the summer months. The pay was good, and the bonuses made for an excellent second job. I always received my checks on time. I do find their platform more interesting than some of the companies out there. It is very engaging for students. The pictures and the interactive games are very professional. Of course, some of the level 1 slides were a bit easy, and you had to add some of your own personality to get the students involved.

    This company also has a fixed schedule so you can't change your schedule every month if you needed to. However the bonuses are great if you can manage to have good attendance.

  • Application process
    - I sent an application online, via their website
    - I was contacted back via email for an online interview with a recruiter
    - I interviewed with a recruiter on a scheduled date and time. The interview included some basic questions including:

    Tell me about yourself

    My experience teaching English: how long I've taught, the type of students I've taught (children, adults)

    Where I was from and what passport I have

    Approximately how many hours I'd be available each week and some other typical interview questions

    - After the interview, I was contacted again and asked to download their teaching software/platform and schedule a date for my mock lesson
    - The mock lesson was with a teacher that was already employed with them; he pretended to be a child 6-9 years old, and I had to teach one of their trial lessons to him
    - After the mock, I was contacted about a couple of days later with an offer for employment
    - I was offered 15 USD for every 40-minute class

    How long I worked for SAYABC
    - I worked for a little over 3 months

    WHY I LEFT SAYABC.

    - I have taught online with various ESL companies, but primarily European companies. So, I am used to being treated like a human being (because I'm one :|😒 ).
    - My experience working with Chinese companies has really educated me a lot about the Chinese system. Basically, when you work for a Chinese company, whether as an employee or independent contractor, you are generally treated as a subhuman creature...and at best, like a robot. You are expected to deal with all sorts of bureaucratic imbecility, neurotic managers, miserable "support staff" and plain old rude idiots, who do not even acknowledge that their insufferable behaviours are abusive, impolite and disrespectful. Why? I don't know, but it's possible that they actually treat each other in the same way.

    - If you're just a regular SAYABC teacher, you will encounter this "un-supportive" supposed "support staff". You try getting support from someone who is very apparently miserable with their life and see how much support you get.

    - However, all this changes if you are one of their "special teachers". Special teachers get the "Un-Chinese hospitality" (basically, they actually treat you like a human being). Not to call any names, but typing SAYABC into any search engine will pop up videos of their "special teachers". As a special teacher, you get red carpet treatment (e.g. they actually reply to your emails within the same week and reply to your Skype messages at a time that is still relevant to your enquiry). Why is this? Why do "special teachers" get treated like human beings, while the rest of us are fair game for all sorts of abuse by the Chinese employees of SAYABC, from "support" staff, to IT workers, to the "managers"? Well, it's because "special teachers" are, for lack of better words, "useful idiots" (in the words of Yuri Bezmenov). If SAYABC treated all their teachers like crap, who would make those pretty "how to get employed by SAYABC!" and "10 GREAT THINGS ABOUT WORKING FOR SAYABC!" videos that are posted online? SAYABC would have to rely on some Chinese employee with a very limited ability of communicating in English, to make the videos for them, and serious teachers would not take such a company seriously (right?). SAYABC therefore needs native English speakers to make those videos for them, and for this reason, they have their "special teachers" (or useful idiots) that are always going to be there to keep making videos and recruiting easily dispensable contractors.

    Want to know more reasons why I left? Read on.

    Any internet problem a student has is YOUR fault. It doesn't matter if your other classes ran smoothly and you always have the same internet connection problem with the same student, every single time you have a class with them, it's YOUR fault, and the useless SAYABC portal ensures that it records it as being your fault. How? Whenever a student has a connection problem, the portal automatically drops the teacher's connection and displays it to be "poor", even though the teacher can hear all other students in the class perfectly well, and all other students in the class can also hear the teacher well, with the exception of the student with the connection problem. Who cares if your connection to a Beijing server has a download speed of over 50mbs, an upload speed above 20mbs and a ping of 10 - 90 (WITH WIFI CONNECTION)? SAYABC doesn't; they consider it to be your own blimming fault that the student has poor internet connection. Not the student's fault, no, never!

    Another reason I left: You have the Chinese SAYABC employees sending you messages via the chatroom in the classroom, in the middle of your class. 9 out of 10 times, these messages have absolutely nothing to do with the lesson that you're teaching. The worst part of this, is that I had a so called "manager" (who you would think would be a lot wiser and know about the existence of decorum and propriety, unlike the other flying monkeys that work for SAYABC), send embarrassing messages using the classroom chatroom, while I was bang in the middle of a lesson. Why should this bother me? Because not only can some children read quite well, their parents, who usually sit next to them during the class, may also know how to read English and also understand English. What did I get when I brought this up with the "un-supportive" support staff? Nothing. They did not acknowledge what they had done and they didn't even consider what they had done to be unacceptable behaviour.

    My pay was constantly missing a small but significant amount every month I got paid, with the exception of the first month (more on this later).

    EVERYONE is rude at SAYABC. Every single Chinese employee that I communicated with (with the exception of my recruiter), had abominable English, were unpleasant to speak with and were rude. Some might say, "it's the language barrier". Ehh no, it's not. I have lived in 2 non-English speaking countries, continuously, over the past 7 years, and I know language barrier when I see one, and I also know impertinence when I encounter it. Someone screaming over you and not letting you get a word in when you're having a Skpye call with them to share your concerns, is not "language barrier" being displayed. They are rude.

    Finished a class a little earlier than scheduled? (35 minutes instead of 40 minutes; 36 minutes instead of 40 minutes? 39 minutes and 30 seconds instead of 40 minutes), you better not leave the classroom before the clock hits 40 minutes. Why? Because that lesson would be recorded as a "teacher-no-show". What does this mean? It means you don't get paid for teaching the whole presentation for 34, 35, 39.5 minutes, because SAYBAC considers your time to be worthless, if you don't spend 40 minutes in the classroom. So what do you do if you finish the presentation before 40 minutes? You stay in the classroom and do half-baked activities with the children, or you go back to the middle of the presentation and repeat what you've just taught several times, to visibly uninterested and usually sleepy children (classes are held between 6PM and shortly after 9PM Beijing time). It's the Chinese way.

    It can't be all bad, right? I mean you stayed for 4+ months.
    - I enjoyed teaching my students. I actually looked forward to each of my classes, even my classes with difficult students
    - The base pay was okay: 15 USD per 40-minute class
    - They paid on time (for the few months I worked with them, I always received my pay between the 10th and 15th of the subsequent month). However, my pay was always missing between 15 USD and 35 USD. After contacting the SAYABC "support" team about this, I received an email claiming it was "bank transfer fees". I call BULL on this. Why? Because my pay experienced this deduction before reaching my bank account, and in addition to that deduction, I also had to pay fees to my bank. If what SAYABC said on their contract and during the interview was true (we would cover any fees associated with transfers from China, but you have to pay your bank fees yourself), then I wouldn't have had to pay another transfer fee, in addition to the fees I paid to my bank. Strangely though, I only started paying "transfer fees" not including my banks fees, after my first pay. I only paid my bank fees for my first pay, and the amount that reached my account was what was recorded on the portal. This was a huge part of my leaving, because I cannot tolerate working with people that are financially dishonest. One month, 15 USD was missing from my account (the price of 1 whole 40-minute lesson), the next month was 35 USD. For all I know, the following month would have me short of 100 USD, in the guise of "transfer fees". Wait, I'm supposed to be writing about the positive aspects of working for SAYABC.
    - The teaching material was generally well written, with a few exceptions where some slides were just stupid and made no sense; however, these were very few and far between.
    - The incentives were good. 22 USD/class for subbing for another teacher; base rate (15 USD) for a trial class + 8 USD for every student that signs up within 5 days of the trial class (why within 5 days? Because they would actually have to pay you a lot of money if there was no limited time-frame in which students had to register with them after the trial class). +54 USD to your total pay for every unit you finish with your group of students (each unit has 9 classes, and you meet your students 2x/week), so each unit is completed in about 5 weeks).

    Why didn't you stay? The perks were good, notwithstanding the horrible work culture adhered to by the Chinese SAYABC employees.
    My dignity is priceless.

    • Could you suggest some European companies? I have found that the companies expect you to provide them with respect but, in most cases that is not returned. I am looking for a company to start with. I am a native of the US, taught 20 yrs of music, retired. I would really like to start with a strong conapmy where I am able to learn correctly. My goal would be to stay indefinitely, if it is the right company fo me or stay for a year and maybe, find another company. I am not one to wnat to hop around to locate the correct position. It seems that many of the companies have made some pretty radical changes. I have only been familiar with the Chinese companies. I am almost finished with the TESOL and hope to get a TEFL in addition. the TESOL. ( I found a TEFL that appears to be more thorough.).I have both a Bachelors and a Masters- The Masters is in M.Ed. with a minor in music. I have a state teacher certificate from the US. I only speak English. Thanks in advance. My email is springly78@gmail.com

Leave a Comment