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Online TEFL TESOL course review scams in 2026.

(Updated: December 21, 2025)

This is a must-read article if you are choosing which TEFL course to take and are confused by which ones are legitimate and which ones are scams.

The scams are becoming more and more sophisticated.

To prevent your TEFL dream turning into a TEFL nightmare, we strongly recommend that you read this article in full.

Online TEFL TESOL Scam TEFL programs.

Currently, the more notable scam TEFL companies are ESLinsider, ITTT International TEFL and TESOL Training, MyTEFL, The TEFL Academy, and World TESOL Academy.

1. ESLinsider

ESLinsider (Ian Patrick Leahy) portrays himself as a TEFL whistleblower and he trashes almost every TEFL program online for seemingly altruistic motives, but his endgame is to sell you one TEFL course – his TEFL course. Among a long list of criminal activity, he was recommending TEFL students without college degrees to buy fake ones online. Some people followed his advice and (in China) were arrested, fined, deported. Ian is currently wanted by the Chinese authorities and is essentially on the lamb, living a transient life in the United States. Ian was banned from Facebook for spreading misinformation and disinformation way back in 2017. https://www.eslinsider.com/

2. ITTT International TEFL and TESOL Training

ITTT International TEFL and TESOL Training operates under more than 20 different websites. Each one looks similar, but is different just enough so that you would be forgiven into believing that one website is a different company from another website. This company has a bogus accreditation from a website that spells it as “Accredidation”. Affiliate marketing is their lean and they have one favorite who will say and write anything to get you to make the purchase: Linda Dunsmore. ITTT will take your money, give you access to a subpar course, fail to respond to online tutor requests, and ghost you when it comes time for the advertised “free” job-finding help – unless you pay through the nose for their job placement services, which you are recommended to avoid like the plague.

3. MyTEFL

MyTEFL used to be accredited by OTTSA (a website they created) and are now accredited by a bogus company: International TEFL Accreditation Council (ITEFLAC). Folks, official accreditation company website’s don’t have stock images of business people in office boardrooms. MyTEFL offer affordable TEFL courses, but they make their real money from paid job placement services. Do not pay for this service. If you do, when you receive your weekly or monthly teaching pay, without realizing it at first, MyTEFL will be skimming up to 25% off. And what can you do about it when you have locked yourself into a job contract with a language school through MyTEFL? https://mytefl.com/

4. The TEFL Academy (TTA)

The TEFL Academy (TTA) is a truly corrupt corporate company. They claim to be the “Worlds #1 TEFL Course Provider!” They are not. And, despite their many claims, they are not accredited. The TEFL Academy claims to be accredited by AQC, DEAC, QUALIFI, and even by Ofqual. It is only regulated by Ofqual and QUALIFI, and it also appears that QUALIFI might have been created by the good folks at The TEFL Academy. AQC is a sister website of DEAC, and you can see that The TEFL Academy is not accredited by DEAC because DEAC has a search feature that shows all the companies that it accredits – The TEFL Academy is not listed. As with ITTT, The TEFL Academy pays affiliate marketers to promote its courses. More about this below. https://www.theteflacademy.com/

5. World TESOL Academy

World TESOL Academy is likewise shady as hell. They offer TEFL courses for $38 and this appears to lure in a lot of unsuspecting folk. After you pay, you get bombarded with requests to become one of their affiliate marketers. Students rate the course as “terrible” and a bit like flying with Ryanair, with a smorgasbord of hidden fees and additional costs. World TESOL Academy is accredited by Accreditat and CPD that are pay-for-accreditation companies that are not recognized by any reputable language schools. Another red flag is that they have the Reviews tab disabled on their Facebook page. https://www.worldtesolacademy.com/

How TEFL companies scam you.

Besides the above mentioned scams, there are some complex ways in which some TEFL companies will scam you.

And the sophistication of the scams is intensifying.

TEFL Review Website Bedfellows

Go Abroad, Go Overseas and TEFL Course Review are the three biggest TEFL review websites. They each make their money from charging TEFL companies for a listing on their site – the TEFL companies are their customers – and it is in their best financial interests to have positive reviews about (fill in the blank) TEFL company than to have bad reviews published. This is why a company like The TEFL Academy has a high review score on all three websites – they make certain that negative reviews of them are minimized and they are free to have fake positive reviews appear on all three sites, and on the other review sites where they have a listing. Incidentally, The TEFL Academy has a lot of money at their disposal and frequently sue individuals and companies if they dare to publish something negative about them. Trusted TEFL Reviews published a few negative student reviews of The TEFL Academy and we were warned that if they were not taken down, they would sue us. We simply responded that the reviews will remain published because they were written by students of their program.

Affiliate Marketing

If you see an individual excessively promoting a TEFL program – with or without a coupon code for a discount – it will certainly be an affiliate marketer. Caitriona McTiernan and Megan Broccoli are the two main ones for The TEFL Academy and Linda Dunsmore heads the ITTT affiliate marketing side of the business. A large majority of TEFL programs belong to affiliate marketing companies, paying people who have never taken their courses to promote them online and earn money for themselves in the process. They will say and write absolutely anything (“the course was AMAZING!”) to make the sell, such as promises of earning $100 per hour for teaching English online. No one earns anywhere near to $100 teaching English online.

Trashing A Business Competitor

In the Wild West of online TEFL, anything goes. It’s very common for TEFL companies to trash each other online. They create fake profiles and then write fake complaints and fake reviews – misinformation and disinformation – on complaints websites and Reddit. And TEFL programs with deep pockets, such as The TEFL Academy, have now started to pay people to take a competitor’s course and then slam it online. This is cruel and clever because the person can show that they have a certificate from the TEFL company and can write exactly what the company tells them to write. A recent case involved one of the affiliate marketers from The TEFL Academy – Megan Broccoli – who purchased a TEFL Online Pro course, completed it, claimed after an hour of course completion that she couldn’t use the certificate, and began spreading her message on Reddit and elsewhere that the company is a scam. Something similar also happened to OISE University of Toronto TEFL and CIEE TEFL. CIEE TEFL, OISE University of Toronto TEFL and TEFL Online Pro are among the 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL certification courses.

Reddit

When Online TEFL/TESOL courses were gaining traction about 15 years ago, in response to the established in-person TEFL/TESOL course industry, a few of them set up Reddit communities – communities that they used and continue to use to push their agenda. This tends to focus on trashing their competitors and clandestinely promoting their courses. We recommend avoiding Reddit for Online TEFL/TESOL course information because of this, and because of the vast number of TEFL shills active on the site.

Niche subreddits, such as online course communities, are often run by people with a vested interest in promoting certain courses—for which they receive a financial kickback. This often leads them to delete positive comments about any business competitors of the courses from which they receive kickbacks.

The r/TEFL subreddit is well known for this type of behavior—they allow positive comments for their favored TEFL companies but prevent students of some other TEFL programs from posting honest reviews of their course experiences. They even have a Reddit Wiki page that clearly demonstrates the quid pro quo partnership they maintain with certain programs.

Trashing Trusted TEFL Reviews

It must be so frustrating for the many TEFL programs that don’t have the kind of power over Trusted TEFL Reviews that they lord over other TEFL review websites. So what do they do? They spread misinformation and disinformation about me and Trusted TEFL Reviews because they just can’t handle having even one or two negative reviews published online about them. By trying to discredit this website, they hope that people won’t believe the reviews of their program. All TEFL programs listed on Trusted TEFL Reviews have a free listing and all TEFL programs are free to respond to reviews and to add comments.

The TEFL Wall of Shame.

Important Clarifying Information.

Several points need addressing, and I will write about each one separately:

The Teachers’ Choice Award

Several Online TEFL companies are claiming that the Teachers’ Choice Award is fake. It isn’t. We created the Teachers’ Choice Award back in 2019, after noticing that other mainstream TEFL review websites had also created their awards. The fundamental difference between our award and the awards of other mainstream TEFL review websites is that the winner of the Teachers’ Choice Award is based on merit alone – voted for by language schools, universities, TEFL students, and TEFL graduates. If a company has won an award from a mainstream TEFL review website, it means they have likely paid for the privilege of “winning” that award.

TEFL Online Pro

TEFL Online Pro (https://teflonlinepro.com/) has won the Teachers’ Choice Award for seven consecutive years – they are the highest-rated in 2026. They have won the award every year because they were the Online TEFL/TESOL program that received the most votes. Trusted TEFL Reviews does not own TEFL Online Pro, just as it doesn’t own the other four Online TEFL/TESOL programs that currently hold the place of being one of the 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL programs. Trusted TEFL Reviews is an independent Online TEFL/TESOL reviews website. We are not affiliated with any TEFL/TESOL program listed on the Trusted TEFL Reviews website.

Trusted TEFL Reviews is a not-for-profit website

Contrary to what some Online TEFL programs claim, it doesn’t cost anything to list your Online TEFL/TESOL program on Trusted TEFL Reviews. Also, we don’t allow any paid advertising because we feel that it could present a conflict of interest. The only advertising allowed is granted to the TEFL program winner of the annual Teachers’ Choice Award. TEFL Online Pro (https://trustedteflreviews.com/category/tefl-online-pro-reviews-in-2025/) is the winner of this year’s award, so they have been allowed to promote any TEFL course discounts that they may run during the year. This additional exposure on Trusted TEFL Reviews is without charge for the TEFL program currently enjoying Teachers’ Choice Award winner status.

I am not a man

I identify as a woman because I am a woman, living and teaching English in Vienna, Austria. Contrary to what some Online TEFL/TESOL companies have written about me online, I am not a “man”, I am not a “dyke”, and I am not a “b!tch”. I am a mother. I co-own Trusted TEFL Reviews with my partner and we run Trusted TEFL Reviews together, from our apartment in Vienna. We also have a small office within the city limits that we visit mostly during the summer months when the air-con in the office is a welcome respite. We also run the Teachers’ Choice Award from this office. It is no Online TEFL/TESOL program’s beeswax what our addresses are and we both feel safer not disclosing our addresses. I have received threats in the past simply because I wouldn’t delete a negative review written about one of the TEFL programs listed on Trusted TEFL Reviews.

We never delete reviews from Trusted TEFL Reviews, unless the review is later found to be fake

Online TEFL/TESOL course programs are the customers of the mainstream Online TEFL/TESOL review websites. The programs pay a yearly fee to be listed on the review website, and this is how those review websites generate the majority of their commercial income. Those review websites have a strong financial incentive to hide negative reviews and hold almost no verification process for publishing positive reviews – the vast majority of which are written by the TEFL company. Trusted TEFL Reviews has a strong verification process in place and we only publish reviews that have been proven to have been written by a real TEFL student. This has infuriated a few Online TEFL/TESOL companies – companies that are used to chalking up fake 5-star reviews on those mainstream TEFL review platforms.

We allow all of the TEFL companies listed on Trusted TEFL Reviews to respond to reviews

All Online TEFL/TESOL companies listed on Trusted TEFL Reviews are free to respond to any review published about their program. The vast majority of programs choose not to, but some do. The most prolific company to respond to reviews – responding to every review they receive – is TEFL Online Pro. This company is proactive and recognizes the importance of thanking customers for writing positive reviews and addressing any issues presented by negative reviews. If an Online TEFL company writes that they tried responding to a review but were unsuccessful in doing so, it is a flat-out lie.

Russian review websites

A few months ago, an Online TEFL/TESOL company reached out to me – a company not listed on Trusted TEFL Reviews – complaining that their business wasn’t doing so well. They blamed their dwindling revenue on the many cheap Online TEFL/TESOL programs undercutting them with lower prices. They suggested that they would “handle the Google Ads campaigns” of those programs through a process known as click fraud. They also suggested that I should write some damning reviews about those programs on complaintsboard.com. I refused the offer and told the individual to focus on improving their course offerings and customer services. complaintsboard.com, dirtyscam.com, and ripoffreport.com are all Russian-owned websites. They may claim otherwise, but they operate outside of countries where they can be held accountable for the defamatory material that they allow to be published on their websites. I read one recent “complaint” that TEFL Online Pro is offering courses illegally and not paying their taxes. This, of course, is just fiction. I also read another “complaint” where someone had written that OISE University of Toronto TEFL is a scam and their certificates are not valid internationally. Also, fictitious. The rogue Online TEFL/TESOL companies use these websites to badmouth their business competitors because all you need to do to have your review published is to verify your email address – using any name to create an account. Those Russian websites feel protected from legal repercussions and they are the go-to websites for the dregs of the Online TEFL/TESOL certification course world.

TEFL companies that want to take over the world

The TEFL Academy (https://trustedteflreviews.com/category/the-tefl-academy/) is the perfect example of a company that wants it all, and they are willing to break all the better business rules to achieve their objective. We began listing this program on Trusted TEFL Reviews a few years ago. Within a couple of days, we received an avalanche of 5-star reviews for them, but not one of the reviewers was willing to prove course participation in The TEFL Academy program. They were fake reviews. We also have it on good word that this company reaches out to its graduates and offers them a free mini TEFL course if they write a positive review. This is why there is such a disconnect between their reviews on Trusted TEFL Reviews and their reviews on Facebook, Trustpilot, etc. World TESOL Academy (https://trustedteflreviews.com/category/world-tesol-academy/) is also guilty of this shameless and flagrant middle finger to the better business rules. They claim to be the “Worlds #1 TEFL Course Provider.” This obviously isn’t true, as are many other claims on their website.

Our advice for Online TEFL/TESOL companies

Interact with your customers! If you receive a positive review, thank the customer for spending their time to review your program. If you receive a negative review, apologize and try to right a wrong. Don’t write false sh*t about me or Trusted TEFL Reviews just because you got some negative feedback.

Our advice for Online TEFL/TESOL students

The Online TEFL/TESOL industry is unregulated and highly competitive. Some companies will swear blind to you that you need to take their course because it has more hours or because it has won so many awards. The Teachers’ Choice Award is the only Online TEFL/TESOL certification course program award that cannot be bought. The industry standard is a 120-hour TEFL/TESOL certification course (140 hours if it includes 20 teaching practice hours). You don’t need more training hours because those extra hours are meaningless for TEFL employers. If you pay less than US$100 for a 120-hour Online TEFL/TESOL certification course, you WILL regret it.

Accreditation

To prevent you from becoming a victim of a TEFL scam, we recommend that you choose a Fully Accredited TEFL/TESOL certification course provider.

The most well-known accreditation companies – offering Full Accreditation:

ACCET – Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training.

ACTEFLC – Accreditation Council for Teaching English as a Foreign Language Courses.

OISE – University of the Toronto Faculty of Education.

TESL Canada

University of Cambridge’s English Language Assessment

If you read anything negative about these organizations online, it has been written by an Online TEFL/TESOL program – a program that likely has no accreditation itself or one that simply pays a dodgy accreditation company an annual fee.

You can see which companies are Fully Accredited and internationally recognized by looking through the program listings in the TEFL Course Directory:

https://trustedteflreviews.com/tefl-course-directory/

The top-rated schools in the directory are top-rated for a legitimate reason.

The low-rated schools in the directory are low-rated for a legitimate reason.

Be smart. Don’t fall for the disinformation and misinformation.

Trusted TEFL Reviews

If and when we are notified of shady practices or even outright scams, we will post details of them in the Online TEFL Course Scams section of this website.

This ‘Online TEFL Course Reviews Scams’ article was originally written and published by Mia Williams, co-owner of Trusted TEFL Reviews (TTR) | Best Featured TEFL Articles

Related articles:

https://trustedteflreviews.com/2021/03/30/6-tefl-red-flags/

https://trustedteflreviews.com/2021/03/30/common-tefl-scams/

New! Click here for the online TEFL/TESOL international certification course Teachers’ Choice Award winner. International Online TEFL/TESOL course certification at its best.

Verified Online TEFL/TESOL certification course program reviews, ranked in order of customer satisfaction: TEFL Course Directory

TEFL Accreditation Guide | 6 TEFL Red Flags | TTR Home | TEFL Course Special Offers

The post Online TEFL TESOL Course Review Scams in 2026 appeared first on Trusted TEFL Reviews.

ESLinsider | A Warning for all TEFL/TESOL students and graduates.

We don’t like to issue warnings but there are times when we feel that we have to.

These times are when Trusted TEFL Reviews feels that it is in the public interest to issue a warning.

This is such a time.

ESLinsider is all over the internet.

For those of you who don’t know, ESLinsider is a blog and a TEFL program operated by a guy from Monroe, New Hampshire.

His name is Ian Patrick Leahy.

This is the guy:

In this photo, taken from his ESLinsider blog, Ian Patrick Leahy gives the misguided advice that people shouldn’t bother taking a college degree course.

Essential TEFL Tip!

Are you worried about being scammed? TEFL course scams are becoming more sophisticated!

Protect yourself by reading about the latest TEFL scams in this article:

Online TEFL/TESOL Course Review Scams in 2025

If you are concerned about becoming a victim of an Online TEFL/TESOL course scam, we strongly recommend choosing from one of the 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL certification course programs in 2025:

The 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL Courses in 2025

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews

Ian is famous in the TEFL world, for all the wrong reasons.

About ten years ago, Ian took a dirt-cheap TEFL course and decided that he could create a better course.

So, he put his skills to work and created a TEFL course which he coined his TEKA course.

To finance the marketing for this TEFL course, he became a prolific blogger, shill, and spammer.

As some TEFL programs have correctly pointed out, Ian and ESLinsider accounts were banned from Facebook because of this shilling and spamming.

If QAnon had a TEFL branch, Ian would be its director.

So many TEFL programs and TEFL accreditation bodies have publicly complained about Ian’s incessant bullying and his non-stop publishing of TEFL conspiracy theories.

Choose any TEFL program or TEFL accreditation body- Ian will have written some garbage online about it.

This was the ESLinsider head office when Ian lived in Japan:

For a while, Ian’s business took off.

He was somehow able to run his business while he lived in and then moved from China to South Korea, and then from Taiwan to Japan.

His big convincer was his blog.

‘ESLinsider’ gives the impression of someone in the know.

The truth is, that Ian has very limited knowledge of TEFL and this has been demonstrated in the teaching videos that he used to upload to his YouTube channel.

It was all about the money.

I don’t think Ian had or has any deep love or attachment to TEFL.

Here is another photo of Ian- also taken in Japan:

Ian went from TEFL program owner to TEFL online teacher.

What happened? Why the fall from grace?

Well, in part, Trusted TEFL Reviews can be thanked for this.

We noticed the growing number of complaints by ESLinsider students.

There were complaints about his customers being defrauded out of their money.

There were complaints about his customers being arrested in China because Ian by then was sought after by the Chinese authorities for fraud. Showing an ESLinsider TEFL certificate at an interview was classed as guilt by association.

There were also complaints about his customers being arrested in China because they took Ian’s advice to buy fake college diplomas.

I’m not making this up, but I do wish I were making it up.

Ian is a menace.

Let’s have another photo of Ian to break up the text in this article.

This one is of Ian teaching Phonics.

The only problem is that he doesn’t have the first clue about phonics:

Someone who does know what phonics is:

So why are we writing this article?

Trusted TEFL Reviews began exposing Ian Leahy two years ago.

And, he DID NOT like it.

He directed his attention away from the TEFL programs and TEFL accreditation bodies that he was destroying online and turned that energy on me and Trusted TEFL Reviews.

His bullying was unbelievable. It was non-stop.

Conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.

He would write that I was the owner of this and that TEFL program.

A month later, I was the owner of yet another TEFL program.

My name wasn’t Mia.

I was a guy.

And on and on and on and on the garbage spewed from his “office”.

What did I do?

I published an article, exposing Ian.

The article became a mini viral “sensation” in the TEFL world and the result was that Ian went out of business.

He moved back to Monroe, New Hampshire, and began working on the ski slopes there.

Of course, that didn’t stop his harassment of me and most other TEFL programs and TEFL accreditation bodies.

It did, however, slow him down.

Ian is currently working a summer season in Oregon, at one of the lodges there.

On Reddit, he was last seen asking about illegal job opportunities in Chile and New Zealand.

Despite his ESLinsider program being dead in the water, Ian still takes the time to spread his conspiracy theories.

My advice to anyone who reads something that has been written by Ian Patrick Leahy from ESLinsider:

What you are reading has no substance in the real world.

It is just the rantings of a desperate man with a conspiratorial mind.

If you think you are reading something written by Ian Patrick Leahy, you probably are.

He always uses the same style.

Screenshots with line markers added- highlight some nonsense connection that he has made.

As long as Ian believes that he can somehow resurrect his TEFL program from the ashes, he will keep on and on and on and on writing about how bad his competitors are and how fraudulent all the accreditation bodies are.

That, in a nutshell, is Ian Patrick Leahy from ESLinsider.

You can Google search ‘ESLinsider’ and ‘Ian Patrick Leahy TEFL’ for confirmation of what I have written.

Thank you for reading this ESLinsider article.

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews

Read more ESLinsider reviews.

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Verified Online TEFL/TESOL certification course program reviews, ranked in order of customer satisfaction: TEFL Course Directory

TEFL Accreditation Guide | 6 TEFL Red Flags | TTR Home | TEFL Course Special Offers

The post ESLinsider appeared first on Trusted TEFL Reviews.

How to avoid the most common TEFL TESOL certification course scams.

Essential TEFL Tip!

Are you worried about being scammed? TEFL course scams are becoming more sophisticated!

Protect yourself by reading about the latest TEFL scams in this article:

Online TEFL/TESOL Course Review Scams in 2026

If you are concerned about becoming a victim of an Online TEFL/TESOL course scam, we strongly recommend choosing from one of the 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL certification course programs in 2025:

The 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL Courses in 2026

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews

Common TEFL Scams come in various forms and from various sources. When people think of ‘TEFL Scam’ they usually think first of the scenario where they pay for a TEFL course and receive nothing in return. Thankfully, this is a rare occurrence. You are, however, much more likely to fall victim to a TEFL scam unwittingly- one that you may not discover a victim of until a few months or even a few years later.

This article will look at the most common TEFL Scams and will demonstrate how to avoid these easy-to-miss pitfalls. We will also be highlighting the Online TEFL certification course programs that are well-known in the TEFL industry for their shady business practices. i.e., TEFL programs to avoid.

At the end of this article, we list the Online TEFL/TESOL certification course programs that we recommend taking if you are having a hard time deciding on which course to take.

1. Common TEFL Scams – Fake Reviews.

Fake customer reviews are a huge issue across the board for most industries and the world of TEFL is no different. The fakers have been getting more and more sophisticated and it can now be very difficult to distinguish real reviews from fake reviews.

Let’s take a look at one of the worst fake reviews offenders: The TEFL Academy.

The TEFL Academy (TTA) used to be a well-respected Online TEFL TESOL course provider, before 2021, until they brought in a new CEO: Thomas Gibbons. Since Thomas’s appointment, Trusted TEFL Reviews (TTR) has witnessed a substantial overnight increase in “customer reviews” for TTA.

One only needs to look at TTA’s customer reviews on Reviews.io, Trust Pilot, and Hello Peter, to ascertain that something isn’t quite right with the sheer number of 5-star glowing reviews being received all at once for this program, as well as on its Facebook (Meta) page.

How can we be certain that TTA is publishing fake reviews?

Soon after Thomas’s new appointment as CEO at TTA, TTR suddenly began receiving a lot of reviews all at once for TTA’s listing. In one day, if my memory serves me correctly, we received just over 20 reviews for the TEFL Academy program.

Out of those 20 reviews, only four were found to possibly come from a real reviewer. Out of those four, no one returned our email when we requested proof of course enrollment.

It was then that we suddenly stopped receiving so many reviews for this program- until March of this year that is.

In March of 2021, TTR received yet another suspicious TTA review, stuffed with a lot of marketing keywords. The review was submitted by one of their Brand Ambassadors, masquerading as a recently-graduated TTA TEFL student – Caitriona McTiernan.

What does a TEFL Academy Brand Ambassador do? As far as we can gather, it is their job to promote TTA’s courses. In return for their hard work and diligence, they earn a 20% affiliate commission on every TEFL Academy course that is purchased via their recommendation.

TTA’s Brand Ambassadors have demonstrated that they are capable of seriously stretching the truth and can write absolutely anything, without accountability, to earn a juicy 20% affiliate commission fee on every TTA course referral.

And Caitriona earns a ton of money by promoting The TEFL Academy – a UK/Ireland-based TEFL school that rips its customers off through false advertising and likewise false claims.

But, hey, it pays for her trips abroad and I guess she somehow inner justifies the whole shebang. Somehow. I, for one, couldn’t. And neither, I’m assuming, could you.

More about affiliate commissions is in section 2 of this article.

We consider the blatant faking of customer reviews to be a serious red flag.

Whenever we come across examples of this, we always expose the company or individuals behind the fake reviews- as we have done so regarding The TEFL Academy:

https://trustedteflreviews.com/2019/03/25/the-tefl-academy-certification-review/

https://trustedteflreviews.com/2022/05/19/tta-the-tefl-academy/

Incidentally, the path of least resistance for these fake review scammers, when their review is denied publication, is sometimes to claim that Trusted TEFL Reviews is biased. Invariably, the found-out fake reviewer will claim that TTR is owned by such and such a TEFL program- a claim designed to reduce the credibility of TTR and reduce the credibility of them having been exposed as a fake reviewer.

If the TEFL program that they are reviewing tends to receive poor reviews, as The TEFL Academy does, the fake reviewer will also be trying to reduce the credibility of those verified customers’ poor reviews.

Claims made that Trusted TEFL Reviews is a biased reviews website, owned and run by any of the TEFL reviews websites listed on Trusted TEFL Reviews, is a clear sign that the person or company making the claims is trying to cover something up.

Such claims always lead back to an individual representing a TEFL company, or a TEFL company acting in its self-interests. In both cases, the hidden agenda behind such claims stems from a TEFL program with a poor reputation- a poor reputation that they are trying to cover up and conceal from future paying customers.

Trusted TEFL Reviews is an independently run Online TEFL/TESOL reviews website. We are not affiliated, in any way, with any of the Online TEFL/TESOL certification programs listed on this site.

Only the winner of the Teachers’ Choice Award is granted the ability to publish the award on their school website, and they also enjoy a whole year’s free exposure on Trusted TEFL Reviews, where they may post, for example, any current course discounts or promotions on the Trusted TEFL Reviews website.

Tefl Online Pro won this prestigious award in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025.

https://trustedteflreviews.com/category/tefl-online-pro-reviews-in-2025

If an Online TEFL/TESOL certification program has a high rating on Trusted TEFL Reviews, it means that they are doing something right when it comes to the product it offers and how it treats its customers.

If an Online TEFL/TESOL certification program has a low rating on Trusted TEFL Reviews, it means that they are doing something wrong when it comes to the product it offers and how it treats its customers.

Other programs that have also followed this path of least resistance line of attack, just as The TEFL Academy has done so, are Ian Patrick Leahy from ESLinsider TEFL, Henry Harvin Education, ITTT TEFL, MyTEFL, TEFL Fullcircle, and World TESOL Academy.

What else do these fake-review Online TEFL/TESOL programs have in common?

They all offer unaccredited courses, despite almost all of them claiming to be “accredited” and “international”.

Where is a good source for real TEFL student reviews?

Facebook tends to be a very good source because it has at least some moderation systems put in place, whereby they are able, over time, to delete suspect reviews.

trustedteflreviews.com remains one of the most trusted sources for customer reviews because we are an independent reviews website- meaning that we don’t have a horse in the race and we are free to publish any customer reviews that have been verified as coming from a reliable source.

The verification process for the publication of reviews on TTR includes requesting proof of course enrollment.

All 52 Online TEFL/TESOL certification course programs currently listed on Trusted TEFL Reviews, ranked in order of customer satisfaction:

https://trustedteflreviews.com/tefl-course-directory/

2. Common TEFL Scams – Affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is another major spanner in the works when it comes to the perpetuation of common TEFL scams.

The TEFL course affiliates marketing scam works like this:

Person ‘A’ wants to earn money online. They realize that they can earn money online by recommending a TEFL program and earning a commission on every course purchase that they initiate. The commission rate is usually around 20% of the total course purchase price. Person ‘A’, who has never taken the TEFL course, begins blogging about that TEFL course- claiming that they purchased and took the course, that it was amazing, and that others should also purchase and take the course.

The internet is rife with travel blogs that are signed up to TEFL course affiliate programs.

You can usually recognize them because they have unique names, such as ‘Goats On The Road’, ‘Roaming Vegans’, ‘Two Monkeys Travel Group’, etc.

Some TEFL programs, such as The TEFL Academy, have gone a step further by employing their own ‘brand ambassadors’ to affiliate market their courses for them. In some cases, the brand ambassador will be a graduate of the program, but in other cases, the brand ambassador will have no first-hand knowledge of the course.

Either way, when you are being paid to write only positive things about a product/service because you get to gain from your content, it is highly unlikely that you will be objective in your coverage of the product/service for which you are writing.

Not all TEFL programs have an affiliate marketing program, but the ones that do tend to be programs that you would do best to avoid. MyTEFL and The TEFL Academy are two unaccredited Online TEFL TESOL certification programs that rely heavily on their affiliates’ minions for new paying customers.

Of further concern is that some of the most well-known TEFL course reviews websites, travel abroad/overseas websites, and work abroad/overseas websites are knee-deep in the affiliate’s marketing model- earning an affiliate’s marketing income from TEFL course sales of the programs that they have listed, and which they accept reviews of on their sites.

Affiliate marketing is one of the common TEFL scams. You should most certainly take anything written by an affiliate marketer with extreme skepticism because they often, if not always, have a hidden agenda behind the content that they have written.

3. Common TEFL Scams – Accreditation.

TEFL accreditation is another area in which there lurk Common TEFL Scams.

Because there is not one central accreditation body for Online TEFL TESOL certification courses, there are, instead, a handful of accreditation bodies that fully accredited Online TEFL TESOL certification course programs.

The accreditation bodies authorized to provide Fully Accredited status to Online TEFL TESOL certification course programs:

ACCET – Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training | https://accet.org/

ACTEFLC – Accreditation Council for Teaching English as a Foreign Language Courses | https://www.acteflc.com/

OISE – University of the Toronto Faculty of Education | https://www.oise.utoronto.ca/

TESL Canada | https://tesl.ca/

University of Cambridge’s English Language Assessment | https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/

Online TEFL courses that are directly accredited by the Ministry of Education also enjoy Fully Accredited status.

There are, of course, other “accreditation awarding institutions” out there, such as Accreditat, OTTSA, and ITEFLAC, but they are fake accreditation websites.

Trusted TEFL Reviews ran an article on the OTTSA accreditation scam a while back:

https://trustedteflreviews.com/2020/02/18/warning-the-ottsa-accrediting-professionals-scam/

MyTEFL started with OTTSA accreditation. As has ITTT TEFL.

About six months after we ran the OTTSA accreditation scam article, MyTEFL also magically gained “accreditation” from ITEFLAC – a website that suspiciously appears to have been created by MyTEFL. MyTEFL is now also “accredited” by the International Council for Online Educational Standards (ICOES). ICOES also accredits such bastions of international education including, but not limited to, ‘Permanent Jewelry Bestie’ and ‘spray tan class’.

MyTEFL and ITTT TEFL issue their course certificates out of Thailand. OTTSA was created by a newbie English teacher, Simon Godwin, who lives in Thailand.

OTTSA is a creation of MyTEFL and ITTT TEFL.

ITEFLAC is so obviously a scam. You only have to look at the website to see that it is a fake accreditation website. Could ITEFLAC also have been created by MyTEFL? Possibly. We definitely wouldn’t put it past them.

The TEFL Academy also lies about its accreditation claims.

On the TTA website, it is claimed that The TEFL Academy is accredited by Ofqual, QUALIFI, DEAC, and AQC.

These are external bodies authorized to regulate education programs, not accredit them.

The TEFL Academy (TTA) is, therefore, heavily regulated, but is not accredited at all.

The lesson to be learned here is that when choosing which Online TEFL TESOL certification course to take, choose a course that is fully accredited by one of the (top) above-mentioned reputable international accreditation bodies.

4. Common TEFL Scams – The ‘That TEFL Course is a scam or fraud’ scam.

When I traveled in India, one of the stand-out annoyances was how whenever I would arrive in a new place, with my mind made up on where I was going to sleep for the night, I was always told by random strangers on the train or bus stations that the place where I had chosen to stay was “bad”, “no longer in business”, or “a scam”.

This would then follow with a recommendation of their own, for a far better place where I should sleep instead.

In 100% of these run-ins with “helpful” strangers, not once was my intended accommodation as was described by them.

This is also a Common TEFL Scam.

Some Online TEFL TESOL programs spend vast amounts of their time spreading fake information online about their competitors, to try and convince people to take their course program instead.

A clear winner in this category is Ian Patrick Leahy, from ESLinsider TEFL.

Ian has carved out a specific niche for himself, whereby he churns out pages and pages of misdirected online content- all with the sole intention of selling more of his unaccredited ESLinsider TEFL /TEKA courses.

In other words, Ian Patrick Leahy is a serial online spammer.

Ian and his ESLinsider TEFL course have been banned from Facebook for this excessive spamming and excessive spreading of false information.

Pick and choose any Online TEFL/TESOL certification program – Ian will have written some trash online about it at some time, on his school blog or YouTube channel.

The major irony is that Ian Leahy from ESLinsider TEFL has been directly linked with the imprisonment of English teachers in China.

Just Google ‘ESLinsider Scams Asia’ and you discover a treasure trove of complaints and warnings.

Ian was not only selling his unaccredited TEFL/TEKA course to unsuspecting people. He was also selling fake college diplomas. The Chinese authorities found out and arrested and then deported anyone they found to have bought a fake college diploma from Ian Leahy/ESLinsider.

There are now warnings issued by various reputable sources – all advising people not to take one of Ian’s ESLinsider TEFL/TEKA courses because if they do, they won’t be eligible for a work visa and might be detained due to association with Ian’s TEFL course.

In addition to this bombshell, it has recently come to light that Ian Leahy has been accused, by his verified customers, of having withdrawn money from their debit and credit cards without prior authorization and for purchases not related to TEFL.

Ian Patrick Leahy claims to be a ‘TEFL expert’, an ‘ESL insider’, but has little knowledge of TEFL – demonstrated in one of his YouTube videos, where a user comments on him not knowing the first thing about teaching Phonetics.

The Ian Patrick Leahy ESLinsider scam has been covered in detail on Trusted TEFL Reviews, using Ian’s own published content against him: https://trustedteflreviews.com/2020/02/03/eslinsider-reviews-scam/

We often receive emails, asking whether so and so’s Online TEFL course program is legit or not, and citing concerns about something they have read online that points to the opposite conclusion.

Our advice is always the same.

Place importance on verified customer feedback. Don’t place importance on content that is not from a verified customer source.

5. Common TEFL Scams – Dirt-cheap TEFL courses.

If you pay peanuts then you get monkeys, and if you buy an Online TEFL TESOL certification course for peanuts then you will be setting yourself up for immediate failure and for becoming victim to the dirt-cheap Common TEFL Scams.

We do understand that money can be tight for some people, but there are some purchases in life that you don’t want to save on and compromise quality on.

A TEFL course is something you don’t want to make a huge saving on because there is always a reason behind that huge saving.

If you purchase a 120-hour Online TEFL TESOL certification course for under US$100, you can expect that course to be unaccredited and full of grammar and spelling errors. You can also expect that you will learn very little on the course and that your course certificate will look like a 5-year-old created it.

The dirt-cheap Online TEFL TESOL certification courses are also almost always not accepted by online/international employers, and you will likely discover down the path that your certificate won’t be accepted as a document for the work visa that will be essential for your teaching purposes.

Do yourself a favor and invest a little bit more and earn an internationally recognized TEFL TESOL certificate that will properly train you to teach English, and that will be accepted worldwide.

The Online TEFL TESOL certification courses that Trusted TEFL Reviews recommends you take.

TTR is an unbiased Online TEFL/TESOL reviews website, so we are completely impartial when it comes to which TEFL course you should take.

However, based on the verified reviews submitted over the years by Online TEFL/TESOL course customers, we would recommend, if you are having a hard time deciding on which course to take, the following (listed in order of customer review ratings) Fully Accredited Online TEFL/TESOL certification course programs:

TEFL Online Pro | Verified customer reviews | https://teflonlinepro.com/

TEFL/TESOL online programs receive an additional program reviews category when they win the Teachers’ Choice Award and are granted the ability to promote their course discounts or promotions on Trusted TEFL Reviews.

OISE University of Toronto TEFL | Verified customer reviews | https://www.teachaway.com/

CIEE TEFL | Verified customer reviews | https://www.ciee.org/

Maximo Nivel TEFL | Verified customer reviews | https://maximonivel.com/

CIEE TEFL, Maximo Nivel, OISE Toronto TEFL, and TEFL Online Pro certificates are Fully Accredited and internationally recognized.

Read more: The 5 best Online TEFL TESOL courses to take in 2026

TEFL Online Pro has won the Teachers’ Choice Award in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025:

https://trustedteflreviews.com/2024/10/19/the-teachers-international-online-tefl-tesol-certification-course-choice-award-winner/

Stay safe out there!

This ‘Common TEFL Scams | What To Watch Out For’ article was written by Mia Williams, co-owner of Trusted TEFL Reviews (TTR) | Best Featured TEFL Articles

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