EF Tours is a major scam
 

Our son's backpack is still standing in the corner, gathering dust.

Like many people, we were introduced to EF tours through our son's school, which gave them an air of credibility in our eyes. However, we will do the best we can to advise our school to never work with them again.

We were not told an exact date, but a timeframe for travel in the months ahead. Just as an aside: this makes it harder for "customers" to file a cancellation in the time frame the company recognizes as eligible. In fact, they gladly took our money (more than $3,000) without feeling the need to communicate with us before our planned departure date. Because EF Tours is expensive, kids of only three families sought to participate. Within the week of departure we were told to pack and meet at the airport at a certain time on Saturday evening. Only, on Saturday, mere hours before we were going to drop off our son at the airport, the trip was called off.

It took days before our chaperone told us the reason why: she had her passport stolen and could not travel. This is an extenuating circumstance for the company, I understand, but also is no fault of the families. For nearly a month we heard little from the company itself other than they'd offer vouchers and refused to reimburse the families who could not go at other times during the summer.

Nearly a month later, we were offered a replacement trip of the exact length, places, and program of the original trip. This was planned to head out on July 7. We really were hoping our son got to go after all. However, EF Tours now asked for $800 more - not $80, but close to a third of the amount we already paid them and had not received anything for yet (not even the common courtesy that they would communicate with their paying customers). Only a month later, the same trip cost nearly 1/3 of the original price more, vouchers or no. How much more would we pay, even if we were still willing to send our son with them the following year?

There is no guarantee. In fact, when we reached out to EF Tours, they insisted on keeping our money in exchange for vouchers (for those who had other plans and could not travel at the later date) as well as the additional $800. They actually provided us with their law offices address.

This company piggybacks on our schools' credibility and has - as I see now - a history of being unreliable. I would recommend to anyone considering traveling with EF Tours to either go with a different company or plan a trip for yourselves. Just like with people, the true character of a company shows when things do not go as planned. EF Tours is of a scam character to say the least.

When I recently was looking for an $89 fan to put in a house we were selling, I researched reviews extensively. So why wouldn't you do the same for a major investment of 3K, plus putting at risk your child's safety? There are several nasty reviews of this company online.

Here we go again... Two other threads on Fodors.

https://www.fodors.com/community/eur...choice-984292/

https://www.fodors.com/community/eur...tours-1021373/

The last posts on those two threads were a decade or more ago. There was a very recent one - like in the last 3 or 4 weeks (which I'm not sure but may have been deleted because the OP got pretty abusive and eventually accused various Fodorites of being EF employees ;) ) which had great info and insight on both sides of the problems. There is also an ancient thread on the Europe forum which gets topped by a newbie pretty frequently (it must come up first on Google searches) which is VERY informative.

While most EF 'users' are in the States -- it seems many tours are to Europe so that is where most 'EF is horrible' topics get posted.

Oh -- I just did a search and I 'mis-remembered'. It was a 2022 thread which a newcomer topped and the newcomer was the one who's posts were nuked, not the whole thread. Here it is. https://www.fodors.com/community/eur...1705167/page3/

That angry newbie even sent abusive private messages to several members - apparently not everyone who has a gripe about EF Tours is a total prince themselves >;) )

Sorry for your bad experience. Research is everything.

Not on you, but I do not buy "the dog ate my passport" excuse -lol- There is no one else who could lead the trip? More importantly would you really want a group of kids sent off to Europe under the supervision of someone who can't even keep track of their own passport?? :-)

Welcome to Fodor's. I am sorry you had this terrible experience. I am guessing the chaperone who didn't bother to notify everyone for several days about her passport is likely not an employee of the company which probably lessens their responsibility but I don't know for certain. Travel later in the summer does tend to be more expensive which might have something to do with the increased cost.

You and your son must be so disappointed. Had you purchased travel insurance? What have you decided to do? Perhaps you and the other families can band together and travel later or next summer with one or more of you becoming chaperones? I don't know if that would work but it might be worth investigating. Good luck!

Most times isn't the 'lead chaperone' a teacher or member of the school administration??

Janis, I think you are right but I figured it wouldn't hurt for the disappointed parents to check and see if there can be an alternative.

I understand your point and while not everyone spends extensive amounts of time before they spend $89 on a fan, this is the main complaint I am having in my head now. Hindsight is always 20/20. I guess, we did not look for reviews because they came through the school and the child would have gone with a teacher known to us. While missing out on conducting research on the business is causing me a lot of headache, it still should not speak against my sharing the experience, so others would not find themselves in the same situation inadvertently.

OP, was the chaperone from your son’s school?
Personally, from what you have written, and from my own experience in chaperoning student trips, I believe the chaperone or whoever you worked with from the school was entirely responsible for this fiasco. What were they doing in the time between losing their passport and informing parents of the situation?
First, another chaperone could have taken over.
Second, it is sometimes possible in such situations to get a passport very quickly. If you are traveling in less that 14 days, you can go to a passport office and get one day service. The chaperone should have moved Heaven and earth to do that. If she could not do that, she should have acted quickly and responsibly to take charge of the situation, make a decision and inform the parents immediately.
When a trip I was chaperoning was cancelled by the company because the partner group cancelled, I quickly enquired about available options for similar trips that were within the original budget, was offered two, selected one and immediately called parents. The company did not call each parent, I Did! I truly do not understand why schools and/or teachers do not accept responsibility for their role in this. They are given so much specific information: dates, costs, inclusions, exclusions, insurance, how chaperones work, types of hotels, etc. Yet parents seem to know very little about it.
While I think EF is pretty much at the bottom of student travel, this situation was not really about EF’s product or their delivery of it. It is about a person (teacher/chaperone/leader) who made a commitment to parents and got the parents to commit to sending and paying for their child to be accompanied by her on a trip. She failed totally in the commitment. It may have been justifiable, but she apparently did nothing to rectify the loss (to parents) that resulted from her failure.

I'm a grump, coming from a lower income family and a working class community, I don't feel sorry for anyone, period, who spends thousands of dollars on a high school kid to take a vacation. This is truly whining of the first world and top of the first world. When I was a kid, we were lucky if we could take a family road trip for a week or two in the car. I never got to Europe until I was in my 30s and could afford it on my own. No one I knew in high school had families paying for trips to Europe for them. I am not swayed by any arguments about kids paying for it themself through savings/jobs because again, any money I earned as kid had to be spent on other things like clothes or saved for college, not blown on a European trip. That argument wasn't made here but I've seen it before.

But the point is, the complaint should be totally on the school and the teachers, not a company that provides a budget product. Why aren't they being held responsible? They are the scam artists who are benefiting from touting these trips to students.

In fact, the lack of no research, even a few Google simple searches, when spending thousands of dollars was explained by trusting the teacher. So they are the scam artists, right? They get a free trip if they can enroll a certain number of students, it's like a pyramid scheme. So why not complain in a school meeting with the admin/teachers and public?

This warning isn't going to do any good for similar people because they also will not even do a few simple Google searches, if they use the same logic.

The whole high school trip abroad is a grenade in the modern world. Schools and clubs offer these things, but when things so south, suddenly no one is in charge and the parents are the losers (and the students). From personal experience, educators are poor lawyers and poor financial people. You are totally on your own-- they absolutely will run and do nothing. They don't care that you lost money, they look at these travel vendors as giving them free trips and they are so cozy.

If you are out money, take the tour agency to small claims court. You will win. I had a similar fiasco and took the company to court and won. Any communication with the school is wasted time.

This is unfortunately a completely misdirected comment. Insurance covers YOUR behavior, rarely the vendor's behavior like bankruptcy or a canceled tour. These are civil contract issues. I am not aware of insurance that covers a vendor's behavior, is there insurance to cover a plumber who is working in your house? That's what you are implying, that there is coverage for this, when there is not.

I don't believe that the OP was in the wrong for posting. It would have been better, however, if she began by saying that she should have vetted the company, and also, that her intent was to warn others. I am sure it was quite painful for her to write. I have posted negative reviews about hotels with the intent to warn others, and more often than not, I did not listen to previous reviewers. These two situations certainly have some similarities.

We live in a capitalist society, and some people can afford trips like this, and some cannot. Certainly, that is not the point of the post. It was a learning lesson that one should read reviews, and NOT to trust others, such as the administrators of the school. They have certainly proved here that they cannot be depended on to watch out for your interests.

To the OP, I am sorry that this happened to you, and I did not mean to be harsh in my comments. I hope that you can ban together with the other families in an attempt to get at least some of your money back. Perhaps one of the families has a lawyer as a relative who can write a demand letter to EF Tours. Do let us know if you have any success.

YES. I've lead numerous tours. All customers VERY HAPPY.

No, EF Tours is NOT a scam. As a teacher, I've taken 6 EF Tours with numerous students --sometimes more than 25 at a time. Travelers have the OPTION of exchanging a tour, I'm sure. When COVID hit, and my tour to Italy was cancelled, that was an OPTION, but they refunded those who didn't go in that case--it wasn't their fault. This parent's experience is not typical, and the title of this post is due to one traveler's experience. It's also libelous because EF has been in business for more than 50 years with plenty of good reviews and a good reputation.

amount
 

You can do a lot with $3000, Always try to make your own arrangements and not package tours if you can.

The OP was a new poster and hasn't returned. I hope their issues were resolved satisfactorily.

The author has not returned in seven month. We are now closing this thread.