Don't use World Expeditions
 

My wife and I recently travelled through India, Nepal and Bhutan. We used World Expeditions to organize our trip. I have travelled extensively for 30 years (personal and business) and have never experienced worse service from an agent. Poor service, poor communication, poor follow up. They're great until they get your non-refundable deposit (early in the process) and then the service quickly deteriorates. No help with complaints from their head office, either. I'm very sorry we ever got mixed up with them.

Vinnie, I can't imagine using one company for travel to those three countries. Can you tell us specifically what went wrong? What they did or did not do? That would be much more helpful than what you have posted so far.

Yes that would be helpful. Where do they have offices?

Looks like they subcontract to local companies, so it would also be useful to know who were the local agents on your trip, along with specific details of your complaints.

Yes, they subcontract to locals in each country. We had no problem with the locals, just the office personnel in the Ottawa and Sydney offices. Specifically, it took months to finalize a fairly simple itinerary. They kept telling me that once I paid the final payment, then they would send the details. To me, that's backward. I want to know exactly what I'm paying for (for example, which hotels, which sights, which meals, etc) before I submit final payment. Other agents that I have dealt with never had a problem with providing detailed itineraries very early in the process.

The other problem is that they were very condescending, as if I was a child. Rather than answering my questions or addressing my concerns along the way, they would give me platitudes or non-answers. "Don't worry, trust us, everything will be fine." That is NOT the answer I want to hear when I'm paying $13,000 for a trip.

For example, our flight into Delhi was scheduled to land after midnight. Initially, they told me that they couldn't provide a driver to pick us up until 6 AM so we would have to sit in the airport and wait. Can you believe that response?

I also got passed around to four different people in the same office over a period of about 3 months. I would get to a certain point with one person and suddenly be switched to someone else, thus forcing me to start over. It's like they didn't have a file with all the pertinent information in it. I would have to answer all the same questions all over again. This shuffling caused them to get dates mixed up, flights to the wrong city on the wrong date, etc. I ended up having to catch their mistakes for them. No apparent quality control or double checking of details before sending out documentation.

Well, that all sounds like a pain, but why didn't you give up on them and try something else? Or do it yourself - I've done India (twice) and Nepal on my own, and I only used a tour for Bhutan because you have to have at least a guide and driver.

It sounds like an unpleasant and very expensive lesson. Thanks for warning others.

Wow. Thanks for the explanation and sorry to hear of your bad experience. If that's how they behaved before service I would have strongly considered another operator.
Take care dude.

Dear Vinnie1981 –

We’re very sorry to read on this forum that your experiences with our company were not to your satisfaction. Our office staff are trained in all aspects of the pre departure reservations process and when you expressed some concerns we naturally responded quickly to rectify the same. That is our policy and we are very focused on providing our customers with the very best level of service. If there are any outstanding issues, we would be most appreciative if you could outline those specific matters to us by email. We were otherwise very pleased to read your trip evaluations and that you enjoyed your experiences with us in Nepal and India.

World Expeditions has been operating trips across the Himalaya since 1975. Our local ground agents in Nepal and India are actually owned by our company. These local bases operate our high quality trips exclusively for us so that we can maintain the high quality of service that thousands of travellers have enjoyed and have come to expect from us for over three decades.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Kind regards

World Expeditions

WORLD EXPEDITIONS--- pick up the phone and call vinnie like any other business would do and address his problems directly... don't hide behind this forum and claim things that are not true in his eyes...

the person that calls should be a senior person, a VP type or the owner, who clearly has the power to make adjustments for vinnie and for the benefit of others. no back and forth and no wasting more of vinnie's time.

rhkkmk

i just noticed that vinnie is new here... i hope he is not trying to smear WE???????

If it took so long to get an itinerary and their communication was poor why did you book with them?

Rhkkmk... I am sure Work Expeditions is posting on here so that we all know that they are happy to try and fix whatever is the problem.

Miss green--but they didn't

The time to fix the problems was before the trip, since they seem to have all been pre-trip problems. WE is claiming the problems were fixed, so presumably this is a legit customer, but they were not fixed to the customer's satisfaction.

I'd especially like an explanation of the Delhi airport issue. I hear that airport has been improved lately, but I would certainly not want to be stuck in an Indian airport for hours!

Hey everyone,

Thanks for your responses.

I originally contacted WE based on a recommendation from a trusted colleague. The, I was stuck with them because they were great up until they got my $3,000 non-refundable deposit. Then the service went downhill in a hurry.

I agree with rhkkmk. They are quick to respond to this post but very slow on responding to my problems. The person I tried to deal with is their North American Manager. Seems high enough up the food chain to help me out, no?

Sorry, Miss Green, but in spite of many contacts via phone and e-mail, they were not prepared to address my concerns.

DO let us know whether they are more willing to work with you now that you have made your complaint public.

Sorry to read about your experiences but I guess the lesson here is not to part with money that is "non refundable" as, once you do, you have lost all leverage. Most of these companies are capable of cc transactions but choose not to for this very purpose. I rarely use travel agents but is I do, I would insist on paying by cc and would never wire money. Not sure which country you are from,or where this agent is based, but is there not some sort of travel industry organisation overseeing the travel industry which could arbitrate on this issue for you. In the UK we have ABTA, the association of British travel agents who customers can go to in the event of this sort of problem.

Posting here is great but if you want to really scare the company into action then I would post on. Tripadvisor as well giving all the detail. That forum has a much wider readership and most travel industry people fear the damage bad publicity cand do far more than here on Fodors ( great though this sight is!)

I'd go higher, like to the CEO.

Thank you, Kathie and crellston for your replies and suggestions.