WorldStrides International review: Travel reimbursement

On April 30, 2019, my family began making payments toward a trip to France for our high school sophomore scheduled for July 9-20, 2020. A second payment was made on May 16, 2019, and a third on Feb. 4, 2020. At this point we had invested $1900 toward this trip. In April 2020, we decided to stop making payments due to the COVID Pandemic and unforeseeable future of this trip, and I'm glad we did. The trip was eventually cancelled. *Note on April 4, 2020, we received a late payment fee of $50.

On Jan. 21, 2021, we received an email from our son's French teacher stating that WorldStrides International would reimburse for the trip minus a $399 Cancelation Fee (no problem). I followed the directions stated in her email and was told the refund process was taking 10 weeks (again no problem). After several months and no refund check, I decided to reach out to the company via phone and was unable to get through. I left my number and was told a customer representative would called me back. I made several phone calls like this and never got a response. So then I sent several emails, always resulting in an automated response that someone would get back to me, which never happened.

Recently I decided to try again. After a 30 minute wait, I finally got through to a customer service representative who was very kind but unable to help me. He told me that he only dealt with national travel, gave me the number to international travel, and transferred me. After another 30 minutes of waiting on the phone, I hung up. I decided to Google the company and discovered this website, and that WorldStride International filed for bankruptcy in 2020. I am hoping a formal complaint will help me retrieve the money ($1,501) that we were promised so that we can move on.

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