Remote Year brings together groups of inspiring professionals to travel, live and work in different cities around the world, for 1, 4, or even 12 months at a time.
Remote Year (remoteyear.com) has 576 customer reviews on Five Star Index, with an average rating of 4.7 out of 5.
Also known as
remoteyear.com
Website
remoteyear.com
Category
Activities & Tours
Listed on Five Star Index
2026
About these reviews
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The company replied to 12% of reviews.
Latest
Most recent review: December 2024.
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Incredible company. I completed a 12 month program in 2018 and it changed my perspective and the way I live. The experience will teach you about removing yourself from the bubble of comfort you are used to. It will teach you the importance of how you spend your time. It will teach you how to approach new places and seek understanding about people and cultures.
If you lean into your journey with Remote Year and are intentional about your relationships with the people in your group and learning what it is like to live in these different places it will absolutely change your life!
Response from Remote YearFeb 15, 2021
Hi Josh,
Thank you so much for sharing your review. As the new CEO of Remote Year, I truly appreciate you taking the time to share your your feedback and perspective with us. COVID-19 truly was a tough time for our business and we made it through due to the trust, support, and leadership from you from your time on both the Aurora and Imani programs. It's incredible to see you still continuing to play a huge role in our community even after your programs.
We are truly grateful to be back in 2021, stronger than ever, and ready to deliver the programs and experiences for you and our community. Thank you so much for your support and we look forward to crossing paths with you again in the world!
Shaun Prime
CEO, Remote Year
AD
Amanda D.
A Life Changing Experience
I embarked on Remote Year / Kublai in 2017 to what I thought was to escape a cubical and see the world. This ended up being a year long journey that would forever change my life. To this day, I talk about this “Remote Year” often and now more than ever I’m so appreciative for 2017. This one year, along with the places and faces I encountered, created experiences that were a collection of moments, turned now into memories. Remote Year/ Kublai is a year in my past I will never choose to move on from, for it gave my lifelong connections that I still have to this day and an appreciation for life. It can be done and would 1000% recommend to anyone. Forever grateful!
Response from Remote YearFeb 15, 2021
Hi Amanda,
Thank you so much for the beautiful reflection on your Remote Year experience. As the new CEO of Remote Year, I truly appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us. COVID-19 truly was a tough time for our business and we made it through due to the trust and support from you and thousands of people in our “Remote Nation” community.
We are truly grateful to be back in 2021, stronger than ever, and ready to deliver the programs and experiences for you and our community. Thank you so much for your support and we hope to keep building lifelong memories and connections for you and our community!
Shaun Prime
CEO, Remote Year
RE
Red
Don't trust this company
Don't trust this company. Save yourself the heartache and use your money elsewhere. They will make promises that they don't deliver then blame you for "mishearing" or "misunderstanding" the minute you put money down. They will lie to your face - as a salesman did for me then charge you more money because of their lie. Be aware that there have been claims about this company's lack of care for their consumers of color - find the medium article and their shady sales tactics - testimonials can be found on Reddit. You'll find many "brutally honest" articles online touting how amazing they are. Still, I warn you that some of those articles are questionable - i.e., I found an article for someone who supposedly traveled with remote year from Dec 19-Dec 20, aka during lockdown. Proceed with caution. I regretted my decision to trust this company the minute I gave them money.
Response from Remote YearFeb 15, 2021
Hi Red,
Thank you so much for your feedback. We pride ourselves on being the most trusted platform for remote working and remote learning globally and have had thousands of customers trust us with their life-changing experiences around the world. We are sorry that your experience has been unpleasant and inconsistent with the experience we work hard to deliver for our customers.
As the new CEO of Remote Year, I would love to hear more from you and ask that you reach out to us at [email protected] so that we can address whatever feedback you have specifically about your experience. Also, we want to emphasize that we did not solicit articles or reviews that misrepresent any information. We have been very public about and posted an announcement in March 2020 that our programs were suspended. We will only resume programs starting in March 2021.
We sincerely appreciate your understanding. We are grateful for the opportunity to earn back your trust and deliver the life-changing experience you deserve.
Shaun Prime
CEO, Remote Year
LA
Lauren
Worth a Second Chance
Had a very frustrating experience due to COVID-19, but have been impressed with the new leadership and direction this company has taken in the past few months.
Response from Remote YearFeb 15, 2021
Hi Lauren,
Thank you so much for your feedback and I'm truly sorry about your experience so far. COVID-19 was an unexpected global situation that impacted the entire world and led us to suspend all operations until it was safe to resume programs.
Like many travel companies of our size, we held hope that we could return to running programs much sooner. However, COVID-19 forced us to suspend all of our programs throughout the world, including the United States until we could resume again safely.
As we communicated to you and all of our participants for Remote Village at the time, we offered refunds in the same method that you used for payment. Because you had used a down payment & credit on balance to reserve your spot, we returned 100% of the program cost back to your down payment & credit on balance.
A few weeks ago, we began to resume operations and have made many changes to continue to protect 100% of your payments and credits on balance. 1) We have waived all change fees and expiration dates for any payments or credits. This means that you can use your balance at any time over your lifetime. 2) We have released itineraries to our existing customers so that you have priority access to any programs before they are offered to the public. 3) We have created a dedicated team to work with each of our customers individually to make sure you have all options available to you when you are ready to travel again. 4) We have offered more flexible options to use your credit, such as shorter, flexible programs (1 week - 1 month long). 5) We have offered the ability to use 100% of your balance with our partner, Selina, at hundreds of their locations around the world.
We sincerely appreciate your understanding. We are grateful for the opportunity to earn back your trust and deliver the life-changing experience you deserve.
Shaun Prime
CEO, Remote Year
C
C
Good times
Good times. Thanks RY
Response from Remote YearFeb 15, 2021
Hi C,
Thanks so much for sharing your review with us! As the new CEO of Remote Year, I truly appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback with us and for continuing to support us. COVID-19 truly was a tough time for our business and we made it through due to the trust and support from you and thousands of people in our “Remote Nation” community. We hope to share more good times with you in the future!
Shaun Prime
CEO, Remote Year
JL
Juliana L.
$7000 on a 2 week trip in Chile!
Reading through the previous reviews, I definitely mirror some of the experiences people have had and am also disappointed by the CEO, Sam Pessin's blanket justification responses. I was travelling with a group on a year long programme called 'Inara', which started off in Chile on 1 March 2020. Firstly, it was negligent for the company to embark on this trip, if they 'were constantly in touch with their health and safety advisors, International SOS' as within 2 weeks, we were at a world crisis level, forcing everyone to try and get home. But the worst part has been the way Remote Year have responded (or failed to) since.
We have received blanket responses explaining time and time again how we are not going to get a refund for a year long trip that was cancelled. They have been able to justify this by saying the trip it's 'postponed', so they are not obligated under their terms and conditions to do so.
Remote Year have expressed options for how we can participate in future programmes, however the reality in a post-pandemic world is that the majority of us are no longer in a position to embark on a year long trip, as we now don't have that option financially or due to other commitments. All other companies in the travel industry have been forced to honour refunds due to the extenuating circumstances, however Remote Year feel they are not obligated to do so, even though at least 20 people on programmes have paid in full for a trip they will never be able to honour.
It's such a disappointment, as I started the trip with admiration of this company for setting up such an amazing initiative. Sadly, they don't know how to look after their customers and really listen, which would have gone a long way to ensuring their future customers would still stay loyal to the brand and want to continue journeys with them once the world is in a place to accommodate travel again.
Response from Remote YearFeb 15, 2021
Hi Julia,
Thank you so much for your feedback and I’m truly sorry to hear about your experience. We would have loved to be able to offer cash refunds to customers during the pandemic and would probably have asked for the same thing if we were in your shoes. However, like many travel businesses of our size, we were heavily impacted by COVID-19 and had to preserve our ability to fully honor our commitments to all customers.
As the new CEO of Remote Year, I am committed to delivering programs and experiences for you and any customers with balances on record throughout 2021 or when you are ready to travel again.
A few weeks ago, we began to resume operations and have made many changes to continue to protect 100% of your payments and credits on balance. 1) We have waived all change fees and expiration dates for any payments or credits. This means that you can use your balance at any time over your lifetime. 2) We have released itineraries to our existing customers so that you have priority access to any programs before they are offered to the public. 3) We have created a dedicated team to work with each of our customers individually to make sure you have all options available to you when you are ready to travel again. 4) We have offered more flexible options to use your credit, such as shorter, flexible programs (1 week - 1 month long). 5) We have offered the ability to use 100% of your balance with our partner, Selina, at hundreds of their locations worldwide.
We sincerely appreciate your understanding. We are grateful for the opportunity to earn back your trust and deliver the life-changing experience you deserve as we have for thousands of other customers over the past 5 years.
Shaun Prime
CEO, Remote Year
JP
Jules P.
SCAM
Remote year SCAMMED us out of our deposit on a trip that was “postponed” due to Covid!!! If this company survives (highly doubt) Covid STEER CLEAR!
Response from Remote YearJun 19, 2020
Hi Jules,
Thanks for your feedback and I’m sorry to hear about your experience. Over the past few months we have been working tirelessly to ensure that our current customers and staff have a comfortable path in this time of crisis, and also to make sure that we build a path to service all of our paid customers as soon as possible. We have been doing our best to communicate regularly through multiple emails and hosted a founders webinar in April to answer open questions.
Over the last few weeks, we have been working around the clock to launch Remote Village, our first ever US program. Any down payments paid for global programs can be used to cover the down payment of Remote Village, and also toward global programs as soon as we are able to relaunch across the world.
We appreciate your patience in these trying times when we’re all unclear how things are shifting in the world and we hope that you will travel with us when this time passes. If you have any questions, you can contact [email protected] and our team will help.
Sam Pessin
Co-Founder & CEO, Remote Year
SA
Sam
I’d avoid the company
Great idea, poorly executed. A few thoughts. In general, I’d avoid it.
1) 2k a month in 2nd or 3rd tier countries should get you a high living standard. I upgraded twice out of the 3 months I was there. And it was not worth it. People who didn’t upgrade got better accommodations, which made me irate.
2) Program leader was great. A mother that watched over people that needed a bit more hand holding. Not to say this is bad. It’s just that some people like that. And pay for it.
3) My 1-year trip was interrupted by covid-19. The way that they handled it was appalling. They had already fired all of their senior people and junior reps were doing the customer support. The rep lacked nuance and didn’t really provide support other than canned responses. This is all a reflection of the upper management.
4) Based on how they treated me and some of the other customers, I’ll make three assumptions. 1) they won’t survive this and 2) even if they did, Companies won’t sponsor their employees due to potential lawsuits, 3) even if they did, people will not want to travel post-covid19.
5) The track days were fun but kind of ridiculous. You’d spend half of the day driving in a semi-passable bus.
$2k can go a long way in South America and Southeast Asia. If you’ve never been out of the country or would like to find a group of people to travel with, then it’s something you should look into. If not, avoid it. You can do better.
Response from Remote YearJun 19, 2020
Hi Sam -
Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate your thoughts on the different features of Remote Year.
Overall, our programs have gotten really strong feedback over the last 3 years (50-60 range of Net Promoter Score). We have always used constructive feedback to continue to improve the platform. Tracks were actually born from customer feedback directly, and those local experiences got an average of 4.3 out of 5 points in feedback scores in 2019. We will continue to work to improve those scores, but we are proud of the progress so far.
In terms of our reaction to COVID-19, I'm sorry that we disappointed you. Throughout the escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic, we were constantly in touch with our health and safety advisors, International SOS. We followed their guidance throughout, including our decision to pause programs on March 20th. At that point, we did the following:
- Told all customers that they could stay in their current apartments until the end of the month, and that we would connect them directly to the landlords if they wanted to stay longer
- Offered to help anyone find flights to get home through our travel team
- Offered support finding new places to stay for those that wanted to shelter in place
- Kept one member of our city team on board through April in cities where we had a higher number of customers that sheltered in place
As you mentioned, we also kept some customer service staff on board to help us communicate with customers as effectively as possible.
In the last two months, we've been working to launch our first ever US programs - Remote Village. In addition, we will be launching global programs as soon as possible. All of these efforts were in the spirit of offering as many options to you and our other customers as possible to use any outstanding payments to Remote Year. I hope you will travel with us again so we can rebuild your trust and serve you the way we've served 3,000+ other customers across 60 programs since 2015.
Sam Pessin
Co-Founder & CEO, Remote Year
