Avoid Brendan-Trafalgar Tours!!
 

Sept. 8, 2011 we made reservations for an Irish bus tour for June 10, 2012 with Brendan Travel, we took advantage of the early booking discounts, prepaid discounts, as well as using our American Express card for full payment to receive a $100 Gift card from AE, the booking included hotels and transfers the day before and the day after the land tour.

On March 29, 2012 we were informed by our travel agent that Brendan had CANCELLED this tour--they had our money for 7 months and then cancelled and offered a refund!! How were we to find a substitute in the same range without the early book and prepaid discounts offered!!

On April 6, 2012 our travel agent was offered a substitute tour thru their parent company of Trafalgar Tours...BUT they said this tour was longer and more expensive and they would honor our previous amount paid. Sounds good except for the fact they would not honor the prepaid hotels and transfers or the AE Gift Card!! We had to leave the tour one day early to connect with our Mediterranean cruise out of Southampton ...so they did not have to pay for the last night hotel, Bunratty Castle and Folk Park tour admission, farewell dinner and transfer to airport. But they kept the money we had already paid for hotels and transfers and so even thou we had paid $140 USD for a hotel-airport transfer we were not credited, reimbursed or transferred-- instead we advised we would have to pay for our own cab fare to the airport-33 Euros!!

I feel like I was taken advantage of and ripped off--I would suggest you consider other tour operators as Brendan/Trafalgar are not customer service oriented and have, in my opinion, very questionable ethics and business practices. I can understand the bad economy may have resulted in a situation that may have made it a money loser to operate that tour but we are clients that dealt with them in good faith-paid in full, included additional services such as hotels and transfer before and after should not have been penalized and suffered additional financial expenses that were originally paid--they should have honored all the prepaid items and considered it a good will accommodation. Now for the sake of a relative small amount of money they caused major bad will and lost us as future clients and hopefully some of you that are reading this!!

So, you posted on Travel Tips and got dissed. Are you going to post everywhere? It's been over 4 months since your "experience?

Here was my response to you...

I'm really getting sick of one-time posters, who join only to complain about a specific product.

I weep for you not getting your $100 AMEX card. What's this world coming to?

<<Now for the sake of a relative small amount of money>> then quit bitching about $$$!

Most of the folks on this site book their own travel arrangements, as they've learned the pitfalls of third parties.

May I suggest you buy trip insurance when you book your next holiday? A lot of things can happen in four months, as you learned the hard way.

Did you enjoy the substitute tour (up to the point you had to leave)?

Obviously, some people can be downright nasty when posters have travel complaints or problems. Normally, I've found the travelers on Fodor's to be more understanding and helpful than what has been shown lately.

Janet, like you, I can understand if Brendan had to cancel your tour due to lack of participation, etc., but I agree that you should have been refunded for the services you did not receive -- even if it was only a small amount of money. IT WAS YOUR MONEY, not theirs.

If you paid with a credit card, I would contact your credit card company and see if they can help you at all.

I did a google search for "Travel Ombudsman" and saw this website for Conde Nast Traveler. You might also try contacting them for assistance:

http://www.cntraveler.com/travel-tip...rcelona-beyond

You might want to file a complaint with the US Tour Operators Association, being sure that you copy Brendan/Trafalgar:

http://www.ustoa.com/2009/

It is always wise to buy travel insurance when you have non refundable prepaid expenses such as a tour. You might want to consider this in the future

Hi Janet

I can understand your frustration. But you'll find in the "small print" that a tour operator has the right to cancel the tour, one of the grounds being if numbers are insufficient (for many tour companies). By booking the tour you accept this as a condition of travel. A few years ago we booked a tour and airfares to Turkey. Due to insufficent numbers the tour was cancelled. OK we got our tour deposit back but the airfares were non refundable so we were obliged to go. We ended having to take a more expensive tour. I must say we had a fantastic time though. I frequently remind Fodorites that when booking tours insist on a "Guaranteed Departure Date" (GDD). Your travel agent will advise you of these (you'll find them in your travel brochure too). It is a simple request that can save alot of annoyance and money.

It is excessive to post the same thing twice on the same board.

You could have taken the refund and booked a different trip or done it on your own.

You could have taken trip insurance and been covered for tour operator cancellations.

You had options and didn't like the option you choose.

Lots of people would love to take a trip and can't afford it. You can afford a trip and took two trips (Ireland and then a cruise) and came home complaining. You have posted nothing worthwhile about either of your trips.

JanetK, I understand your frustrations, but I've travelled with both Brendan and Trafalgar before, and found them to be quite adequate. Granted, I had no problems like you had, but it is in the fine print, I'm sure, and that's why there is travel insurance, which I take out on every trip - whether I plan it or let someone else plan it.

I have learned over the years to always take out trip insurance and always to only book on a tour that is guaranteed

I was not finished yet and hit the wrong button. Most tour company web sites will tell you when a trip is guaranteed to go.
After a couple of cancellations and having to scramble to find another trip in my time frame I learned to check first. Sometimes you can know this way in advance to get your discounts. Other time you have to wait awhile or take a chance.
I too have had problems with Trafalgar and won't travel with them again. So I feel your pain. Hope you had a great trip after all the hassle.

This is one of the risks of using tours. There is no guarantee that they will take place. You had the option of asking for a complete refund and either picking another tours that fit your needs (there are dozens of companies) or organizing on your own.

Agree that they could have gone out of their way to accommodate you - but they chose not to. They didn't do anything illegal, although I agree it wasn't smart.

But - you didn't have to take their offer if you found it so unacceptable.

I don't take tours so I cannot advise but I thought I would do a little surfing. Fist up were these guys.

http://www.epinions.com/reviews/1661...gar_Tours?sb=1

They basically score the company and it is a pretty mixed bag of equal scores for great and terrible. Given how easy it was to get a view on this company I'm surprised anyone uses it.

I don't understand the "bad economy" issue, if there is no business about then you have to work harder to keep what you have. Since the company is Californian I'm surprised the economy is in such distress. Not knowing how things work in the poverty-striken :-) parts of the US but have you tried talking to United States Tour Operator’s Association (USTOA)?

well I do think in the spirit of fairness, and since you are not shy about discussing money..... when you state that the substitute tour was longer and more expensive, you should give those amounts. When you don't give those amounts, it leads to the suspicion that you probably got a better tour for a fair amount less and yet are lamenting the relatively small amounts that were not reimbursed.

Note to Rastaguy and adrienne - this was originally posted on the Travel Tips board, where the poster was advised to ALSO post on the Europe board in the very first reply - i.e. before Rastaguy posted there. It's a bit much that he then shows up here to be rude here as well. It would be nice if first posters became long time readers/posters.

It's a bit much that you are intent on 'tracking' me.

I thought that Globus was Brendan's "parent company" but I haen't traveled with them since 1999 and really enjoyed that trip.

I booked a "stay package" with Globus in 2001 and they changed the Paris hotel all of a sudden and would not even let us upgrade to be better located. I wasn't happy about that and then the Trade Center tragedy happened and we canceled because we were due to leave a week after and I just wasn't up for it. We had trip insurance and got every dime of our money back.

thursday - I didn't read the other post before but saw that that Janet posted twice on this subject. I'm sorry janisj encouraged her to post again on the Europe board. IMHO this type of complaining post does not help other travelers.

I do feel sorry for someone who goes on a tour of Ireland immediately followed by a Med cruise and has nothing good to say about her trips.

<<I don't understand the "bad economy" issue, if there is no business about then you have to work harder to keep what you have. Since the company is Californian I'm surprised the economy is in such distress. >>

Obviously someone who doesn't know anything about how bad California's economy has become.

BigRuss you are correct. I did not know that many young Californians were leaving the state in droves to seek wealth in another land or had had to nationalise their main banks. ;-). I take it then that life in CA is bad right now?

I've taken a couple tours, many years ago. The complaint is a little confusing to me, but I don't want to figure it out that much as the main complaint seems to be that the tour wanted was cancelled and it happened closer to the departure date.

This is normal, no tour is going to be cancelled by a company unless not enough people sign up, they all tell you that. And of course, they aren't going to cancel it until closer to the date to wait for people to sign up. So the argument that this company is so terrible for doing what is standard tour business doesn't make sense to me. It's just part of the risk when you book a tour that you have to choose a company and tour that will likely go. They can't always predict the economy correctly, I'm sure. And of course you could have bought trip insurance.

I don't understand the whole prepaid hotel and transfer business, as you don't pay for hotels separately on a tour, but it sounds like those were arrangements separate from the tour. So they had nothing to do with those, and that is why you either do not prepay things like that (really no need to ni the case of hotels), or buy trip insurance.

I think complaining posts can help other travelers if done correctly and as a learning experience. The OP didn't learn anything from this one, apparently, just blamed the tour company for everything. One could learn to buy trip insurance or not prepay hotels, or to find some way to predict tours that may go versus not. I don't know what those would be, but maybe someone could have some tips about what to ask the company, etc. This is a wellknown good company, however, so that isn't the issue.

I think when I booked my tour many years ago, another one was cancelled, also, because some of them were on our tour -- I think they just consolidated a couple departure dates for the same tour, which seems reasonable (ie, had 2 a month instead of one every week on this itinerary). Please were given the chance to move their dates or cancel.

I've done a few Trafalgar tours and found them to be fine. Of course they list many departures but need a minimum number to make the tour work and profitable for them. It used to be some departures were guaranteed which meant they went hell or high water but as the economy tanked a bit, they were sendiung out some tours with 8 or 9 participants. So they also included the right to cancel a guaranteed departure and changed the title of these tours to preferred departure date or something like that.

Unfortunately it happens and is far from unheard of in the organized tour business. I think they did make an effort to make you whole by offering a tour which was a bit more expensive at the same price. I know it's unfortunate but they ere basically following standard practices of the industry and did make efforts to accomodate you. The idea of travel insurance, given that it is not really all that expensive, is a good one.

Since apparently you got a full refund and would have been able to do something similar, I just don't think you were treated unfairly and not in accordance with the standard practices of the industry, like them or not.

Good luck to you in any event.

I'm xyz123 and I approved this message.