Mamma Mia
I just got back from Greece, one trip I will not soon forget.
Let me preface with this. I do not write this to be mean, malicious, or to be a bully. I'm writing this as a warning to anyone looking into this company or any other company. Do your homework. Also I hope you get a good laugh, I know I did, once the tears dried.
I have had a lot of people asking me about my trip and there is so much to unpack and truly I still don't have all the answers. This is a very long story but I will try to make it quick.
A couple of my friends were asked to go with a traveling group called Book your Bucket list (BBL). When I heard they were going to Greece I promptly invited myself. (Side note if you don't want me to come on a trip with you don't tell me about it until after you have returned home, I will invite myself.) I called Josie the owner of BBL and handed over my fee to attend what I thought would be an amazing trip to Greece. About 2 weeks before we were to leave I was getting nervous as we had not received any information. The friends I was with said they heard from someone that had previously traveled with BBL that they were late getting flight info to you but once you were there it would be amazing. That was the sliver of hope I held on to for much, much too long.
Four days before we were to leave I reached out to Josie explaining I had not received any information beside a rough itinerary. I got an immediate response saying "...as soon as I land I will send over your flight over". That was about 1am early Sunday morning. Monday morning after not hearing a word from her I emailed her again telling her my concerns. She ignored my email and sent out a group text. Apparently "they had a bug in their email server" and she is "reaching out to everyone to confirm they have received their flight email". I responded with "As you know I have not received any information" She then sends me a screenshot of a flight. Not a confirmation, just a screenshot from Delta's website of a flight that is going from SLC to Athens. That's it.
I then asked for hotel names so I can give them to Derrik in case of an emergency. She responds with 3 names of hotels. I continue to ask for an actual flight confirmation number and she continues to give excuses. It is now Tuesday afternoon, at this point I actually ask her if she is running a scam.
Tuesday at almost 10pm I finally get my flight info. I questioned myself many times if I should cancel but I have that one glimmer of hope that "once we get there it will be amazing". Wednesday evening I ask her what to do at the airport, she responds that she will be there waiting for us.
Okay. Everything is about to line up and be smooth sailing from here on out, right? RIGHT?!?!
We arrive in Athens after a 16 hour trip. It's 11am local time and I'm a bit hungry and even more tired. We find the BBL group but no Josie in sight. She won't be arriving until 4:30pm. No big deal, flights get delayed. So we stand in the airport waiting for our van. After 45 minutes they say it's almost here so we head outside. We proceed to stand there for another 30 minutes. I question them as to where the van is. They say it's late. I suggest we get an Uber. They say they have one, it's 2 minutes away. Five minutes later I ask where it is. They say "our location hasn't been picked up". To anyone who knows how Uber works knows that this doesn't make any sense. After more standing around we finally get ourselves into a cab. There are 6 of us friends total but probably 15 more in the whole group. I get in a cab with a BBL "employee?" Mallory and two of my friends. The other 3 friends are in a separate cab. We drive 45 minutes to the AirBnB that the BBL team stayed at the night before (and had checked out of...) to drop our luggage off, because our rooms aren't ready yet. I know, I'm confused too. We show up to the old BnB only to hear Mallory say. "This isn't it". Ok, so where is it? "I don't know". Our friends are now standing in front of some house in the middle of Athens. We tell our cab driver to slowly drive next to them as then walk with their luggage to a busy street to find another cab. At this point it is becoming very apparent there is something seriously wrong.
I ask Mallory why we can't just go to the hotel and drop our stuff off and she informs me we are not staying at Titania Hotel, the hotel Josie sent me and told me we were staying at, but rather at an AirBnB 40 minutes back outside the city. Nice. Liam Neeson isn't my dad so this sounds extra sketchy.
We are all very hesitant to stay at some place we have not seen. We also had plans that we made specifically by The Titania Hotel we were supposed to stay in. We called Titania and they tell us that Josie never had a reservation there and they are all booked. At this point the day is half over and we ask Mallory "what is the plan if we miss the acropolis today?" She says, "We will just go tomorrow". The next day we were supposed to be going to the beautiful Melissani Cave. She says, "Oh we aren't doing that anymore, it is a 10 hour round trip bus ride, but we heard about another cave we will go to instead". Ummmm, no thanks.
After driving around for two hours, getting in and out of the cab our driver tells us "I remember this for one year!" It's getting late so we just decide to go to the Hilton and cut our losses for the day. Once we're there we get a text from Josie with a few sad excuses as to why she wasn't at the airport and why we don't have rooms at Titania.
We explain that we had booked spa reservations that night in the city near the hotel they told us we'd be staying at and that we don't want to drive 40 minutes back outside the city to stay in a place we aren't even sure exists. She then says "that is more than fine and we can keep you in a hotel in the city." Which was great. So we are now sitting in the Hilton lobby going on 4 hours. Mallory is still with us, but she keeps telling us she has to go to the new AirBnB to take the rest of the group the key. We explain to her that she can not leave us in Athens alone and that someone else can come get the keys from her, as there are multiple other BBL "employees". She says the entire group is waiting at the AirBnB for the keys. At this point I am hoping that is the case. I hope everyone else in the group is having a great time and they are all just thinking we are a gaggle of crazy girls. That dream is completely shattered when a couple from "the group waiting at the AirBnB" walks into the lobby saying they have been sitting on a random curb for the last few hours. No AirBnB in sight...
Questions so far:
Josie finally shows up at 5:30 with a tone in her voice like she is a waitress who brought us the wrong soup, "What seem to be the problem?" My frustration generally either comes out in yelling or tears. In this situation I still want answers, so the tears begin to flow. I am thousands of miles away from my kids and husband, I have spent a lot of money and taken time off work for this dream trip and we are being talked to like children.
All we ask Josie for at this point is honesty and answers, both of which she is having trouble supplying. What she is saying and what we had been told by Mallory are two completely different stories. We ask for hotel names, confirmation numbers, and phone numbers so we can call and make sure we have places to stay in Mykonos and Santorini. Not an absurd request by any means. In fact, this is basic information that SHOULD be provided before a guided International tour. You know, the kind of basic information that we can give to our families if we go missing so they know where to look. Josie takes about 30 minutes to retrieve one hotels information. We call the hotel. The hotel explains they do have a reservation but the credit card was declined. The second hotel was a similar story. To be honest, at this point we would have been surprised if anything was actually booked. It's now 8pm we are still waiting on her to get us confirmations for various excursions, so two friends and I decide to go to our spa evening we had planned. My friend is writing an article on this Turkish Spa and it wasn't super helpful to have six girls trying to figure out what is happening with the trip so we decide to head out. When we returned at 10:30pm, the other girls we were with informed us that the rest of the group showed up and is now staying at the hotel.
New Questions:
Our first day in Greece we explored the hotel lobby of the Hilton. The history, the culture, the architecture!
We make the decision to see how the next day goes. At this point I am ready to change my flight and just come back home. I go to sleep and wake up to a few texts just after midnight. One of our friends husband did some digging and talked to an employee. "Josie... said things started out rough due to bad weather...but has given him her commitment that it will get better from here. Whatever that means". That's reassuring, thanks for that.
That text was put in a group message between us six girls plus Josie. She responds with her apologies. "If you are going to be happier and feel more secure doing your own thing I will give you all refunds and you are welcome to keep your flights...." We all respond yes, we will take the refund. With only 5 days left in the trip we don't want to waste one more second. She said it will take "7-10 business days, which I can process right away".
The next morning I finally get to eat the first real meal since our layover in JFK about 34 hours before. We talk to Josie and she assures us again we will get a refund. We then head up to our room and proceed to plan the rest of our trip, just us six.
The rest of the trip turned out amazing.
The following Thursday and Friday the 30th and 31st we asked for confirmation numbers for our refund. No response. So Thursday the 6th I called my credit card company to dispute my charge. She was not responding and after reading countless new comments I was afraid I would never see my money again. She has posted screenshots on BBL IG page that she has refunded us, but I haven't seen that refund. The credit card dispute did go through so in the end I did get my money back.
I can laugh about this now, but in the moment being in a foreign country that none of us had been to before and we had already paid thousands of dollars is a very scary feeling. I got lucky, I had been to Europe before so planning a last second trip while on this failed trip wasn't as bad as it could have been. I also was planning on paying for a trip so as soon as I was reimbursed going off on our own I wouldn't be spending any "new money" but for a few of our friends, they now had to pay for a trip they weren't planning on and for countless others who paid and then had a trip cancelled and have yet to get their money back, that is a whole different story.
I hope you got a good laugh from this story. I know I have.
Everything I have said here is the truth to the best of my friends and my knowledge. I have plenty of emails and texts of almost every conversation I had with Josie.
Let me preface with this. I do not write this to be mean, malicious, or to be a bully. I'm writing this as a warning to anyone looking into this company or any other company. Do your homework. Also I hope you get a good laugh, I know I did, once the tears dried.
I have had a lot of people asking me about my trip and there is so much to unpack and truly I still don't have all the answers. This is a very long story but I will try to make it quick.
A couple of my friends were asked to go with a traveling group called Book your Bucket list (BBL). When I heard they were going to Greece I promptly invited myself. (Side note if you don't want me to come on a trip with you don't tell me about it until after you have returned home, I will invite myself.) I called Josie the owner of BBL and handed over my fee to attend what I thought would be an amazing trip to Greece. About 2 weeks before we were to leave I was getting nervous as we had not received any information. The friends I was with said they heard from someone that had previously traveled with BBL that they were late getting flight info to you but once you were there it would be amazing. That was the sliver of hope I held on to for much, much too long.
Four days before we were to leave I reached out to Josie explaining I had not received any information beside a rough itinerary. I got an immediate response saying "...as soon as I land I will send over your flight over". That was about 1am early Sunday morning. Monday morning after not hearing a word from her I emailed her again telling her my concerns. She ignored my email and sent out a group text. Apparently "they had a bug in their email server" and she is "reaching out to everyone to confirm they have received their flight email". I responded with "As you know I have not received any information" She then sends me a screenshot of a flight. Not a confirmation, just a screenshot from Delta's website of a flight that is going from SLC to Athens. That's it.
I then asked for hotel names so I can give them to Derrik in case of an emergency. She responds with 3 names of hotels. I continue to ask for an actual flight confirmation number and she continues to give excuses. It is now Tuesday afternoon, at this point I actually ask her if she is running a scam.
Tuesday at almost 10pm I finally get my flight info. I questioned myself many times if I should cancel but I have that one glimmer of hope that "once we get there it will be amazing". Wednesday evening I ask her what to do at the airport, she responds that she will be there waiting for us.
Okay. Everything is about to line up and be smooth sailing from here on out, right? RIGHT?!?!
We arrive in Athens after a 16 hour trip. It's 11am local time and I'm a bit hungry and even more tired. We find the BBL group but no Josie in sight. She won't be arriving until 4:30pm. No big deal, flights get delayed. So we stand in the airport waiting for our van. After 45 minutes they say it's almost here so we head outside. We proceed to stand there for another 30 minutes. I question them as to where the van is. They say it's late. I suggest we get an Uber. They say they have one, it's 2 minutes away. Five minutes later I ask where it is. They say "our location hasn't been picked up". To anyone who knows how Uber works knows that this doesn't make any sense. After more standing around we finally get ourselves into a cab. There are 6 of us friends total but probably 15 more in the whole group. I get in a cab with a BBL "employee?" Mallory and two of my friends. The other 3 friends are in a separate cab. We drive 45 minutes to the AirBnB that the BBL team stayed at the night before (and had checked out of...) to drop our luggage off, because our rooms aren't ready yet. I know, I'm confused too. We show up to the old BnB only to hear Mallory say. "This isn't it". Ok, so where is it? "I don't know". Our friends are now standing in front of some house in the middle of Athens. We tell our cab driver to slowly drive next to them as then walk with their luggage to a busy street to find another cab. At this point it is becoming very apparent there is something seriously wrong.
I ask Mallory why we can't just go to the hotel and drop our stuff off and she informs me we are not staying at Titania Hotel, the hotel Josie sent me and told me we were staying at, but rather at an AirBnB 40 minutes back outside the city. Nice. Liam Neeson isn't my dad so this sounds extra sketchy.
We are all very hesitant to stay at some place we have not seen. We also had plans that we made specifically by The Titania Hotel we were supposed to stay in. We called Titania and they tell us that Josie never had a reservation there and they are all booked. At this point the day is half over and we ask Mallory "what is the plan if we miss the acropolis today?" She says, "We will just go tomorrow". The next day we were supposed to be going to the beautiful Melissani Cave. She says, "Oh we aren't doing that anymore, it is a 10 hour round trip bus ride, but we heard about another cave we will go to instead". Ummmm, no thanks.
After driving around for two hours, getting in and out of the cab our driver tells us "I remember this for one year!" It's getting late so we just decide to go to the Hilton and cut our losses for the day. Once we're there we get a text from Josie with a few sad excuses as to why she wasn't at the airport and why we don't have rooms at Titania.
We explain that we had booked spa reservations that night in the city near the hotel they told us we'd be staying at and that we don't want to drive 40 minutes back outside the city to stay in a place we aren't even sure exists. She then says "that is more than fine and we can keep you in a hotel in the city." Which was great. So we are now sitting in the Hilton lobby going on 4 hours. Mallory is still with us, but she keeps telling us she has to go to the new AirBnB to take the rest of the group the key. We explain to her that she can not leave us in Athens alone and that someone else can come get the keys from her, as there are multiple other BBL "employees". She says the entire group is waiting at the AirBnB for the keys. At this point I am hoping that is the case. I hope everyone else in the group is having a great time and they are all just thinking we are a gaggle of crazy girls. That dream is completely shattered when a couple from "the group waiting at the AirBnB" walks into the lobby saying they have been sitting on a random curb for the last few hours. No AirBnB in sight...
Questions so far:
- Mallory, if you had the keys why didn't we go there instead of the old AirBnB?
- Why do you have keys to a place you have yet to go to?
- Where's Sherlock Holmes when you need him?
Like with the Uber situation, we're assuming that the workers don't know how AirBnB works.
Josie finally shows up at 5:30 with a tone in her voice like she is a waitress who brought us the wrong soup, "What seem to be the problem?" My frustration generally either comes out in yelling or tears. In this situation I still want answers, so the tears begin to flow. I am thousands of miles away from my kids and husband, I have spent a lot of money and taken time off work for this dream trip and we are being talked to like children.
All we ask Josie for at this point is honesty and answers, both of which she is having trouble supplying. What she is saying and what we had been told by Mallory are two completely different stories. We ask for hotel names, confirmation numbers, and phone numbers so we can call and make sure we have places to stay in Mykonos and Santorini. Not an absurd request by any means. In fact, this is basic information that SHOULD be provided before a guided International tour. You know, the kind of basic information that we can give to our families if we go missing so they know where to look. Josie takes about 30 minutes to retrieve one hotels information. We call the hotel. The hotel explains they do have a reservation but the credit card was declined. The second hotel was a similar story. To be honest, at this point we would have been surprised if anything was actually booked. It's now 8pm we are still waiting on her to get us confirmations for various excursions, so two friends and I decide to go to our spa evening we had planned. My friend is writing an article on this Turkish Spa and it wasn't super helpful to have six girls trying to figure out what is happening with the trip so we decide to head out. When we returned at 10:30pm, the other girls we were with informed us that the rest of the group showed up and is now staying at the hotel.
New Questions:
- If you made the reservations weeks ago then finding and forwarding us the confirmations should take, um 30 seconds max, right?
- What happened to the cooking class we were supposed to do?
- Why is everyone staying at a hotel, where is the supposed AirBnB?
Our first day in Greece we explored the hotel lobby of the Hilton. The history, the culture, the architecture!
We make the decision to see how the next day goes. At this point I am ready to change my flight and just come back home. I go to sleep and wake up to a few texts just after midnight. One of our friends husband did some digging and talked to an employee. "Josie... said things started out rough due to bad weather...but has given him her commitment that it will get better from here. Whatever that means". That's reassuring, thanks for that.
That text was put in a group message between us six girls plus Josie. She responds with her apologies. "If you are going to be happier and feel more secure doing your own thing I will give you all refunds and you are welcome to keep your flights...." We all respond yes, we will take the refund. With only 5 days left in the trip we don't want to waste one more second. She said it will take "7-10 business days, which I can process right away".
The next morning I finally get to eat the first real meal since our layover in JFK about 34 hours before. We talk to Josie and she assures us again we will get a refund. We then head up to our room and proceed to plan the rest of our trip, just us six.
The rest of the trip turned out amazing.
The following Thursday and Friday the 30th and 31st we asked for confirmation numbers for our refund. No response. So Thursday the 6th I called my credit card company to dispute my charge. She was not responding and after reading countless new comments I was afraid I would never see my money again. She has posted screenshots on BBL IG page that she has refunded us, but I haven't seen that refund. The credit card dispute did go through so in the end I did get my money back.
I can laugh about this now, but in the moment being in a foreign country that none of us had been to before and we had already paid thousands of dollars is a very scary feeling. I got lucky, I had been to Europe before so planning a last second trip while on this failed trip wasn't as bad as it could have been. I also was planning on paying for a trip so as soon as I was reimbursed going off on our own I wouldn't be spending any "new money" but for a few of our friends, they now had to pay for a trip they weren't planning on and for countless others who paid and then had a trip cancelled and have yet to get their money back, that is a whole different story.
I hope you got a good laugh from this story. I know I have.
Everything I have said here is the truth to the best of my friends and my knowledge. I have plenty of emails and texts of almost every conversation I had with Josie.
Comments
Post a Comment