International Student Tours, Inc.

The complaint is regarding a customer's reinstate charge of $30 due to lack of final payment. The customer states that she made the final payment on line a few days before the final payment deadline. However, the payment did not go through and the customer was auto-cancelled. Hence the reinstate...

charge of $30.Our system required the customer to enter their credit card information and click a "Next" bottom. It then if takes them to another page where they must click "Perform Payment". The last step is to click "OK" in th drop down box. The final screen states that their payment has been approved and allows them to click a bottom showing them their new account balance. The client did not complete the process by clicking either "perform payment" or the "OK" in the drop down box. We take over 10,000 on-line transactions a year and this may happen a handful of times. The client was told this by Ms. [redacted] and assumed it was a system error. It was the client not reading and following the instructions correctly. It was an unfortunate and rare occurrence brought on by user error. I have included the screen shots of the process for your review.As a gesture of Good Will, the client was given a full refund, including $150 the non-refundable deposit!We hope that this resolves the issues to their satisfaction.Sincerely,[redacted]President

There was a disconnect between what was advertised and the actual events. During the time period we were in the Bahamas, there were maybe 100 students there. Not the hundreds that were shown on videos. Once we arrived at the hotel, we were immediately corralled into a small meeting room. The check in process was very unorganized. This is where we were sold the Action pack and were told "everyone was getting it". $170.00 covered all cover charges at the parties, the day at the island and the "booze cruise". Later, when we went to the parties with the kids, there was never a cover charge. The day at the island required more money to purchase drinks and to rent a beach chair. The snorkeling had limited marine life. We waited about 2 1/2 hours from pickup time to loading on the ferry to get to the island. The "booze cruise" was scheduled for the day after we flew out. After contacting a GradWeek person twice, we were refunded $50.00 for the "booze cruise". The "pool party" hosted by GradWeek at our hotel consisted of music playing and a gradweek tent setup on the beach. There was no interaction. I looked back over initial information and nothing was ever mentioned about us having to pay for cabs to the parties. So, we paid for an action pack for covers that did not exist and a $10 cab fare each night. They sell you on the all inclusive resort but then cart you to other locations to spend additional monies. The resort was a dump but that is an issue I will take up with Breezes. As for the security GradWeek offers: One night several of our kids "ditched us". Gradweek people loaded them in a cab to go to the casino. We were told they would only allow them to go back to the resort. We had to hunt the kids down our selves. We had one kid who was not able to make it on the trip. Grad week did not realize we were one kid less until we were loaded on the bus to go home! When we were waiting for transportation to the airport, the bus driver approached us (the chaperones) and said there was not a gradweek person there to coordinate. We expedited the loading of the suitcases and kids onto the bus. They did follow us to the airport but no one helped us with check in our anything. They just stood there.

Review: My son is signed up to travel with a group to travel with IS Tours. A final payment was due on 3/1/2015. A couple of days before the due date, we went on their webiste to make the full payment of $1449 by credit card. We had clicked on the next button to finalize payment and on the bottom of the screen it Thanked us for the payment. We of course assumed that the payment went thru. A friend of my son asked us to call and check to verify if our payment went thru. We did so only to find out that our payment did not go thru and in order for them to reinstate my son, I had to pay an additional $30. I had talked to Kacey Kuebler who even told me that it happened to a lot of students. I had talked to a friend of my son who said that it happened to them too. Obviously, there is a problem with their system as confirmed by Kacey and yet they want to penalize us an additional $30 and for their mistake. It is an unfair practice where it is obviously their system's error and yet they are penalizing us for their error.I only agreed to make the final payment because I don't want my son to be left behind otherwise I find their practice highly suspicious and therefore do not recommend their services to anyone.Desired Settlement: return $30 reinstatement fee

Business

Response:

The complaint is regarding a customer's reinstate charge of $30 due to lack of final payment. The customer states that she made the final payment on line a few days before the final payment deadline. However, the payment did not go through and the customer was auto-cancelled. Hence the reinstate charge of $30.Our system required the customer to enter their credit card information and click a "Next" bottom. It then if takes them to another page where they must click "Perform Payment". The last step is to click "OK" in th drop down box. The final screen states that their payment has been approved and allows them to click a bottom showing them their new account balance. The client did not complete the process by clicking either "perform payment" or the "OK" in the drop down box. We take over 10,000 on-line transactions a year and this may happen a handful of times. The client was told this by Ms. [redacted] and assumed it was a system error. It was the client not reading and following the instructions correctly. It was an unfortunate and rare occurrence brought on by user error. I have included the screen shots of the process for your review.As a gesture of Good Will, the client was given a full refund, including $150 the non-refundable deposit!We hope that this resolves the issues to their satisfaction.Sincerely,[redacted]President