Post your 8th grader travel trip experience
If you have an 8th grader that took or is planing on taking a trip with their classmates to places outside of your state and have had experiences with the trip, I urge you to post a comment here. The purpose is to help others decide on which travel agencies to take or avoid. You can post your good stories as well as your bad ones.
The kids and parents had an interesting time
If you plan on working with World Strides as your tour provider then I must warn you that you will be spending hours doing walking to and from your destinations. They don't believe in tour bus travel unless it is from city to city. In Washington DC the tour guide took a wrong turn and took our group on an extra mile or so hike which took more time for a trip that was on a schedule. Time that could be used to actually see something that is taken up by cross town walks.
It is being proven more and more as I talk to people about World Strides is the fact that they are a cheap skate company that charges for more than they are putting out for. One point is the fact that our group stayed in an unmarked "hotel". Now you tell me where World Strides found a hotel that doesn't have any marks of a name on it. I wonder if a hotel like that even has a business license.
Of course my rants about World Strides could not be complete without a mention about how they make numerous contributions to political leaders. Why would a tour company that specializes in tours to Washington DC make so many contributions....In wonder about that one.
By the way if you have missed it, take a look at the other posts in this blog to see the comments made by former World Strides employees and customers. It is a real eye opener.
If you really like the information in this blog and want to make other people aware of the facts please Stumble it, Digg it or Tweet about it. The more people that are informed the better and maybe one day our kids and schools will not be taken in by this kind of company anymore.
It is being proven more and more as I talk to people about World Strides is the fact that they are a cheap skate company that charges for more than they are putting out for. One point is the fact that our group stayed in an unmarked "hotel". Now you tell me where World Strides found a hotel that doesn't have any marks of a name on it. I wonder if a hotel like that even has a business license.
Of course my rants about World Strides could not be complete without a mention about how they make numerous contributions to political leaders. Why would a tour company that specializes in tours to Washington DC make so many contributions....In wonder about that one.
By the way if you have missed it, take a look at the other posts in this blog to see the comments made by former World Strides employees and customers. It is a real eye opener.
If you really like the information in this blog and want to make other people aware of the facts please Stumble it, Digg it or Tweet about it. The more people that are informed the better and maybe one day our kids and schools will not be taken in by this kind of company anymore.
World Strides, a company full of controversy
Because of the very informative comments that this blog has gotten regarding the tour company, World Strides, I will try and keep the blog up beyond the date of the children's trip. Just visit some of the blog posts regarding World Strides and you will read the many people that have had both positive and negative results with the company. Former employees have also left not so nice comments about the company.
Worldstrides the tour company your school should stay away from
In my previous post about our problems with Worldstrides (you can read that post here) I mentioned the fact that Worldstrides had been involved with a bankruptcy. I had found that information via a private members only message board. It may or may not be in error but apparently the post got the attention of Worldstrides themselves. It is amazing to me that a blog that gets only 3 visitors a week would set off alarms at a small travel agency (Worldstrides only has 300 employees worldwide, hardly a large corporation) Because of that post I got a long 5 paragraph email from Mr. Martin, one of the VP's at Worldstrides trying to "correct" my blog post.
In answer to that email I will "correct" the word bankruptcy with a link to a court document that goes into great detail about how Lakeland Tours (which is what Wordstrides use to be known as) debts mounted up and how Worldstrides was formed under questionable dealings. You can see that document in full here. You can form your own opinion about Worldstrides after reading that.
Next I would like to mention that Mr. Martin prided himself in the fact that the Better Business Bureau of Richmond, VA gave Worldstrides an A+ as a rating. That is indeed true but on the same page they (the BBB) mention the 18 complaints against the company, in the last 36 months alone that were "resolved" (it was not mentioned how they were "resolved")
Another website also listed complaints against Worldstrides and you can see them at this link.
Mr. Martin's email goes on to mention the fiasco with the Bush inauguration which I had mentioned in the prior blog post. He said and I will quote him here, "During the inauguration program we provided an additional 1-2 days of lodging, meals, sightseeing, and transportation for over 1,000 students affected by both security and weather issues. This was done at no additional cost to the participants." Since I have no way of knowing if that is true or not I will give you a link to the news article that started of of this and let you decide. Here is the news article. Of course Worldstrides did not give out refunds to those kids, why am I not shocked. They like to keep what ever money comes their way and they stick to their no refund policy - they kept my money didn't they.
That is not all the news I have on them. Stay tuned for the next installment because there is more!
Those people at Worldstrides should have given me my money back. Now they will get lots of unwanted and free publicity.
In answer to that email I will "correct" the word bankruptcy with a link to a court document that goes into great detail about how Lakeland Tours (which is what Wordstrides use to be known as) debts mounted up and how Worldstrides was formed under questionable dealings. You can see that document in full here. You can form your own opinion about Worldstrides after reading that.
Next I would like to mention that Mr. Martin prided himself in the fact that the Better Business Bureau of Richmond, VA gave Worldstrides an A+ as a rating. That is indeed true but on the same page they (the BBB) mention the 18 complaints against the company, in the last 36 months alone that were "resolved" (it was not mentioned how they were "resolved")
Another website also listed complaints against Worldstrides and you can see them at this link.
Mr. Martin's email goes on to mention the fiasco with the Bush inauguration which I had mentioned in the prior blog post. He said and I will quote him here, "During the inauguration program we provided an additional 1-2 days of lodging, meals, sightseeing, and transportation for over 1,000 students affected by both security and weather issues. This was done at no additional cost to the participants." Since I have no way of knowing if that is true or not I will give you a link to the news article that started of of this and let you decide. Here is the news article. Of course Worldstrides did not give out refunds to those kids, why am I not shocked. They like to keep what ever money comes their way and they stick to their no refund policy - they kept my money didn't they.
That is not all the news I have on them. Stay tuned for the next installment because there is more!
Those people at Worldstrides should have given me my money back. Now they will get lots of unwanted and free publicity.
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