Overseas Adventure TravelReviews of oattravel.com

Disappointing! This is my third trip with OAT and I have to say that I have been happy with the actual trips - well organized, knowledgeable guides, good hotels and food - that's why I gave it one star! I understand it's been a difficult year but customer service and policies have been hard for me to manage - HOURS and HOURS waiting on the phone, mistakes in invoicing which were difficult to correct, not honoring the flight upgrade price when we were closer to the departure date, cancelling the post trip without contacting us to rebook the flight home (I had to contact them) , charging a $600 fee EACH to rebook my travel partner and I on the same flight home (they called it a "custom" flight fee) - so many issues that I had to deal with makes this company not worth the time and effort. I will not travel with them again!

I really don't know how to improve terrible! The customer service is beyond repair and will never ever use them again. We booked our reservations with the promise that a discount would be applied and never happened. We signed up based on getting the discount! Bait and switch tactics. After weeks of the same run around and promised calls back from inept supervisors, we finally got one that was just as useless as the first tier advisors. It was like talking to children who were never educated. Customers don't mean anything to these people or company. We have not even left for our trip and now really worried that they will not perform as promised during our trip. They have our money and can you imagine the fiasco trying to cancel and get it back? Not worth the effort and if you are thinking of using this company, our word of warning, . . DON'T! If you do . . . GOOD LUCK! We just hope that this nightmare will not carry forward during our trip . . . please pray for us!

Customer service, has OAT even heard of this concept? The cover letter that came with my final documents has NO CONTACT information for OAT just in case a customer needs to reach out. No email. No phone number. This SCREAMS: “We have your money, and we don’t care to service your needs.” I had to resort to the numbers available on the website. Here’s my call log: • June 7, 2022: called 800-221-0814 at 1:05 pm, on hold for 3 hours 16 minutes. An automated message told me I had reached the maximum hold time, was being disconnected, and someone would call me within 72 hours (NO ONE EVER CALLED ME BACK!). • June 8, 2022: called 800-221-0814 at 9:03 am, on hold for 2 hours 14 minutes. Could no longer stay on hold, as I had to attend a meeting. • June 10, 2022: called 800-955-1925 at 9:01 am, on hold for 2 hours 8 minutes. Could no longer stay on hold, as I had to attend a meeting. • June 11, 2022: called 800-221-0814 at 9:01 am, on hold for 1 hour 5 minutes. Despite having followed the prompts for needing to speak with someone about the airline reservation portion and departing within the next 4 months, still got transferred from one agent to another and put on hold yet again. I also tried sending an email. The automated response was that someone would respond within 15 business days. Really, 3 weeks to respond to an email? Would Alan & Harriett Lewis, the owners of OAT, have persevered if they were customers? Called 4 times and stayed on hold for a total of 8 hours 43 minutes? ONLY TO BE TOLD THAT BECAUSE IT WAS NOW SO CLOSE TO THE DEPARTURE DATE, CHANGES WOULD NOW BE AN ADDITIONAL $$$. All of my time and effort were futile. Back on August 14, 2017 OAT posted an apology for poor service and long hold times on their website titled "We Owe You an Apology - Addressing our service issues." Yet, once again, OAT has the exact same problem. Why didn’t OAT learn the value of that lesson the first time? Shameful for a service business to not prioritize its customers. And this didn’t just happen, it’s been going on for months (just look at the reviews posted on TripAdvisor). OAT is in serious need of a customer service make-over, starting with the website as well as competent staffing. There is no chat feature on their website, nor the ability to send an intranet email. Customers traveling within the next 30 days are not provided higher priority than someone traveling 4 months from now. It is obvious their needs are more immediate. This isn’t rocket science. For heaven’s sake, OAT needs to step in to and up to today’s technology expectations for a multimillion-dollar travel company. Believe me, an apology will not repay me for my effort, frustration, disappointment, and time spent apparently uselessly trying to reach OAT. Results count, excuses do not. I am stuck traveling with a company that does not have the capability of helping its customers.