Alexandra Spagnolo
1/5
DO NOT TRAVEL WITH EF (PART 1)
In my opinion EF educational tours is not a good company to travel with. I recently traveled with my school to Paris and Barcelona, and my expectations were way to high for what we got. Sure I ended up having a decent time, when it was free time and I could buy what I wanted (to actually eat something) or go where I wanted with my friends (not with the tour group)
Of course, Barcelona and Paris are beautiful cities, so the tours we did were okay, but there were many things wrong with the trip and the tour company and the way things were organised.
First of all, the trip was advertised as a 8 night 9 day trip. When they released the itinerary, it ended up being a 6 night 7 day trip. The tour company totally changed the itinerary and didn't want to do anything about the 2 lost days that we payed for.
The tour company had made us believe that we were leaving on the Friday or the Saturday before the march break. In reality, we departed on the Wednesday before march break, missing 3 full days of school. AGAIN they changed something on us.
Before we even left, EF posted the Itinerary and flight details for the trip 47 days before departure. This is a problem because if you want your full refund (although you have to pay a $400 cancellation fee) you need to contact them before 45 days.
Between 110-45 days you get a full refund minus your insurance and minus $400! Already ridiculous.
When we saw the Itinerary, we wanted to cancel the trip.
We called the tour company on day 43, and they said too bad and only 50% refund would be issued, not including the $300 insurance, cancellation and refund costs.
We understood that if it is company policy, it makes sense, but they should've given us more than 2 days before they knew people would only get 50%. (AND people that didn't buy the $99 cancellation insurance would get nothing refunded past 45 days!)
When we tried to reach out, they pretended to care and said the manager would call us back the next day. But Donna ended up reaching out 4 days later. And when she did Donna said she couldn't do anything.
I was also upset to know that we would be having a connected flight going there and coming home, with an extensive number of hours in the layover country.
When they did the presentation the tour company had told us that they would get direct flights, but it wasn't a promise. I didn't expect to be spending 2 full days of my trip travelling.
Since my tour was the 6th to the 13th, that only really left 6 extremely tiring, jet lagged days to spend in both Paris and Barcelona.
We flew with American Airlines to Philladelphia and then to Paris, and the overnight flight to Paris was questionable. The food was terrible and tasted like dirt (I'm not a picky eater at all and I couldn't even swallow it)
And typical American Airlines lost luggages while we were going there.
When we got to the hotel in Paris, I was informed I would be in a room with 5 other people, another thing not as advertised, since it was supposed to be 4 people to a room to my knowledge.
Since it was an overnight flight and we got there early morning, we had a full day of touring ahead of us.
And don't forget that the EF traveller app is a joke!! They told my parents there would be daily updates with pictures and postings from the tour guide, but they didn't do anything. They also said they would post the flight information (the landing and flight details) but they never did! The first 2 days of the trip they didn't even post anything at all, not what we did or where we went at all. Another lie.