(Updated) Follow-up to the EPIK Orientation snafu.

Yesterday I posted about EPIK requiring its incoming teachers to front all the costs of their week-long orientation in February. EPIK has since come out and denied this, adding that only dependents of teachers will be responsible for their own costs. On the official EPIK site in a post titled "Urgent Orientation Update" they've posted the following:

There have been some rumors circulating around several popular blogs and forums concerning the EPIK 2010 Orientation, and we would like to clarify the misinformation. We sent an email to several of our recruiters detailing the costs of the Orientation for their dependants only. One of our recruiting agencies misinterpreted the email and assumed that all participants would be responsible for the costs and continued to inform their applicants of the changes. We are working hard to correct this mistake and assure incoming EPIK teachers that they are responsible only for their medical check and personal costs (souvenirs, extra food, extra-curricular activity costs). Again, all other costs for the Orientation will be borne by EPIK and not the applicant.

Additionally, we would like to state that there will be shuttle buses from the Incheon International Airport to the Orientation site for both the Jeonju Orientation (February 17th) and the Seongnam Orientation (February 18th). Please refer to the "What's New" section for more information.

I jumped the gun in taking the word of a recruiter, and I'm sorry for not following it through to the source. I regret causing unnecessary worry for teachers by attributing the policy to EPIK and not to one or more recruiters. I'm waiting for comment from Gone2Korea, the recruiter who sent out the emails and "misinterpreted" EPIK's information by writing

We regret to inform all teachers (for both orientation sites) that EPIK is no longer going to cover all of the costs associated with the arrival and orientation periods. We apologize for the discouraging news but we were just notified of the changes ourselves.

Why are they making teachers pay for some of the costs this semester? We’re not entirely sure but if we had to guess it’s likely because they’ve gone over their budget and cannot afford to cover all the costs this semester. Previously (past semesters) everything was covered so this is a recent change in policy and/or a budget issue. Please refer to the information below to view fees specific to your orientation site/arrival date.

Perhaps the solution is for EPIK to not farm its business out to recruiters, if indeed it is the recruiter at fault here and not EPIK.

As an update I'll add part of what Gone2Korea wrote to me in response to an email on February 4th, reprinted with permission:

Ultimately one of our staff members misinterpreted certain aspects of some rather important information that was sent form the EPIK office. Shortly after receiving this information we sent out an update to all of our EPIK teachers explaining the new policy changes. Roughly 12 hours after the initial email went out another member of our staff discovered that certain aspects of the information was incorrect so we immediately sent out a revised update which apologized to everyone for the mistake and asked them to please disregard certain parts of the previous email (orientation fees and the February 18th shuttle service specifically). Unfortunately one of our teachers had already posted the initial update on the eslcafe website and was already being viewed and discussed by hundreds of EPIK teachers who are currently getting ready to depart for the March 1st semester.