The situation at Rumah Bahasa has taken a marked turn for the worse in recent days, and the new managers of this school have gone on the rampage, threatening to sue the whistle-blower who first exposed their fraudulent business model and even challenging him to a fist fight. For the authors of this blog, we can’t help but feel a sense of deja vu. What happens when the shoe is on the other foot with these lying, manipulative Binsars, Frendys and Lukes who run dishonest schools in Indonesia? They act all indignant and lash out with threats of retribution, their inflated egos stunned by the realization they aren’t untouchable after all. They see other people as targets and marks to be used; the idea that other people might see through their scams and tricks enrages them. Why aren’t people acting like the passive victims they are supposed to?

This story started a while back on Dave’s ESL cafe. A teacher came forward and reported that Rumah Bahasa had established a business based on 100% illegal labour. The business wasn’t even registered as a company, so it was unable yo get work visas (Kitases) for its teachers. Amazingly, even the school manager was working on a tourist visa. This staffroom stuffed full of illegal teachers was even worse than TBI. At least TBI employed some legal teachers amongst all the second-class VKU visa teachers: this company had one-upped TBI and had no legal teachers or managers at all!

Looks fine on the surface

After reading the story of the teacher on Dave’s ESL Cafe, we decided to repeat his allegations on this blog. We get around 150 views a day. We knew that if we tagged our blog posts “Rumah Bahasa Lotte Mart”, this blog would soon be very high on Google searches for the school. We knew we could play a big role in exposing these allegations to a broad audience. This plan worked better than we possibly imagined and over the past couple of months, this blog has been flooded with views from Rumah Bahasa customers. Some of the visitors to this blog informed us of more info. It appears that the school owner, Frendy Horas, had fooled a lot of Indonesians too, lying to them about the salary and making “sweet promises” he couldn’t keep. These people painted a picture of a completely dysfunctional school where people were constantly coming and going, classes were opening and closing without rhyme and reason and many people were disappointed by the lies and broken promises of Frendy Horas.

Late last week the scandal around Rumah Bahasa seemed to have reached new heights. On Friday this blog received 450 views in a single day. Friday is usually a quiet day for traffic on this blog. But there were now twenty and thirty visits per hours, most of them coming from google searches for “Rumah Bahasa Lotte Mart” or “Frendy Horas Rumah Bahasa”. And then on Saturday we learned from Dave’s ESL Cafe that the school now has new managers- a Dutch husband and wife team who have taken the reigns. Incredibly, these people allegedly threatened not only to sue the original poster, but they even threatened to falsify the facts to make it look like he was the author of this blog! Nicceee management skills guys! Had they been taking notes from Binsar Simorangkir and Luke Preece?

In a truly ridiculous touch, the hubby even threatened to challenge the original poster to some fisticuffs. The fist-fighting school manager …. only in Jakarta, folks! But as the original poster rightly said, as citizens of the Netherlands, they are neither entitled to manage a school or even teach English in Indonesia, so they are way out of line with this conduct. For these detached observers, we can only conclude that this unfortunate school is not going to prosper and may even collapse in the coming months. And how can anyone concerned about quality education for Indonesians view that as anything other than a good thing?