Trip to Europe 'scam'
Sep. 3rd, 2010 10:35 amLast week we received a letter from People To People International offering Rosa a trip to Europe next summer. I hadn’t heard of the organization so I did a little poking about. First I looked at their website, and was somewhat concerned when I couldn’t find any indication of how much it would cost. So then I went to google, and the top “suggestion” in the google search window said “people to people scam”. Here’s the first page on that search...
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/travel/people_to_people.html
According to the reviews, it’s a for-profit travel agency, it’s extremely expensive—with a lot of hidden after-the-fact charges--the lodgings and supervision are terrible, and there’s no actual selectiveness whatsoever. The names come from databases, and whoever pays first, goes. Most of the complaints are people who tried to get their money back for whatever reason, but several are people whose kids had bad experiences.
To be fair, I have seen several comments from people whose kids had a good experience, but the price is way too high for what you seem to get. As I said, their own website doesn’t say, but it looks like at least 4000 for two weeks in Europe. I think we could ALL go to Europe for two weeks for that.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/travel/people_to_people.html
According to the reviews, it’s a for-profit travel agency, it’s extremely expensive—with a lot of hidden after-the-fact charges--the lodgings and supervision are terrible, and there’s no actual selectiveness whatsoever. The names come from databases, and whoever pays first, goes. Most of the complaints are people who tried to get their money back for whatever reason, but several are people whose kids had bad experiences.
To be fair, I have seen several comments from people whose kids had a good experience, but the price is way too high for what you seem to get. As I said, their own website doesn’t say, but it looks like at least 4000 for two weeks in Europe. I think we could ALL go to Europe for two weeks for that.