E-Chinese Learning Reviews

(based on 6 reviews)

88 of 178 people found this review helpful

See my experience here https://www.reddit.com/r/ChineseLanguage/comments/4p86zg/my_sad_story_of_attempting_to_use/

I've recently succumbed to their advertising - "Our focus is on you", The Economist testimonials - and subscribed to their "service". Not only did they "assign" a tutor who's booked out for the next two weeks, they are not even refunding my first month subscription fee. The fee is rather high (double?) too, its over US $300 a month for up to 3 lessons a week. I hope Paypal will return my money, given this HK company's only reaction to a Paypal dispute was to block my access completely :)

Lessons learned:

1. Don't trust advertising (duh), even if it comes from The Economist
2. Never get into a subscription deal, only consider pay-per-lesson variants like they have on italki.com
3. eChineseLearning.com is particularly bad because you're not in control of anything - you only get to select a time slot, and if your "tutor" is not available that day (which is common, unless you book like a month in advance) you get a random substitution.

Hilariously, their michael_echineselearning dude (via Skype) has been blackmailing me to remove all comments or they won't refund any money, sheesh.
"basically, what we said [to Paypal] is that we will refund the... (Read the full review)

In summary, I would not recommend E-Chinese Learning to a friend.

103 of 215 people found this review helpful

I know that the teachers at echineselearning are obscenely underpaid. And if the students skip classes, the teachers are not paid at all, while the students are charged for missing that class. This is completely unfair to me. That's also the reason the teachers there take a move often.

Internet can be unpredictable. These teachers don't go to the office; they mostly work from home on their own laptops, and it can be the luck of the draw whether their building has reliable Internet.

These teachers are predominantly young women who might not be as experienced as they stated.
I first did echineselearning, then I moved on to iChineseLearning, which is another online Chinese school that offers similar service. So far, I am doing pretty well with them. The teachers there are stable and don't change so often. As far as I know, teachers at iChineselearning get better payment. Another good part of iChineseLearning is that the schedule is more flexible and there are not as many rules and limitations. And the price is more reasonable. If you are considering learning Chinese this way, I encourage you to try both and compare. Fortunately, both of these schools offer free trial lessons. (Read the full review)

In summary, I would not recommend E-Chinese Learning to a friend.