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Ownership & Fake University Partnerships: According to “whois.com” the company website is registered to a person named Yuri Khlystov. Although the website has a .org domain it is NOT an organization, NOT a NPO, NOT an NGO, and it is NOT partners with tope 100 universities in America and the UK as their telesales people often claim on the phone. In fact this group photo of SMU on the web site is a fraud according to the SMU alumni association which claims they have no knowledge of Gi2c.org
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Fake Overseas Locations: On the homepage of Gi2c.org it lists many office locations around the world that simply do not exist. They claim they have offices in Tokyo, New York, London, Canada, Los Angeles.. When you call each of the numbers the same person will answer the phone- in Beijing where it has been call forwarded. I have asked Gi2c management and the receptionist to provide mailing addresses and street locations for these foreign offices and they just hang up the phone. They do have a nice big office in Beijing and rent an apartment in Shanghai that they call their Shanghai office.
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15 Employees of 20 Resigned In Last Year: The Shanghai office was recently managed for 5 year by a Chinese girl who goes by the name of “Jane" and “Jean”. She recently “resigned” along with fifteen other employees, including foreigners. Reasons for the mass resignation are cited as “personal” but China Scam Patrol reports that the resignations follow the arrest of a Chinese employee "Tommy" for visa fraud by the Chinese PSB and he is seen in the below photo. ***** was convicted and served a 9 month prison sentence. Gi2c claims that ***** is “not really an employee, but helps us a visa consultant” but former employees say otherwise and confirm that ***** came and worked in the same office almost every day and “ran errands for the owner a lot” . All these people who left the company sill have their photos on the Gi2c website here to give people comfort that foreigners work there not just Chinese who are prone to cheat in online marketing/recruiting programs. http://www.gi2c.org/our-team.html
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Terms & Conditions: The company has changed it’s “terms and conditions” three times in the last year in order to avoid claims made by a former Chinese employee who filed claims with the Chinese Labor Board. That case was finally settled - in favor of the employee who was cheated of 6,000
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Facebook Censorship: If you monitor the Facebook page of Gi2c you will see that most all complaints are deleted within 24 hours of being posted including one from intern “James” who complained the housing he was provided had black mold in the bathroom/shower and the mattress gave him lice. Others complained how they were baited and switched – promised one internship before they paid but then given another after they arrived in China.
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The “Refundable Deposit” that isn’t: A big problem is the sneaky way they steal deposits from people that are supposed to be “100 Refundable” but all their fine print exceptions give them excuses to avoid giving refunds, unless someone is actually in Beijing and brings the police to the office like two former employees admitted to me. They get the $300 deposits by promising you that you can get this great internship “with a big brand international company” but you must reserve it or someone else will surely grab it.” People think they will only have to pay the $300 for this program so it looks like a great deal.
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The Big Surprise: After the deposit is paid the intern finally learns that they must pay a placement fee of $3,700, their round trip air fare of $2,000, $1,500 two months of apartment rent and security deposit, and $2,000 for daily meals and subway costs – a total of about $8,000! At this point most people want their deposits back, but “regretfully” they are told to “read the fine print”.
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Fake Testimonials: The company has been caught using shill testimonials and almost all the online reviews you see for them (gushing with praise) are paid for or self-created on their own websites, blog, or wordpress accounts. How difficult it is it to create an email identity and go post great reviews about your own company as a fictional customer.
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Gi2c sales people brag that they are "partners" with over 50 top universities yet the ones they named in their brochure disavow any knowledge of the company. Likewise they claim they "work hand in hand" with the HR Directors of over 120 Fortune 500 companies sin China yet they cannot even list 10 companies they supposedly work with!
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Aliases: The company was originally called “GetIn2China.com” and in fact, the old web site is now forwarded to Gi2c (getin2china.com). That old company had been well-known in China as the place where “black visas” were sold to Russian prostitutes and people involved in various gray and black market activities. When police raided a Luxury Goods company that sponsored a Gi2c intern (the company was selling fake designer handbags, sunglasses, etc) and the arrests were announced on CCTV and local newspapers, Getin2China.com suddenly closed their offices at Dongzhimen location and reopened at the Galaxy Soho building (pictured below) and changed their name to “Gi2c”. Coincidence? I think not.
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Gi2C Employees: if you look at the Gi2c web site today at the “Our Team” link you will see a lot of foreign faces posted there yet all but one resigned and no longer work there for months yet the company wants you to believe that they are still there to create a false sense of comfort that you are dealing with foreigners. They even use the videos of these former employees who never gave their permission (according to one that I spoke to personally) The black guy Kris is still there but the others are gone. Just more deception. http://www.gi2c.org/our-team.html
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About the internship itself. The big international internships advertised on the web site are fabrications used as bait, including the “Wall Street Company”, “Big 8 Accounting Firm”, “Famous Japanese Electronics Company, etc.” If you check every month you will see that 80% of these internship never change! After they have your deposit in their hands you will see that the companies that actually want you are most no-name Chinese companies or small international start-ups. Too late they have your deposit – and you are not getting it back. When you get to China you will find yourself living in a single room of a shared apartment with 2-3 other interns, although the sales rep promised you your own apartment. At the internship you will usually find yourself making things like copies, coffee, deliveries, sales calls, etc. If you are one of the lucky ones you may end up in a shopping mall passing out advertisements for the company. One intern with a BBA from a top notch university was even asked to where a cartoon costume for a promotion. At thebeijinger, a user named “Queen of Hearts” asked Gi2C to identify their “Wall Street Companies” and to publish the addresses of their “overseas offices” and a copy of the contract. The reply given by Yuri was pretty honest – he admitted Tommy's arrest and other problems but he did not lists the companies or the contract. He also admits that 25% of his customers are dissatisfied but on the website it claims a “94% satisfaction rate”
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The company was caught using a boileroom in Pakistan in 2013 where telesales people called UK uni students claiming to be calling from Gi2c's "London Office" which realscam.com exposed as a big fraud.
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Job Conversion Rate: If you corner the Gi2c management they will finally admit that less than 5% of their interns are offered a job, and because the offered pay is so low, most of those offers are rejected. But their sales reps and advertisements say “almost a third of our interns receive job offers”.
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Visa and legal problems Gi2c never mentions: Intern applicants at Gi2c are told to lie to the visa officers about why they are coming to China or they would not get a visa. They are told to ask for a “M” visa which is reserved for “Cultural Exchange Delegations” like museum curators, actors, musicians, artists, etc. Gi2c also promotes and sells a 6 month program to Arabs, Pakistanis, Indians, and Africans who just want entry into China and cannot get anything more than a 30 day tourist visa on their own. China law specifically states that no international internship can exceed “90 consecutive days” but that doesn’t stop Gi2C from breaking the law and putting the intern at risk of arrest and imprisonment followed by deportation. Customers are actually instructed to break the law and lie on their visa applications. Read this from top to bottom:
http://antifraudintl.org/threads/beware-of-china-internship-visa-scams.96692/
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The Chinese government outlawed foreign interns in 2013! Here is the link that shows Gi2C is actually selling something that is not even legal today in China!
http://www.balglobal.com/News/NewsDetail/tabid/266/id/3105/language/en-US/CHINA--China-Eliminates-Internship-and-Training-Visas-for-Most-Foreign-Students.aspx
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