I recently signed my child up for an 8th grade trip to Washington DC though this company which was sponsored by the Junior High School. Because we were involved with sports outside of school that may conflict with the trip schedule, we made sure to purchase the "Refund Guarantee Protection" for $105.00 which allowed us to get a full refund (minus the protection cost) for any "any reason". Much as we anticipated, we ended up having a scheduling conflict which was recognized two months after signing up and two months before the actual trip. Upon contacting Educational Tours to request a refund, we were told our request had to be made in writing. We immediately drafted a request and included all of the necessary information. We were told that since the payments to date were auto drafted from our Mastercard Debit Card, the refund would have to be credited back to the card, which in itself is ridiculous seeing that a debit card is not a credit card and the funds were not being charged. However, we were told this would be the quickest way so we agreed.

After nearly four weeks, we contacted Educational Tours by phone to check on the status of our refund and we were told it takes 4-6 weeks to process a refund request. When asked why it takes so long we were told “there are refunds in front of yours and they are processed in the order they are received”. This is complete hogwash seeing that they had the system set up to auto draft our debt card for each payment transaction. It does not take 4-6 weeks to redeposit funds into an account or issue a credit to a debit card. It is quite obvious this company makes a great deal of money selling their “Refund Guarantee Protection” and then kiting your money for over a month and collecting interest on your balance. The quality and integrity of this company is seriously in question as far as I’m concerned. I will never do business with this company again under any circumstances and I wouldn’t recommend them to any school, parent or organization.