Remote YearReviews of remoteyear.com

This company is the worst - dont give them any money. There also should be some kind of legal action brought against them for breach of contract. I didn't even sign up for a program! I had only signed up for Enterprise Solutions! A service where they promise to refund your money if you pitch the idea to your boss and remote work isn't approved. I paid $1,000, NEVER even had my first meeting with the ES team, my boss did not approve remote work because after covid my job got really intense (I work for the government), she also said she would have declined anyway. And I kept asking where to send my letter and they refuse to give me back my money. They completely lied to me in my interview. This company is such a scam and they are so poorly manages and do not have the cash flow or insurance to operate at the levels they do.

They are refusing to send me back my money for my cancelled programme! I have emailed the person responsible for persuading me to pay the deposit in the first place back in January (their sales tactics are like vultures) and after hassling me NON-STOP to sign and pay every day for the past month before I payed, now its stone wall silence! DO NOT TRUST.

They are stealing money from people who signed up for future programs, which are now, obviously cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic. They are refusing to provide any cash refunds for our LARGE deposits, while providing some of the worst, most tone-deaf responses. Apparently, they feel entitled to hold onto our cash indefinitely despite the crisis and all of the massive sacrifices that other corporations, our governments and our own personal businesses and lives are taking right now. With the way they’re handling this situation, I would never trust this company enough to go on a trip with them. NEVER. I’ve called my credit card company to pursue recourse, and if I had the money, I’d call an attorney and sue them. For now, at least I hope I can help someone else hold onto their money.

The company appears to be going under as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Do not give them any of your money; you are unlikely to ever see it, or any of their services, again. They are not issuing any refunds to current customers, although they are stringing us along with claims that they are hoping to sort things out eventually. It sounds like they are almost out of cash. The company fired most of its staff before its customers were evacuated or otherwise confirmed to be safe, and it is now saying that it doesn't have sufficient resources to handle the current situation; it has merely provided an email address and promised to try to help with the few people it has left. The reason for Remote Year's positive reviews is that the business is a great idea. The reason for the negative reviews is that management is unprofessional and untrustworthy. It's a shame.

Great intro conversation which might gave been worth the 1 k I lost. Poor follow through and unable to book a travel slot due to their lack of response and unwillingness to communicate in anything other then emails which get sorted into junk mail so are easily missed. They have learned how to convince the credit card companies that they are not scam artists so there is that.

This company does not care about their "remotes" and all they are interested in is making a fast buck and cutting corners in any way possible in order to achieve that.

Remote Year protects badly behaving staff over remotes. I completed a 12-month Remote Year program and loved it. But when I joined another program as a citizen, the Remote Year staff member leading that group would regularly get drunk and high (excessive alcohol consumption and using drugs in countries where they aren't legal are both in violation of Remote Year's code of conduct). But what was worse is that under the influence he would often act in verbally and sometimes physically and sexually abusive ways. I reported him to Remote Year's third-party HR partner and an investigation was done. I was told that measures had been taken to ensure he would not partake in any more substance abuse or inappropriate behavior. In reality, Remote Year just moved him and placed him in charge of another group who didn't know his history. Sure hope he didn't hurt anyone in that group, but abusers rarely change their patterns of behavior so I'm not terribly optimistic. I left Remote Year soon after this and I would strongly encourage anyone considering a program to not participate because this company has no interest in its responsibility to keep you safe.

Late one night in autumn 2017, my husband Insomnia and I laid in bed scrolling through Instagram, wistfully dreaming about traveling. The sentient algorithm on the app immediately sensed my fernweh, and two thumb flicks later, I was looking at a high-res photo of a laptop, sitting by itself on a wooden table, overlooking a palm tree- lined beach. “Make anywhere your office. Be a digital nomad with #RemoteYear (RY) and start taking your meetings on the beach.” I immediately clicked on the travel company’s sponsored post, and hungrily devoured all the photos of exotic places on the profile. There were photos of many places I’d already been, but what me drew me in where the photos of places I hadn’t even heard about. I browsed the link in their bio, read the FAQs, and completed the questionnaire, praying that my answers would make me a good fit for the program. Remote Year offered everything I wanted, with no hassle. I could travel the world while working from my laptop, and they handle all the arrangements! For a $2,000 USD monthly fee, my flights, co-working space, three excursions per month and my lodging accommodations would be arranged for me. I’d been spending that amount on just rent in Brooklyn, so this felt like a steal. What I didn’t realize is that the answers in the questionnaire I completed didn’t matter, because they were only used to determine whether you can pay the initial down payment and monthly program fees, or not. The answers I provided on the interest survey were not used to recommend an itinerary, nor match me with the best-suited group, nor are they used to recommend excursions based on my interests. No, that would be too logical, and from what I gather, too expensive for this budding start up. In my later conversations with RY management, I suggested all of these uses for the data, and I wouldn’t be surprised if future participants see these improvements. More free ideas and labor from me, yay! There was no question about my desire join RY, I have been determined to start #ChasingCalatrava since I quit my corporate job in April 2017. My only hesitation came from my mother’s then-precarious health status. She was on dialysis and waiting for a kidney donor, and I didn’t want to be a world away from her. It pained me so much to know that this seemingly-tailor made opportunity existed, but it was just out of reach. The Universe knew my heart and heard my pleas, and on December 21, 2017, I got the call that my years of campaigning for a kidney donor on social media paid off. Mommy had a match. It is a day I’ll never forget- I was in BedStuy, Brooklyn, sitting in the back of a cab heading eastbound on Broadway with one of my bookends on our way to another girlfriend’s house, and was so overcome, I forgot how to make words with my mouth. I just started hyperventilating and sobbing tears of joy. It was two holiday presents in one: my mother was given a second lease on life, and I could confidently go traipsing off to places unknown and not be worried about her. 2018 was going to be my best year, yet. The Remote Year sales cycle for me was very short. I was the perfect customer: well-traveled, has disposable income, already familiar with working from home, accustomed to video and conference calls, no partner, no kids. In my first phone call with a very motivated young man from their recruiting/sales department I asked, “who do I send the money to, and when do I leave?” He laughed, realized he didn’t have to do much work, and the rest of the call was mostly me asking questions about a “day in the life” of a Remote (the name given to current participants in the program). There was no need to convince me to join, and there was no boss for me to beg to work remotely. I am my own boss, and before any of my conversations with people from RY, I’d already reviewed the FAQs a million times and watched countless Remote-created YouTube videos about the coworking spaces and different apartments in each country. I even started a wishlist on Amazon based on the recommendations from other Citizens (people who have completed a Remote Year program). It looked like the perfect way to spread my freelancer wings while exploring the globe. What better way to see if I could hack it as a freelancer than to recruit my clients from a time zone 12 hours ahead? My only dilemma was which fantastic itinerary to choose. Ultimately, I chose the Atlas program because it spanned four continents and we would be chasing summer. The word “Atlas” resonates with me on a lot of personal levels, so I believed this to be kismet. One thing that stood out in my RY research, and that I should have paid more attention to, was the near-absence of People of Color (POC) in any of the RY social media photos and online blogs and videos. I didn’t pay it much mind because I’m accustomed to working and living in majority-white spaces, and I took into consideration that international travel is a privilege not accessible to most of the population. In my subsequent conversations with RY leadership, I have stressed how disheartening it is to see so little visibility of LGBTQIA and POC people in their social media and marketing materials, and it appears that they listened, because there are now multiple pics of brown skin in their recent images. Before I fully committed to Remote Year, I inquired about speaking to Black women who had participated. I chatted with one Black woman who working for RY as a Program Leader at the time, and another Black man who worked for RY in an operations capacity. In hindsight, I should have pressed on and asked to speak to Black people who were paying to be in the program, or who had successfully completed it, not people who were being paid by RY. That was mistake number one. After chatting with those two Black employees, I quickly committed to the program with a $5,000 down payment and became a Premote (the designation you are given after you’ve paid to play, but before you depart). Access was granted to proprietary websites and a Slack workspace shared by the whole Remote Year Nation. Premotes are also assigned an onboarding specialist who answers questions, hosts webinars so that you can “meet” the other people in your cohort, and holds you accountable for deadlines related to things like buying travel insurance, applying for visas, etc. My onboarding specialist was very helpful, as were all the other RY staff I met with. When I discovered that each person was in a different international city, it became even more clear that this program really was built for a location independent lifestyle. Having staff that works remotely in different countries gave them lots of credibility, and I was confident that I was in good hands. I was very wrong. In the months before I left, I attended at least a dozen webinars and live workshops to get to know Remotes in other programs and people in my immediate group. It was on one such webinar that I learned one of my program leaders is a Black woman from Philly. I was OVER THE MOON. I immediately jumped into a group chat with my friends to tell them all about it. “#RepresentationMatters!! There’s more than one of me!” I cried real tears of joy and relief as soon as the webinar ended. Yet another sign that this trip was meant to be! As I met the rest of my colleagues online, it appeared that our group is somewhat racially diverse. Out of forty people, there are three men and one woman of Asian descent, four Latinas, and three Black women, including one of the program leaders. The other members of Atlas are primarily a mix of cisgender, heterosexual, Millennial white people from North America and Europe, with an Israeli man and an Australian man adding to the geographical diversity. Our ages range from 24 to 54, and our professions run the gamut from graphic design to finance to architectural design. Four of us identify as non-binary, but it would be months before I learned that. My preference would have been for even more diversity, but I was not completely alone, and I felt good about that. Mistake number two. All skinfolk ain’t your kinfolk, and many would rather remain silent than to stand up and speak out in the face of adversity. In all the webinars I attended, race, ethnicity and general diversity topics were never discussed. A very big missed opportunity on the part of Remote Year. Since this journey began, I have met some incredible people, several of who I am honored to call my friends, and who I hope will remain in my life in perpetuity. I’ve had opportunities to develop personally and professionally. I have volunteered with women who have escaped sex trafficking, I have learned how to decrease my carbon footprint and my environmental impact, I learned how to scuba dive, and I have hiked more in the last 9 months than I have in all of my 39 years on this planet. I chased waterfalls and I walked with elephants. I’m getting emotional as I type this because it has been a whirlwind of firsts and of so many emotional highs and lows. There have been many peaks, but the valleys were profound. I am sad and disappointed with how much money I spent on this once-in-a-lifetime experience to perform endless emotional labor while being mistreated by my fellow travelers. For much of the last year, I was a huge advocate of Remote Year, and I recommended it to strangers and familiars, often. I loved the idea of group travel, but I regret not doing more research, and I regret traveling with a company that has no real concept of representation and inclusion. If I’d had fewer stars in my eyes, I might have learned that other Black men and women had left their programs early because of negative experiences similar to mine. Mistake number three. Are there POC (specifically Black women) who successfully participate in Remote Year and have a good time? Sure. But, I will never recommend that someone spend $2k/month on a crap shoot in the hopes that their travel companions aren’t racist/misogynist