A friend of mine opened a business with two partners, one Taiwanese and one foreigner. After opening an office etc and trying to do business for a few months, they were forced to shut down by the government. They could not procure the correct permits and they were not allowed to do business in a residential building. The Taiwanese partner said in no uncertain terms that she was out. My friend and the remaining foreign partner decided that their business could just as easily be internet based, so they kept their website and continued to put up posters and hand out business cards etc. One day my friend decides to check the e-mails and the password had been changed. My friend, unfortunately not being computer savvy accepted his partner
Who legally owns the domain name of the website and whose credit card was used to purchase that domain name? If nothing else he may just be able to shut down the site. Were there any contracts between the two friends? Depending on the situation your friend may be able to file a lawsuit, but from the information you provided it’s difficult to say.
A civil lawsuit? HA!!!
Buy toilet paper – it’s worth more than the judgement you’ll get from a civil lawsuit. Unless the defendant has a lot of assets that can be attached by the court (at an extra charge to you, mind you) you’ll never see a dime.
Doesn’t Partner A have copies of client lists, etc? Why not contact all of Nefarious Partner B’s “clients”? Let 'em know what’s going on…
He would if Nefarious Partner hadn’t cut off his email access when the bulk of business (more than 100 clients) started to roll in. Partner A is left with about 4 clients.
The Nefarious Partner’s wife has started a new website (where all new business has been directed), so the old one, if shut down, is really of no consequence.
No contracts between the two were signed.
Edited
Well, if they are acting as agents for NZ schools I’d be interested to know about their general business practices as agents. If they don’t follow the code of practice then they won’t be allowed into NZ for business
Just a remark: as we have no idea whether or not the story Impleased has told us is true, I don’t think it’s o.k. to publish the names of the protagonists (as e.g. listed on the “contact” page of the first site …). No offense, Impleased, you said yourself that you’re not sure whether it’s appropriate or not. Everybody here at forumosa choses an alias as an on-line identity, we shouldn’t be going around “outing” others, just my feeling. However, it’s done now, right?
There is an ad posting for the latter website here:
http://www.forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?t=17130
[quote]If you have any students who wish to study English overseas (USA, UK, Canada, Australia, South Africa or New Zealand), you can make some cash!
We represent various language schools in the above mentioned coutries and help students to apply for placement at their school of choice. We also help them with their visa applications and other requirements. These schools pay us commission for sending these students to them, and we in return pay commission to you for sending your students to us.
Check out : www.overseaslanguages.com for further details. Click on the “teacher’s area”.
[/quote]
How did your friend end up investing 200K in a language-school referal business? I HOPE this is 200K nt (about $6000 usd I think). People lose FAR more than that in the business world, many on a daily basis, so rather than getting litigious, why doesn’t your friend view this as tuition for his business education and move on with his life.
Not meaning to excuse his friend for cutting him out, but this sounds like a situation where he might be better served looking forward than backwards…
John
just idly speculating but does anyone think forumosa should put a warning/proviso on this companies advert…after all if it is true that they ripped off their partner they may well carry on to rip off other people; because let’s face it there is no legal recourse for unpaid commission on student referrals. of course it may be the case that all’s fair in love, war and english teaching in which case just ignore me…
There has been talk before about doing stuff like that. In one instance it did happen only because of the sheer volume of complaints that had been posted before the “offending” ad was placed.
I would not do it in this instance because, with all due respect to the original poster, it was one complaint by a third party. I cannot speak for the other moderators or for the Big Chiefs 
but it would take a lot more substanciated posted complaints before any sort of action would be taken…if any action be taken at all.
I do recommend that anyone considering a school or business to work for arm themselves with as much information as they can. The search option of this site can and will save one from a lot of grief. DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
I am the wife and new partner and would like to set the record straight. I feel that Impleased has overstepped his boundaries and should have established the correct facts before flippantly starting a messy catfight such as this. Unfortunately, Impleased is both my boss (which puts me in an awkward position, that i’m not sure how to handle) and of course, buddy to my husband’s ex-partner (if he can be called that, seeing that the business never saw the light of day!). So, here are the correct facts:
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Two foreign partners and one Taiwanese partner tried to open a business in Ilan.
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They rented what they thought was office space from Impleased’s buddy’s girlfriend’s aunty - who didn’t tell them that it was residential space and they were not allowed to run a business there. She was far too greedy to get her hand in the cooky jar and take 2 month’s deposit from them and a month’s rent in advance! All 3 partner’s paid this and therefore took the loss equally.
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The Taiwanese partner tried very hard to legally get the business off the ground, but with this first obstacle of renting the residential property instead of commercial property, a lot of money and time was wasted.
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Impleased’s buddy was so desperately unhappy in his job that he quit it the minute the partners found an office. Of course, when the money didn’t immediately start rolling in, he became pissy and upset that things weren’t going his way. The other partners still kept their jobs and at the same time put in their hours at the office. As Impleased’s buddy was now unemployed he desperately tried to force the other partners to find ways of getting an ARC for him. This was impossible - the company could not be registered because of the property title and many other legalities which had not been settled.
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My husband purchased the website domain and website templates with his credit card. This therefore makes him the legal owner of them. He and I wrote the website together - going in after hours and on weekends whilst holding down a fulltime job. Impleased’s friend contributed exactly 3 paragraphs and 3 pictures to it. This he cut and pasted with permission from other websites. In total, it amounts to a half page compared to the rest of the website which is 17 pages long. He claims he wrote the website, but he has problems opening email. Guess who’s lying!?
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When the Taiwanese partner decided to “drop the bomb” directly after Chinese New Year, my husband and Impleased’s buddy said they would keep the website up and if some business came their way in the Ilan district (which is where their client base is situated), they would do the work and split the profit. There has been no response up to date. This website never once changed from an Ilan based business to an internet based business. Please feel free to look it over: www.adventuresinenglish.ca.
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As for the emails that Impleased’s buddy could not open, this is probably due to the fact that most of them contain a binary attachment
which internet cafe computers will not open. This is for their own safety and to protect them against possible virus attacks. Never once did my husband say that the website was infected - I’s buddy just doesn’t understand anything one tells him. The said emails that were sent may contain a virus, therefore we wrote back to the address they were sent from and asked for an email without an attachment. These never materialised. We have not opened these attachments as we do not want to infect our computer. I’s friend sold his computer and therefore is now trying to run his business from internet cafe’s. -
Due to the Taiwanese partner pulling out, no contracts were ever signed. In fact, they weren’t even drawn up. One of the Taiwanese partner’s gripes was in fact Impleased’s buddy.
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Impleased states that we opened the exact same business behind his buddy’s back. It is not the exact same business - please feel free to check it out : www.overseaslanguages.com, it is an internet based business and it is not registered in Taiwan. Therefore, how can he lay claim to something he has nothing to do with?
We have some schools in common, but that is because my husband is the approved agent for them. Impleased’s buddy is not. There are many sites which advertise some of these schools, is I’s buddy going to try and squeeze them for money too? -
The total amount of money lost by all three partners was no more than NT35 000 each. This was largely because of I’s buddy’s girlfriend and her scheming aunty (the landlady).
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The so-called business which we have cut him out of, is a job offer for summer teaching English. The business was generated by a friend of my husband’s in Taipei (I’s buddy is in Ilan!!!) and we are not sending any students abroad to a language school (which is what I’s buddy and my husband wanted to do in their business). Does he perhaps want a cut of our monthly wages?
So, after this longwinded explanation, I hope that it has become clear that we are dealing with a very simple situation. Impleased has written a very one sided view of the situation. I would have hoped that Impleased could have stayed out of this so that our professional relationship wouldn’t be put under strain . Secondly, his buddy is in need of money because he has been skipping jobs too often here in lovely Ilan. He is leaving soon and probably doesn’t like the look of his bank account. When he heard that we had some business (which had nothing to do with him), he obviously thought he could also get a slice of the cake.
Impleased, as you have decided to become involved in this situation I ask you to help us resolve it. We have been asked to take down the web-site (adventures) which I’m doing. As a gesture of good faith I have put the web-site for sale and asked for any interested parties to contact your buddy’s e-mail address.
There’s an interesting website at http://www.adventuresinenglish.net. I just searched for it on yahoo! when the website wasn’t loading. Is that the correct address? http://www.adventuresinenglish.ca doesn’t seem to be a working internet address.
I’ve just looked and www.adventuresinenglish.ca loads perfectly.
It’s not .net, it is .ca.
[quote=“Pixie”]I’ve just looked and www.adventuresinenglish.ca loads perfectly.
It’s not .net, it is .ca.[/quote]
Opened for me too.
It seems like a great idea, helping people study abroad. But how much money could you realistically generate, as the schools are not your own, the airplanes are not your own, etc? The biggest needs Taiwanese students seem to have is help filling out the forms and test prep.
Realistically, the two websites are identical services. The website at http://www.adventuresinenglish.ca just doesn’t look professionally designed. Then, you could take that basic site to a website designer, and you’d get http://www.overseaslanguages.com. It’s a good argument against making a business website on your own.
Who’s the old guy holding the “for sale” on the website.
Is he a partner too? 
In response to the rather elagantly posted “Wife of Foreign Scam Artists” Quote en Quote, I have this impartial reply from a rather amused foreigner who knows both the scamed and the scamer.
Because we are dealing with children I will put my pennies worth in point form:
1: The after named “Crafty Couple” were infact the initiators of insisting that they must have an office space imediately.
2:Wife of above mentioned had absoulutely 100% no say control or any monetary involvement in this buisness venture aside from her husbands.
3:Although she did feel she needed to contribute her constant emotional ramblings whenever her husband could not speak for himself.
4: The buisness failed because everyone involved was afraid to make a commitment aside from making cleaning schedules for the office
5:The single party involved left his job only try to put more effort into making the buisness a success.
6:He also spent on average 50% more time at the office than “Crafty Couple”
7: As far as how much he actually contributed to the company I would say it was far more than “Wife”
8:All of the Canadian content that was stolen from adventuresinenglish.ca and transfered to overseaslanguages.com was painstakingly over 100’s of hours and 5 months prepared by single guy.
9:When “Crafty Couple” started to get a little buisness they simply cut out not so useful partner and opened thier own company and not thinking to mention anything to single guy imediately started to recieve lucrative accounts. WOW what a shocker!!!
10:As far as this #$%^%&& about needing money as an excuse said single guy recently recieved an overseas insurance settlement, which is public knowledge totaling over 700000.00 nt dollars which he openly used to invest in this venture whereas “Crafty Couple” are still paying back 10000.00 nt dollars they borrowed from daddy.
11:In short covering your tracks is good, but remember , the truth will always come out on top, especially in such a small town.
12: Good luck with your new buisness, I hope you have everything operating legally.
13: Wanna play a game " Who can sleep better at night"
Reminder: You should all be very careful of the statements you make in this or any other forum regarding this matter.
If you wish to use this forum to settle the matter, that is fine… its up to you.
Nonetheless, I don’t think this is necessarily the best venue in which to air your dirty laundry, or to make less than nice statements about each other.
[quote]Nonetheless, I don’t think this is necessarily the best venue in which to air your dirty laundry, or to make less than nice statements about each other.
[/quote]
Sure is entertaining though.
[quote]12: Good luck with your new buisness, I hope you have everything operating legally.
13: Wanna play a game " Who can sleep better at night"[/quote]
Thinly veiled threats are a bit dodgy though. You’d better get your ducks lined up much more carefully than they are in your above post if you’re planning to walk the walk rather than just talking the talk. 