NOVA is a big English teaching company in Japan. They have many branches and have high visibility. They also suck to work for and like to steal money from their customers.

There are many, many things wrong with this company. From a customer's point of view they steal money. How do they accomplish this? Well they charge students a huge fee to join, then charge them arseloads more to buy a bunch of tickets which the students use to book lessons. Unfortunately for the students these tickets have an expiration date! So if they don't use them by the date, they lose all their money. Also when some students bought ticket packages and then wanted a refund after a few days, NOVA told them no, and that they were not allowed to get a refund. The students took NOVA to court and won. haha take that NOVA.

I'll tell you about another thing that NOVA does on a regular basis, but it requires a little background info first. At NOVA there is a level system for students based on their English level decided (supposedly) by the teachers. When the student is nearing the exhaustion of their tickets, NOVA staff will tell the student to take a level up test, which they have to pay for with tickets. Unbeknowst to the students, the instructors are not allowed to fail the student, the student must pass this test. I am one of the testing instructors, if I try to fail some students who don't make the cut, I'm just overruled and they are passed anyway. After they get their results, the staff tells them something like "Wow you passed! Don't you want to keep studying more? Please buy more tickets." It's a total farce and just a ploy to get more money from the sucker students. Unfortunately for me I have to give the same oral test countless times per day, I'm going nuts asking the same questions and getting the same responses day after day. (And you want to know why I'm going home?)

From an employee's point of view the situation is equivalently crappy. Recently in an effort to save some money they told me that they were going to stop paying my commuting allowance (in Japan almost all companies pay commuting allowances, even for part-time jobs). They told me they were going to pay me a much cheaper price for a much different and much longer commuting route. I protested but it was to no avail. Bastards.

Another thing that's kinda funny is the one way in office memo system, where management can send messages and the employee cannot reply. That pisses me off. Also the computers that instructors use in my department (the TV conferencing type lesson where I teach students in a distance learning type setup) are ancient and still use CRTs for monitors which kills our eyes after 5~6 hours of sitting in front of them. Luckily the computers I use have flat panels, but some don't and I feel sorry for those instructors with the CRTs. Also the lesson plans which are on the computers are riddled with mistakes and for the most part suck beyond suck. I always just teach my own lesson plans `cuz the ones that NOVA has developed were developed by slackers in 1999. Yes, some of the lessons are over 8 years old. The students have no idea they're paying top Yen for a very low quality product.

If you have a problem, it's ignored. However, student complaints are not ignored. Even retarded complaints about you like "the teacher was too ugly" or my favorite "the teacher was black" (yes those were legitimate complaints by students) are taken seriously by the management. Management always goes to the teacher with a copy of the complaint and discusses it with the teacher to try to prevent it from happening again. "Yeah, uhhh could you be a little less black next time?" Surely complaints like this should be chucked in the bin immediately but since our students are customers, something like this is taken seriously. Meanwhile NOVA is trying to scam the students in other ways with ticket package shenanigans. Oh yea, I'd be amiss if I didn't mention one of the most hated managers, his name is Craig. He is a suspected cocaine addict. With cokeheads in management it's no wonder the company is crap.

There's so much more wrong, but I don't want to waste your time anymore talking about how bad this company is.