There is a famous line, usually attributed to the political scientist Wallace Sayre, that academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small.
Nobody is fighting over a kingdom. They are fighting over a parking space, a footnote, or who gets listed second on a paper that eleven people will read.
I have been thinking about Sayre’s Law because of something that has happened in the online TEFL industry.
The immediate financial incentive behind some of the activity I describe here may have been relatively small: perhaps $20–60 for a course sale generated through an affiliate link.
The consequences for everyone else were not.
Disclosure first: I own TEFL Online Pro. This is not a neutral post. It is my account of a dispute involving my company, and it summarizes the evidence presented in our full Transparency Report. Readers should judge the evidence for themselves.
The full TEFL Online Pro Transparency Report, including supporting material and screenshots. Click the image to read it.
The setup: who is who
TEFL Online Pro has offered online TEFL/TESOL certification since 2019. We are fully accredited by ACTEFLC — the Accreditation Council for Teaching English as a Foreign Language Courses — and have trained more than 50,000 graduates worldwide. We have also received the Teachers’ Choice Award eight times.
Our main competitor, The TEFL Academy (TTA / Everything TEFL LTD), changed ownership in 2021. We had no notable disputes with the company before that period.
Since then, we have encountered damaging online content about TEFL Online Pro published by people whom we understand to have had commercial connections with TTA’s Brand Ambassador program.
The relevant relationships were not disclosed in the content we identified.
That is the starting point for this article. It is not an argument that competitors should never criticize one another. They should be able to do so. It is an argument that readers deserve to know when apparently independent commentary comes from someone with a relevant commercial relationship.
But I believe there is a bigger picture here.
Sicarios for hire? Affiliate marketing as a competitive weapon
The two cases described below should not be viewed in isolation.
In our experience, the problems began after The TEFL Academy changed ownership in 2021. Since then, we have had reason to question whether affiliate and ambassador relationships have been used as a means of attacking a competitor while allowing the company that may benefit to remain at a distance.
I have come to think of this as the sicario model of online competition.
In Spanish, sicario refers to a hired assassin. Here, I am using the term metaphorically: the attack is carried out by someone else, the commercial interests behind it may not be visible to the audience, and the company that may benefit can distance itself from the person who published the content.
The analogy is deliberately provocative. I am not suggesting that every affiliate marketer is acting improperly, or that an ambassador relationship by itself proves that a company commissioned an attack. The question is whether the evidence in these cases points to a wider pattern of competitive conduct.
Consider the difference between a company openly publishing a critical advertisement and an affiliate publishing a supposedly independent review.
In the first case, readers know who is speaking and can account for the commercial interest. In the second, readers may believe they are hearing from an independent observer, unaware that the author has a relationship with a competing provider.
The criticism is visible. The commercial connection may not be.
That is what makes this model potentially effective. Content that appears independent can carry more persuasive weight than an openly competitive advertisement. And when a third party publishes it, establishing the extent of the company’s involvement can be difficult.
It can also complicate accountability. The existence of a commercial relationship does not establish who commissioned, directed or approved a particular publication. But it is a reason to investigate the circumstances and to ask why the relationship was not disclosed.
Our Transparency Report sets out the records we have collected. I invite readers to examine them and consider whether these incidents look like unrelated disputes or part of a broader pattern.
Brand ambassadors and affiliate links: fine, if you say so
Affiliate marketing is not a crime. It is a perfectly legitimate business model.
A company pays a commission when someone refers a customer who makes a purchase. A content creator can earn money by recommending products, courses or services.
There is nothing inherently wrong with that arrangement. The problem arises when commercial content looks like independent opinion and the financial relationship is not made clear.
Advertising guidance in the UK and Ireland addresses the need for advertising and commercial relationships to be identifiable. The precise obligations depend on the circumstances, the platform and the applicable rules. The underlying principle is straightforward: readers should not have to investigate an author’s business relationships to discover a relevant commercial interest.
TTA operates a Brand Ambassador program and has also advertised a commission-based affiliate scheme through ShareASale. Our records include program material indicating commissions in the region of 10–15% per sale, potentially amounting to approximately $20–60 on a course sale, depending on the price and terms.
The TEFL Academy Brand Ambassador material held in our records:
Another example of the program material.
The affiliate program listing.
The commission terms shown in the program material. These figures describe the program; they do not prove that a particular author received a commission on a particular post.
Twenty to sixty dollars.
That is the potential financial incentive we are talking about.
It is not proof that money motivated any particular person to write anything. Nor does evidence of participation in an ambassador program, on its own, establish that an author earned a commission from a specific review.
But it raises an obvious question: if a writer has a commercial relationship with a competing provider, should readers be told?
I believe the answer is yes.
2021: the blog post that got it wrong
In March 2021, a review of TEFL Online Pro appeared on the TPR Teaching website under the headline “TEFL Online Pro Review Warning: Is it Legit?”
The author, Caitriona McTiernan, had a personal affiliate link associated with The TEFL Academy, according to the material we collected. We also have records connecting her with TTA promotional content.
The review stated that there was no evidence that TEFL Online Pro was regulated or accredited.
We dispute that statement. TEFL Online Pro was fully accredited by ACTEFLC at the time. The supporting records are included in our Transparency Report.
The original review and its recommendation to avoid TEFL Online Pro.
A comment published under the name “Caitriona Maria” on July 11, 2021, stated: “Yes, TEFL Online Pro is a scam.”
That is a serious accusation. Readers should be able to examine the context and decide whether the evidence presented justified it.
We found no affiliate disclosure on the review. We also found no disclosure of the commercial relationship in the comment.
Yet the same author included affiliate-link disclosure in the description of a YouTube video reviewing The TEFL Academy.
The YouTube video promoting The TEFL Academy.
The disclosure included in the video description.
You can view Caitriona’s YouTube video promoting The TEFL Academy here.
The contrast is relevant. It suggests that the author was familiar with affiliate disclosure, even though we could not find a comparable disclosure on the material criticizing our company.
The original TPR Teaching post was subsequently removed. Our records include a Wayback Machine archive of the page from March 30, 2021.
An archived record of the original page.
We also contacted The TEFL Academy about the related YouTube channel. In correspondence from December 2022, TTA support initially described the channel as belonging to “a creator we are unaware of.” After we identified the person, the response stated that she “no longer works for company.”
The December 2022 correspondence. The screenshots should be read together and in their original context.
Those statements are difficult to reconcile at face value. They do not, by themselves, establish everything about the relationship between the author and TTA, but they are part of the documentary record readers can examine.
The point is not that a Brand Ambassador must agree with the company they represent, or that an affiliate cannot criticize a competitor. The point is that readers deserve to know about relevant commercial connections when they assess a supposedly independent review.
2024: the Reddit post
In October 2024, a customer completed our 120-hour TEFL course. Our records show that she completed the course in the morning and that her certificate was issued later that day.
She subsequently initiated a PayPal chargeback. The dispute was resolved in TEFL Online Pro’s favor.
Two days after the certificate was issued, a long post appeared on Reddit alleging that we had threatened her and sent fabricated emails.
Source: View Megan Broccoli’s original Reddit post.
We dispute all allegations.
Our records show that our communications with the customer concerned matters including her course payment, completion and passing of the course, certificate issuance, and the chargeback. We deny sending the emails that were later presented as screenshots in the post.
These are contested allegations, and readers cannot settle them simply by taking my word for it. That is why we have preserved the relevant records and set out our account in the Transparency Report.
The Reddit post as preserved in our records. Keep the date and surrounding context visible.
We also hold documentation that appears to connect the author with TTA’s Brand Ambassador program.
The Reddit post did not disclose that connection.
To be clear, the existence of an ambassador relationship does not automatically make every criticism invalid. Nor does it prove that the author was paid to publish this particular post. It is relevant context that readers should be able to consider.
The thread has continued to circulate online. We have also seen TEFL Online Pro discussed in AI-generated search summaries. When online material is summarized by automated systems, the original context and any undisclosed commercial relationships may not be carried through.
That creates an additional problem. A claim can be repeated in a new form long after the original discussion, and readers may not know where it came from or what evidence was offered to support it.
This is another reason why transparency matters. Once an allegation has been repeated across websites, forums and search summaries, correcting the record can be far more difficult than publishing the original claim.
An Earlier Dispute Over Facebook Reviews
There is further background to my concerns about the integrity of online reviews in the TEFL industry.
Shortly after The TEFL Academy changed ownership, I received a telephone call from representatives of the organization questioning why TEFL Online Pro had accumulated so many five-star reviews on Facebook. During that conversation, I understood a subsequent statement as a verbal threat to manipulate our Facebook reviews by posting negative comments. To my knowledge, that proposed action was not carried out by The TEFL Academy.
Separately, I have screenshots of communications that I understood as threats to post negative reviews of TEFL Online Pro involving ITT International TEFL and TESOL Ltd. I regard those communications as serious and relevant to the wider question of whether online reviews can be manipulated for commercial purposes.
I retain the screenshots as supporting documentation. Readers should distinguish between the telephone conversation I recall, the written communications that can be examined directly, and any conclusions drawn from them.
These incidents are part of the background to my position that reviews should be assessed critically, that commercial relationships should be disclosed, and that allegations about a business should be supported by evidence.
Threats, Review Manipulation and an Attempt to Silence Criticism
My concerns about the integrity of online reviews are not based solely on the experiences described above. In November 2022, I received emails from an account identifying itself as International TEFL and TESOL containing explicit threats concerning activity directed at the TEFL Online Pro website and its online reputation. The correspondence involved James Anthony Dwyer, associated with ITT International TEFL and TESOL Ltd., and World TEFL Institute. The following screenshots document the communications and the proposals made.
I have retained four screenshots documenting this episode.
1. A review of his own TEFL course
The first screenshot shows a review of James Anthony Dwyer’s own TEFL course, accompanied by a photograph of Dwyer himself, using the alias, “Paul”. I consider this relevant to the question of transparency and the distinction between independent customer feedback and promotional material.
2. Threats involving our website
In an email dated 13 November 2022, Dwyer stated that he already had a click farm clicking on TEFL Online Pro’s Google advertisements and threatened database takeovers and SQL injection of malware on our website, teflonlinepro.com, unless I removed two posts.
The email explicitly made the threatened action conditional on my removing the posts.
3. Threats concerning our Facebook reviews
In separate correspondence, Dwyer threatened to undermine our company’s Facebook reviews with negative comments. I subsequently observed negative review activity that I believe was connected to these threats. I have retained screenshots documenting the correspondence and the reviews.
4. Further correspondence
The fourth screenshot contains a longer email exchange, including further threats and a proposal that I remove critical posts, publish a favorable review of ITT International TEFL and TESOL, and cooperate in promoting its website. In return, the sender offered to remove comments, stop the alleged advertising activity and refrain from the threatened action against our website.
I did not accept this proposal.
I am publishing these records because I believe readers should understand the commercial environment in which online TEFL reviews are sometimes produced and promoted. The screenshots allow readers to examine the original communications and form their own conclusions.
Identification and police investigation
For clarity, the official school email address published by ITT International TEFL and TESOL Ltd. is contact@internationaltefltesol.com. However, the correspondence reproduced above was also conducted through the general Gmail address itttefltesol@gmail.com.
We have since established, through evidence obtained during our enquiries, that James Anthony Dwyer was responsible for sending communications from both email addresses. The use of a general Gmail account does not alter the evidence concerning the identity of the sender.
We have reported this matter to the UK police, and a criminal investigation is currently ongoing. We are awaiting its outcome and will not prejudge the conclusions of that investigation.
What it cost
This is the part that Sayre’s Law does not fully capture.
Content like this does not stay in a corner of the internet. A prospective student searches for “TEFL Online Pro review,” finds a blog post or Reddit thread that appears to offer independent advice, and uses it to decide where to spend their money.
If the author has a commercial relationship with a competing provider and does not disclose it, the reader may not have the information needed to evaluate that advice properly.
We believe that negative content of this kind has cost us business. We cannot reliably calculate the precise financial impact of any individual post, and we cannot know what every prospective student thought when they encountered it.
But the potential consequences are real.
People considering a TEFL qualification may be investing savings, planning a move abroad, or trying to start a new career. Their decision deserves to be informed by accurate information and transparent recommendations.
A commission of $20–60 may be a modest amount to the person earning it. For a student making a decision about their future, misleading or incomplete information can have much greater consequences.
And if a competitor’s affiliate network is being used to spread damaging claims while obscuring the commercial context, the consequences can extend beyond the immediate target. Readers lose the opportunity to assess the content fairly, and businesses may find themselves defending their reputations against claims circulating without the context needed to evaluate them.
That is why this post exists. Not to suggest that competitors should never criticize one another, but to argue that commercial relationships should be visible and factual claims should be supportable.
ESLinsider: the TEFL “authority”
There is another issue worth considering when evaluating TEFL content: who operates the website, and what do they sell?
ESLinsider is a blog and online TEFL training business associated with Ian Patrick Leahy. Readers who arrive through a search for TEFL provider reviews may see an informative-looking article and assume that the author is an independent observer.
But a website that publishes reviews and sells its own TEFL training has a commercial interest in the market it discusses.
That fact does not automatically invalidate its content. A business owner can write a useful, accurate review of a competitor. What matters is whether the information is fair, the evidence is sound, and the reader has enough context to judge the author’s perspective.
When assessing any review website, I recommend checking the following:
- Who owns and operates the site?
- Does the author sell a competing course?
- Are the review criteria explained?
- Are claims about accreditation supported by evidence?
- Does the article distinguish documented facts from opinion?
- Are commercial relationships disclosed?
Ian Patrick was banned from Facebook, in 2017, for spreading disinformation and misinformation on the platform.
I would apply these questions to ESLinsider, to The TEFL Academy, and to TEFL Online Pro. No provider should be exempt from scrutiny simply because it publishes the review rather than being the subject of it.
The commercial context is worth knowing. It is not a substitute for examining the evidence.
A quick word about “free” TEFL courses
Free TEFL courses are widely advertised, and some can provide a useful introduction to teaching English. But “free” does not tell you everything you need to know about the product.
This Trusted TEFL Reviews article covers most of the main points with regard to one particularly notorious “free” online TEFL certification course program (Teacher Record):
https://trustedteflreviews.com/2026/10/12/is-teacher-record-legit/
In the case of Teacher Record, you are the product.
This provider earns revenue through the issuing of an expensive TEFL certificate, will only issue the certificate after you have agreed to write and publish a highly positive review of their course, and then you enter the world of hate with regard to discriminatory job posts and switch-and-bait job postings that promise a certain salary, only to be heavily reduced once you accept a job opening.
They harvest your data.
TEFL Online Pro publicly called this out online.
What was the result?
An immediate online attack in the form of an intense stream of black-hat SEO, predominantly coming from a Chinese casino website: toeflonline.info
I reported the domain toeflonline.info to Google through its reporting system. When I subsequently checked the domain, it was no longer accessible. I have not independently established the reason for its inaccessibility.
Teacher Record is based in mainland China.
Before choosing a course, look at:
- The course content: What will you actually study?
- Assessment: Is your learning assessed, and how?
- Accreditation: Who accredits the course, and what does that accreditation mean?
- Certificate recognition: Will the certificate meet the requirements of the employers or institutions you have in mind?
- Commercial arrangements: Are there fees, conditions or employment-related obligations beyond the advertised price?
Do not assume that a course is good simply because it is free, or that a paid course is necessarily better. Compare the substance, recognition and terms.
Why we don’t routinely ask students for reviews
There is one more thing I want to say about reviews themselves.
We do not routinely ask our students to leave reviews. We prefer that students decide voluntarily whether they want to share their experience.
That means our review numbers may grow more slowly than those of a business that systematically invites every customer to post feedback. Many satisfied customers finish their course and move on with their lives without writing anything online.
The reviews we receive reflect people who have chosen to share their experiences. That does not make every review automatically representative, and it does not mean that critical feedback should be ignored.
It is also worth looking carefully at patterns in the reviews of any provider. If a business receives a cluster of five-star reviews on the same day, a reader may reasonably wonder how those reviews were generated. The timing alone does not prove that anything improper has occurred. Reviews may be requested in batches, for example, and genuine customers may post around the same time.
However, it does raise serious questions as to the legitimacy of reviews from certain providers.
The lesson is not to assume wrongdoing. It is to look at the wider context rather than treating a star rating or review count as conclusive proof of quality.
We prefer to let our customers speak for themselves, and we encourage prospective students to consider multiple sources before making a decision.
Don’t take our word for it
This article has discussed negative reviews, brand ambassadors, affiliate marketing, and the importance of transparency. But what do students who have actually taken our courses think?
Since 2019, TEFL Online Pro has received feedback from graduates across a range of platforms. Rather than asking readers to take my word for the quality of our courses, I invite you to read the reviews and form your own opinion.
In Annelise’s TEFL Online Pro review, she is starting as an English Teaching Assistant with Fulbright Austria. This was made possible because of her TEFL Online Pro certification.
In Noor’s TEFL Online Pro teaching English follow-up review, she outlines how her TEFL Online Pro certification has been essential for teaching online and in South Korea.
In Clara’s TEFL Online Pro teaching English follow-up review, she reports on how her TEFL Online Pro certification has prepared her for teaching online and in Barcelona.
Read Reviews and Explore Other Sources
- Trusted TEFL Reviews: https://trustedteflreviews.com/category/tefl-online-pro-reviews-best-tefl-tesol-certification/
- Facebook reviews: https://www.facebook.com/teflonlinepro/reviews
- Google reviews: https://g.page/r/CWQMRorxD2gfEAI/review
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@teflonlinepro
- Cambodia Bucket List: https://cambodiabucketlist.com/tefl-online-pro-reviews
No review platform tells the whole story, and readers should always consider feedback critically. We believe the fairest approach is to look at the available evidence, consider different perspectives, and make up your own mind.
How to read TEFL content: a short checklist
Before relying on a TEFL review, ask yourself six questions.
- Who wrote it? Is the author identifiable, and can you check their background?
- Do they sell a competing course? If so, does the article make that clear?
- Is there an affiliate link or ambassador relationship? Look for a clear disclosure of relevant commercial interests.
- What does “accredited” actually mean? Check the accrediting organization and the scope of its recognition. Accreditation, regulation and employer acceptance are not interchangeable.
- Can the claims be verified? Look for original records, dates, relevant documents and evidence that supports the conclusion.
- Does the author acknowledge uncertainty? A credible review should distinguish what is documented from what is alleged or inferred.
These questions apply equally to favorable and unfavorable reviews. They apply to small providers, large providers, independent bloggers and businesses with courses of their own.
They also apply to us.
TEFL Online Pro has a commercial interest in how prospective students perceive our courses. That is precisely why I have disclosed my position at the beginning of this post and provided a link to the underlying report.
I am asking readers to examine the evidence, not to accept every statement simply because it comes from me.
The stakes are small. The damage isn’t.
Step back and look at the whole picture.
A potential commission of $20–60. A blog post. A Reddit thread. A brand ambassador whose commercial relationship is not disclosed. A competitor that may be able to distance itself from content published by someone else.
Each incident might seem insignificant when considered alone. But repeated content can shape search results, influence prospective students and affect a business’s reputation long after the original publication has disappeared.
For the person writing a review, the immediate incentive may be small. For the prospective student who relies on it, the stakes may be their savings, their career and their plans to live abroad.
That is where the stakes stop being small.
The problem is not affiliate marketing. It is not criticism. And it is not the existence of competition in the TEFL industry.
The problem is that readers may be presented with what looks like independent advice without being given the context needed to assess it. When commercial relationships are hidden, readers are left to make decisions with incomplete information.
If affiliate networks are being used to deliver competitive attacks while concealing the commercial context from readers, the damage extends well beyond the people directly involved. But that conclusion must be assessed against the evidence in each case, not assumed simply because a relationship exists.
Sayre’s Law offers a useful way of thinking about the disproportion between a small immediate incentive and the effort spent pursuing a dispute. The more important lesson, however, is that the consequences are not necessarily small for the people who become the targets or for the readers who rely on the resulting content.
The cost of low-stakes behavior does not disappear. It may simply be paid by someone else.
If a review has a commercial context, readers deserve to know it. If a company is involved in a campaign against a competitor, that involvement should not be hidden behind the apparent independence of third parties. And if we make serious allegations, we should be prepared to show the evidence.
That standard should apply to every provider in the TEFL industry, including my own.
Food for thought?
The next time you read a strongly worded TEFL review, check the disclosure, look at who is behind the website, and ask whether the claims can be independently verified.
A review can be critical and still be fair. It can be commercially motivated and still contain useful information, or it can simply be a competitor’s sicario hit-job. But readers deserve to know the context, and serious allegations deserve evidence.
That is the standard I believe every TEFL provider, reviewer and affiliate should be prepared to meet.
Disclosure
I am the owner of TEFL Online Pro and earn income from the business. I also bring more than 25 years of direct experience in TEFL/TESOL certification and teacher training. My work has included developing both on-site and online TEFL certification programmes, as well as writing articles for Cambridge University Press.
I have extensive practical knowledge of TEFL/TESOL course development, certification, and the online teacher-training industry. This article reflects my perspective as both an industry professional and the owner of a company discussed in this report. It should not be read as independent commentary. Where allegations are disputed, I have identified them as such.
The full report and supporting material are available in the TEFL Online Pro Transparency Report.
Neville David Thomas
Read more blog posts: nevilledavidthomas.com/blog
Do you agree or disagree with any of the points raised in this post? Do you have additional information or a different perspective to share? Please leave a comment below. Constructive discussion is welcome.
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