I’ve had a reasonable amount of success myself with chasing up the misuse and downright abuse of the names of these two venerable (but vulnerable?) institutions. UniTEFL took away the “recognised/ approved by” bit above their names after I mentioned it here and Canadian Institute of English removed the TESOL logo (which used to be there each and every time they used the world “TESOL”) after I emailed them. I also had a very nice email from someone at TESOL thanking me for my efforts, but…
… if they are organisations whose purpose is to raise the standards in TEFL/ TESOL, surely one of the best places for them to start is by defending the integrity of their own logos, names and general reputations. Or am I asking too much? And it rather another great example of the need for a TEFL legal fund?
TEFLtastic 
The first thing to do is to ask them to help, especially if it’s something they can do for free. I can’t see either of those organizations using their money to setup a legal fund, but I think that they might consider the possibility of posting an official statement on their website.
Realistically, what to do you suggest, Alex?
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They could start by just doing what I did – finding and emailing people who are misusing their names. I haven’t tried it but Googling “recommended by IATEFL/ TESOL” should turn up a handful just to start with. I don’t want to reveal too much of an email, seeing as emails are not public, but the nice person from TESOL seemed to be suggesting that they wouldn’t be wasting their time on such campaigns.
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What would surely be a good thing would be if these two organizations listed – clearly, on their websites – those bodies that ARE members or ARE affiliated/recommended etc. I’m not a hundred percent sure but I seem to recall having difficulty in the past with both these outfits trying to find just such listings. Respectable organizations like Cambridge ESOL allow anyone to search their site for, for example, approved course providers – and they seem to keep those listings updated.
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They both clearly state the fact that they recommend absolutely no courses at all on their websites, but the chances that people seeing those false statements will end up on those pages of their sites are next to zero.
Being a member of either association proves nothing at all. All you have to do is pay your subscription. Courses which mention their membership are almost always dodgy
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Another search tactic might be to do an images search for TESOL and IATEFL together. I’m fairly sure that you can refine that by finding out the file name of the logos (e.g. iatefl-logo.jpeg????) that people are using. Almost ever page that has both logos is likely to be dodgy.
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