FigNewS
Covid19 changed EVERYTHING, Awful refund process. CAREFUL.
UPDATED 8/2020: I chose Authentic Vacations because of their great reputation, and "peace of mind" guarantee. COVID19 HAS CHANGED EVERYTHING, CAREFUL! We were booked for 9/2020 13 night trip to the UK, Uh Oh. 3/2020 we contacted our first agent to find she was furloughed 2/2020. Uh Oh. Having already paid Authentic $10K+ we tried rescheduling, NO GO. We then asked for a refund. Our 2nd agent, though cordial, had his hours CUT early 3/2020. After 2 months of many contacts with Authentic and NONE of our $10K back, we tried rebooking for 2021, but the groud tour bus company was not accepting rebookings. Authentic dragged their feet in filing an insurance claim, so after consulting our attorney, we took the claim over ourselves and filed our claim 6/2/2020. Within two weeks we received repayment from the tour bus company, and are filing our claim with American Airlines ourselves. UPDATE 8/2020: American, refunded our claim that we filed ourselves, ONLY because we had a letter from Doctor of husband's medical condition preventing travel. THEN: American sent the money to Authentic's Accounting dept, instead of to us. NO ONE notified us of this credit, and I spent weeks trying to track down our refund!!! Still no go, I am beyond miffed. I just received a thank you note from Authentic, asking for the final payment on our currently scheduled trip in two weeks???? What??? If you plan on working with Authentic or ANY 3rd party, you've added another layer of recourse between you and refunds, should you need them. In the future I will book directly with tour companies and airlines, not because Authentic didn't try or provide a good package, but because they were unable to get any money back for us in a reasonable amount of time.
Response from Authentic VacationsJul 9, 2020
Dear Valued Customer -- Our apologies, your review just came to our attention. (We do not use Trustpilot as a review source, so we were unaware until now that you had posted.) While Covid-19 created modifications to our operations, we have successfully rebooked travel for a future date for our customers who were impacted by the pandemic to help them still realize their dream vacation and avoid financial penalties. If for any reason your travel arrangements with Authentic Vacations have not been rebooked yet or met to your satisfaction, please contact us directly at [email protected] and management will review and respond to you promptly. Thank you.