Before you choose any teacher to work one-on-one with your child, often in an unfamiliar environment, you need to make sure that a) the teacher is qualified and b) that they’re bonded and safe to spend so much time with your child.

We always recommend doing a personal background check on the person that you’re looking into teaching your child.

A quick Google search for the person’s name can turn up a lot of information, particularly legal cases or other issues involving the teacher. The same goes for Facebook, checking the appearance of their Facebook profile can give you a sense of the teacher’s general demeanor and appearance.

Additionally, it’s best to check their qualifications with the appropriate board or association that the instructor is claiming to be associated with.  It’s scary how often credentials aren’t back-checked to ensure your potential teacher is really qualified.

Once you settle on an instructor, if the lessons take place at the instructors’ home or studio, be sure to stay present as often as possible at the beginning to ensure you get a good ‘vibe’ off of the interactions the teacher has with your child.  If anything doesn’t seem ‘quite right’, you should reconsider and find another instructor.

For instance, Piano Lessons Calgary openly invites parents to sit in on their child’s piano lessons as long as they like to ensure they’re comfortable with their child’s instruction and environment.  Truly an example for all teachers to follow.

If you’ve logged into your Facebook account since this past Thursday, you might have noticed something’s different…  That’s right, those are scammiest Facebook ads you’ve seen yet.

According to insiders, on Thursday an edict came down from the ‘executive level’ to dramatically loosen the ad quality standards for Facebook’s image and text advertisements.  Up until this point, potential advertisers and their ‘affiliates’ (commission-only marketing agents) have had to meet stringent discretion guidelines to ensure users weren’t being scammed by fraudulent advertisements and ‘exclusive offers’.

The floodgates however are now open…  According to a source close to these advertisers, Facebook has decided to allow all kinds of formerly regulated advertisements including:

• “Work-at-Home” Scams
• “Free Trial” Diet Products that bill your credit card well before the trial period ends, then refuse to let you cancel
• “Free Federal Grant Money” rackets where you pay get a list of ‘secret’ free grant programs (no such thing as a free lunch)
• “Free Ringtone” subscription services (The Florida Attorney General’s Office had a field day with this one)
• “Free IQ Surveys” that feed you a bunch of easily answered questions before you are required to pay to see the results.
• “Cash4Gold” Programs encouraging you to shove your jewelery in an envelope and mail it in for a third of its actual value

The list goes on, reports also indicate ‘male enhancement’ products are making it through to users.  Facebook has reportedly also significantly increased the daily spending limits for shady advertisers, enabling them to spam a wider array of users.

Some recent gems:

Wads of cash and the illegal use of celebrity images may be bringing in the clicks, but when users end up getting ripped off by all of these “free” offers, chances are they have every right to as why Facebook is suddenly allowing all this crap.

Are they that far behind MySpace in advertising revenue that they need to stoop this far?  Or is this just a grand fishing experiment to find out how much scammers are willing to pay when they’re not having any luck with legitimate advertisers?

Post a comment with the most ridiculous Facebook ad you’ve seen this week…maybe we can get them to rethink spamming their users