I think everyone's biggest complaint is probably the "cancellation" policy (I put that in quotes because even for true emergencies, you'll be charged if you weren't able to let them know about the emergency ahead of time - which would make it, by definition, not an emergency). Not showing up to your class for any reason can get you a hefty scoop taken out of your bonus pay for those classes, and if it's less than 2 hours notice they'll take out more than you would have even made. VIP's justification is that they must reimburse parents for the classes they paid for and didn't receive, but the overall message is that they do not want you missing class FOR ANY REASON - if your leg falls off, they'd just really appreciate if you'd find a way to teach through it anyway, because think of the poor students waiting anxiously for their classes! I've heard (thought have no first-hand knowledge myself) that this is fairly typical of Chinese company culture in general: no excuses are good excuses for not doing your part at work. However, as most of their teachers are Americans and Canadians who have been brought up to pretty much always expect a fair and reasonable reaction in the face of extenuating circumstances, it's certainly a big cause of tension and resentment.
Communication within the company is so-so. The people who are in charge of teacher communication are Chinese, and work in the Beijing office. They are mostly pretty nice, but sometimes what I suppose is the vast chasm created by linguistic and cultural differences can make their responses ambiguous and quite tone-deaf, and several times I've found myself wondering if it would be inappropriate to ask for an American to respond to me, as the back and forth trying to get an answer that misses the mark by a few inches each time, but in different ways, is kind of stressful and tiresome (for the record, I haven't asked, and don't think they would say yes anyway).
The in-class tech-help feature (tech people called "the firemen") works only about 70% of the time, but when it does they are mostly helpful. I've only had really one stressful interaction with them, in which they insisted to me in the room chat (which the children can see) that I needed to switch browsers, and were (in my opinion) pretty aggressive and impatient about it. However, 95% of my interactions with them have been good and helpful, though I think there's a tendency to blame teachers for technical problems when they don't actually have a way of proving that something is on the teacher's end, as opposed to the student's or with the platform.
