Teaching is great but the training course not so good

Ratings
Overall
4
Benefits: 1
Support: 1
Fun: 1
Facilities: 4
Safety: 4
Review

Teaching in Thailand has been a great experience, but I cannot rate the training as highly. I stayed on Koh Chang which is a lovely island but the accommodation was appalling. Tefl heaven advertised this as 'experiencing real Thailand' which really is a nice way of saying, 'we will do this as cheap as possible'. The 'hut' where I stayed was invaded by an army of ants on several occasions to which there was little done about it. During several thunderstorms I was awoke while sleeping on my mattress on the floor (no bed) to having rain dripping on my face and the mattress soaked. I also had two very expensive silk tops eaten by some sort of insects which I had to discard. While we stayed in horrendous conditions the trainers where in luxury huts, I think this is disgraceful.
The food in the accommodation was mediocre and rather pricey considering you have to eat there most days. There are no shops nearby as a substitute. To get to the nearest shop you have to either walk along the beach which you cannot do when the tide is in or get a taxi which costs 50 baht per person each way.
We did our training above the restaurant at the resort which was once again, another hut. This obviously lacked air conditioning which is highly uncomfortable when you are training 7hrs a day and have not acclimatised to Thai weather.
The training itself was poorly put together as we were taught by previous teachers who only had the experience of 1 or 2 semesters. This meaning that they had only taught for around 4 months, I highly doubt they are qualified to teach anything other than English as a foreign language.
Whilst having this experience my friend did his training at the same time in ko Samui and stayed in a 4 star hotel with air conditioned classroom. We paid the same amount and I think he got a lot more for his money while I feel very much ripped off.
Tefl heaven also neglected to tell us that our tefl certificates are not up to the highest standard and although we have all paid a lot of money, we can not get a job teaching in a language school back home. So basically the only countries you can teach with your tefl certificate is where tefl heaven have their training programmes.

I would like to say that the teaching itself is great and thoroughly enjoyable but this is not with any thanks to tefl heaven as they send your information a consultancy agency, who are responsible for placing you and everything after that. I have heard some bad reports from the partner organization, Media Kids, but through my experience they have been very helpful.

Would you recommend this program?
No, I would not