It's taken 5 months since escaping the South Korea placement for me to be able to write this review. I'd rather forget about this awful experience but I feel I owe it to anyone considering this option.
Your first call with Travel Bud will be great with them promising to honour your preferences and to support you through your whole experience. I was quite nervous about working at a Hagwon considering all the horror stories you see online (which are all 100% valid) and Travel Bud reassured me that I would be supported. I'd taught for 7 years at this point and had previously lived in China, so naively I assumed I would be fine on this 'programme' and I was optimistic.
After you've paid your first deposit to Travel Bud, you'll be passed onto another company which they paint as their close partner but I found out that there are a number of companies including Travel Bud who pass on their clients to this other company. The other company seems to be completely overwhelmed and you are treated as such. In total, on this 'Travel Bud programme' you'll work with 4 different companies being passed on and passed on with seemingly no communication between them.
I was told to keep communication with Travel Bud because the only way problems arise is if you don't keep open communication. One of the companies that you are passed onto after the 2nd company is completely hostile and they are the ones responsible for where you're actually placed, your contract, and your preferences. Turned out the preferences couldn't be honoured at all. I felt stuck at this point because I'd already invested money into the programme and had quit my job, so I continued and hoped things would get better.
Travel Bud had assured me it would be simple to have my fiancé and I placed together in the same school and apartment. In reality, we were placed a 20 minute subway ride away in different schools and apartments with conflicting schedules. We agreed to this in the end under pressure and for the reasons I mentioned above. However, it got worse and my school told me they'd be moving me to a different campus and division once my quarantine was over, a 50 minute bus ride away from my fiancé. I got in contact with Travel Bud and the other companies but Travel Bud didn't reply. I had no choice in the matter and was sent away. I never received my quarantine food box from the government with essentials, I informed Travel Bud, again nothing. At the school, they told me to sign a new contract now that I was in Korea. Massive red flag, I'd already agreed and signed a contract prior to leaving the UK. Again I contacted Travel Bud, and they didn't step in. I was made to sign the new contract.
Travel Bud claims they have a trusted network of schools but they are not the company that places the clients. My school was awful, there was bullying, emotional abuse, gaslighting, and all the teachers were under chronic stress. The previous teacher had done a midnight run after her health became so bad she kept fainting in the classroom. One had to be put on an IV drip because of the stress. My fiancé was placed in a school that hadn't had a foreign teacher in 2 years. My friend was placed in a school which had been reported by two previous teachers and she was still sent there.
I soon realised that I was on my own and Travel Bud appeared to have no say in what happens to their clients. Even now and then I'd get a random message from Travel Bud saying things like you're quiet, must be living your best life! which just rubbed salt in the wound. In fact, I had never been so unwell in my life.
Thankfully, the school gave teachers 5 days off for winter holidays so I was able to organise an escape without alerting anyone. I returned to the UK with terrible physical and mental health. I went out to Korea a confident and excited young person and came back with PTSD, involuntary gagging and sickness, disordered eating, chronic abdominal pain, panic attacks, tinnitus, and a foot injury. Only now after 5 months back home am I able to write about my awful experience. I stayed for the 5 months because the children I taught had such chronically stressful lives at the age of 5 years old that I felt like I wanted them to have at least some respite from it all in my classroom.
I urge you to reconsider this option if you are thinking about doing so. For a time I was even afraid to write a review because of the potential backlash but I have a right to voice my horrendous experience with this company.
Response from TravelBud
Hi Gemma
Our entire team has taken the time to thoroughly read through your review and to understand not only your concerns, but see how we can use this as an opportunity to address them and make improvements to our program.
As with your partner Tom, we would like to reiterate that we take this seriously and that while hundreds of teachers have had positive experiences with our program, we value feedback and do not take these negative experiences lightly.
We are incredibly saddened and deeply sorry to hear that your time in South Korea was not the experience that you had hoped it would be.
We ask respectfully that we are given the opportunity to respond to your points from our perspective, as you have been given the chance to do.
Overall, we would like to make it clear that there are certain elements of the experience that are in our control and that we are investigating, and then there are elements that simply cannot be considered the responsibility of a single organization, such as government efficacy and cultural norms pertaining to another country.
Our goal as an institution is to offer support and guidance within the realm of what we can control and to navigate the logistical elements of moving to another country, but we do feel it would be deemed unreasonable to place blame squarely at the door of TravelBud for elements of an experience that has innumerable factors across cultures and individuals.
Teaching abroad offers a unique opportunity to embrace a very different culture from one's own and openness and adaptability are qualities that make for teachers that thrive in new environments and under the pressures of moving abroad.
Having all taught abroad before, we can truly understand that the experience has challenges and it’s not all Instagrammable views - there are days when you miss your family and home and when adapting to new cultures can feel overwhelming. In most cases, however, the good outweighs the bad and the challenges. I’m sorry to hear that this was not the case in your experience teaching in South Korea.
The first point we would like to address is the idea of multiple, disconnected companies. The work that goes into each applicant for the entire journey prior to departure, upon arrival and throughout your time is extensive. As such, we have taken the various aspects of the process and divided it between ourselves and our closely aligned partners with whom we have worked for years, to ensure that those with expertise specific to a particular process are handling that specific aspect.
That being said, we are transparent about the fact that TravelBud is your main point of contact throughout your journey, regardless of what stage you are in. We ask that our applicants reach out to us first and foremost in the event of any feedback, be it positive or negative.
You mentioned that you reached out to us several times with no response, but we have the correspondence of the numerous emails between yourself and our support team. There is no correspondence that indicates that you were looking to leave and we had to hear from another teacher at your school that you had left Korea. It is very difficult to assist teachers if we do not have open and honest communication with our team to be able to best assist.
We have looked into the hostility mentioned by the staff member at one of our partner companies and I can assure you that that particular staff member has been let go. We are looking into ways to ensure that the level of communication across the board is at a standard that TravelBud is happy with.
We do need to acknowledge that while we have dealt with that particular staff member and that we do apologise for their conduct, teachers also need to understand that the Korean staff can come off very direct as a result of direct translations from Korean and cultural differences in their means of communication.
In terms of placements within the same proximity, I understand that you feel that it was not close enough. There are a number of moving parts that need to align in order to place teachers in the same school. Under normal circumstances, it can be challenging to take on couples, but we are one of the few companies willing to do so and we, unfortunately, cannot overlook the extenuating circumstances and challenges posed during the world pandemic. In light of that, we did our best to ensure you were as close as physically possible at the time.
We are working on the following plans that are as a result of your feedback:
- A clear and transparent infographic to showcase our connections with our entire team and their process responsibilities
- Management of expectations regarding what is feasible in the teaching landscape when it comes to placing couples
- Broadening the scope of understanding the means of communication across cultures
I will be reaching out to you and Tom personally via email to hopefully open a dialogue to address some of your points and see how we can navigate this process together in order to improve.
Warm Regards,
Tristan Owen
CEO