Questions and Answers

My mother and I had booked a tour for last April with EF Go Ahead tours for Ireland. We bought the insurance and was told it was good for any cancellation reason. Between the two of us we paid 4914 (tour and excursions only, not airfare) for the tours. Naturally it canceled due to Covid. I was pressured to quickly rebook. So we rebooked for March of this year. I have now found it we lost that original insurance money then. We rebooked and bought more insurance.

That tour has now canceled. My mother is older and does not feel comfortable traveling overseas with all that is going on. I requested to simply get our money back.

I was told that is not an option. We can only get a voucher for the travel (and of course we will again lose the insurance money). We don’t want to travel overseas. In looking at their US options – they are 3-5 days longer than what we had planned originally and much often much more expensive. So we are not interested in that either.

I pushed back saying I know MA (where EF Go Ahead is headquartered) has various laws to protect the traveler and I also pointed that airlines have had to refund money full when they cancel. I understand this is a bad situation but they not able to provide the tour offered and I think legally they need to provide a full refund (other than the insurance again).

They come back and offer the following:
[LIST=1]
[*][B]Rebook to a future date or a different tour[/B] – everything would transfer over to a future date. If you rebook the same tour to the same month in 2022, we can price match it for you. If you choose a different month, or a different destination, we can price lock your tour up to an additional $300 per person.
[*][B]Place Your Reservation on Hold[/B] – Not ready to make a decision? You can place your reservation on hold through May 31st, 2021.
[*][B]Accept a Future Travel Voucher[/B] – The voucher you had would be reissued to you in the full amount paid to date. It is transferable to another person and can be used on any future Go Ahead Tour.
[*][B]Refund outside the Cancelation Fee & Insurance[/B] – Refund of $1,698 and a AnyReason Protection Voucher for $1,000 per person
[/LIST]
With number 4 we are losing $3216 total.

Do you have any suggestions? From my online research it seems I should file claims:
1) Better Business Bureau
2) Mass Attorney General
3) TX/WV Attorney General (states where my mother and I live)
4) FTC

Is there anything else that might make this more likely to get resolved?

Thank you!

Hey Lara, sorry to hear about your troubles!

I can’t find EF Tours on Elliott’s website of senior-level company contacts, if you wanted to try to escalate within EF before contacting anyone else.

[URL]https://www.elliott.org/company-contacts/[/URL]

One other thought, and this would be potentially risky, is you could take the future travel voucher and attempt to re-sell it to either friends/family/online. I would just ensure, in writing, that the voucher is transferable to another person.