Remote YearReviews of remoteyear.com

I want to start by saying that Florianopolis is an amazing destination to go to and I strongly recommend anyone to visit the island. I mainly chose Florianopolis for its nature and beautiful beaches. For a first experience with a community program, I was very disappointed by what Remote Year offered: Housing: the establishment is located in Centro (downtown) of Florianopolis and is a very recent building with great amenities (except for the gym which is extremely basic) including the co-working spaces (there are two) and the restaurants. However due to its location, if you are expecting to finish work at 5PM and be able to go the beach right after to enjoy the sun, you will need a minimum of 25-30 minutes (by car/Uber) before getting to one of the closest beach. It would sometime even take up to 50 minutes to get to a beach after work due to traffic on the island. Sunset was around 7PM in Florianopolis when I visited in January, so you could understand that I barely had any time to enjoy the beaches during the week (at lunch time) or after work. This was a great disappointment to me as I had chosen Florianopolis for its beaches and nature : I could only really enjoy them on weekends unfortunately. Conclusion: great establishment but not the best location if you were thinking of going to beaches during the week. Built-in community : 1) One of the purposes of my trip with Remote Year was to be able to meet with people from all over the world, or at least from different countries to learn from different cultures. This is not the case at all : my group was consisted of 90% from the United-States, 5% from Canada (including myself) and the remaining 5% from different countries. I have nothing against Americans and I did meet great people in my group, however if you are expecting to meet people from different countries this will not be the case. 2) The majority of the activities amongst the group are not included in the price you pay : be ready to budget yourself a great amount of money in order to participate in the excursions with the group. The day excursions are all over $150 USD, which after talking to a few locals are way OVERpriced. For the activities below $100 USD, do not expect too much from them. I had paid $72 USD for ''snacks'' on the beach, a very short guided tour of Santo Antonio de Lisboa where you will visit a church, and go to a Samba bar at the end of the night. All things you could do for free on your own! I did ask from a reimbursement for this activity, which was a really hard process as they were trying to find excuses not to do so. They were blaming me for the following (which I quote from one of their responses by email) : ''you were late to the experience as you opted to not ride with the group and missed a good portion of it which would make it really hard to get the most of the experience''. Which was totally not the case ... After a few exchanges of emails, they did end up reimbursing me. The base cost of the trip does not really include access to the community and activities within the group, but rather an opportunity for Remote Year to $ell you extra activities once you get there. Most of the activities I enjoyed with the group were outside of Remote Year's scope. I still enjoyed my trip to Florianopolis as this is an amazing destination that you should definitely visit ! Brazilians are very welcoming people :) I wish I had read more of the negative reviews before booking this with Remote Year.

Mexico City is a wonderful city and I would recommend that anyone spend a month there, but not with Remote Year. With RY you’re paying for housing, the co-working space, and access to a built-in community. I’ll try to review each one. Housing: RY is ambiguous about what to expect in terms of housing. What you can expect is the most basic AirBnB you can find, furnished with what looks and feels like secondhand IKEA furniture that has seen better days (think: mysterious stains, rock-hard mattresses), decorated with random, empty picture frames hanging on the wall, and a kitchen stocked with a few dinky pieces of silverware and a couple pots and pans that look and feel suspiciously like plastic. My bathroom didn’t have hot water for a week, was filled with mildew, and our washing machine broke down several times, flooding the 2nd floor hallway and closet. Some people in the program lucked out and got nice apartments that were either brand new and modern, or at least charming. The discrepancy in housing quality from one participant to another is a popular topic of conversation amongst the group, to the degree that the PowerPoint presentation shown to the group during orientation included slides saying “Stop asking about rent!” and “Comparison is the thief of joy!” The quality is what you would expect for a “budget-friendly” trip, and budget-friendly Remote Year is not. If you do a quick search on AirBnB, you’ll find lots of really nice places for reasonable prices. Co-working space: I don’t really have any complaints about the co-working space except that very few people from the program use it. I expected a space that was exclusive to RY participants, but it was open to any paying member of the co-working space and I never saw more than 3-4 people from RY actually working there. The cost of the co-working space, if you were to pay for your own membership separate from RY, is a fraction of what you end up paying for it through the cost of the program. Now that we’ve established you’re overpaying for housing and the co-working space, let’s move on to the main selling point of RY, which is access to a built-in community. Most of the bonding amongst the group occurs during the excursions that cost extra, which means that the base cost of the trip doesn’t really include access to the community, but rather the opportunity to pay extra for access to the community. I spent an additional $700 on excursions and I didn’t even sign up for all of them. Overall, there’s a heavy emphasis on drinking and partying, with a sort of frat party vibe. If that’s your thing, sign yourself up. In conclusion, I’m sorry if reading this review has been a total downer. I hate to be negative, but my experience with Remote Year truly had very few positives that had anything to do with Remote Year. In short, I would say that I enjoyed Mexico City despite Remote Year, not because of it.

I haven’t gone a trip but I made a $850 deposit. I was unable to go on the trip so I was told it would be a credit. I had to become a healthcare provider for my sister who became disabled so I can not leave for a month. When I tried to book a weekend trip all of a sudden there were all these exclusions that were never previously communicated. Their fees are criminal $600 membership fee! That didn’t exist when I made the deposit. This is a SCAM! If you want a quick pointless way to lose nearly 1k Remote Year is the way to do it. I regret the day I found out about this company.

Remote Year projects as being on time, efficient and reliable, but my actual experience was anything but. The biggest frustration is the drop in communication, especially in regards to refunds for botched excursions and about frustrations. I do not recommend a Remote Year experience for the cost they want.

My experience was just so bad, which is truly a shame. I was added to a group already in progress, so 18 of the 20 people already had been traveling together for at least a month, if not 2. Never was I told that this would happen - obviously people were fatigued from meeting new people and traveling, and they had already spent tons of money on excursions and going out in the previous months, and by the time I joined they just wanted to hang at their houses and the excursions either barely had enough people or were cancelled. On top of this, the one thing I wanted was a community to hang with, and instead I was put in a house alone for the first week, which is a long time in a foreign country. I didn't find out until I was already there, and RY never told me at all - I found out from my van driver from the airport. When I told them I didn't feel safe staying by myself 10 minutes from anyone else in the program, they refused to let me stay the week with any other groups, and finally asked a man who had paid extra for private accommodations if I could stay with him, which was so uncomfortable. There was at least one empty room in a group house. I mostly had all my meals alone and went to bed at 9 every night. It was 100% the most lonely trip I've ever done. I could have easily stayed in a hostel, saved $2k, and had a better time and met more people. If you are thinking of doing an RY, make sure you do a stand-alone month and don't join a group already in progress. They know this sucks but they do it anyway. And be specific about what you want from accommodations - in my country it was supposed to be 3-8 people per house, but instead I was with only one person who wasn't even there the first week. I personally wouldn't do a 1 month again - it always felt like everything was done to accommodate the 4 month folks to the detriment of the few on the 1 month program. For example, everyone else was there 5 weeks, but I had to leave after 28 days, because that's how long a 1 month program is no matter what apparently. This meant that there were excursions and other things planned that I couldn't do because I had to leave a week earlier than everyone else. The housing was already paid for, so it was actually super weird and just felt like I was being nickled and dimed.

There has been a sharp drop-off in customer service from the first program I did with Remote Year in 2018 (which I very much enjoyed), to now. For trips of one month or more, RY states in multiple places across their website that participants will have 24/7 access to a coworking space with hi-speed internet. However, for the program I participated in (as well as others, according to conversations with RY staff), the company is no longer actually providing this access. For example, in my program, participants only had access to a coworking space from 9am-9:30pm, M-F (although on some days, individuals were kicked out earlier than the published closing time). This issue was then compounded by the fact that the internet speeds at the apartments provided by RY was incredibly slow, causing issues for several participants who needed to work during later evening hours. The response from staff was also disappointing. Some messages and emails were ignored entirely, others took days to get a response. One staff member even asked me repeatedly if I wanted to leave the trip early, which came across as implying that participants aren't welcome if they call out discrepancies between the advertised and actual experience. The benefit of RY programs that I've done in the past has been that, for an additional cost, I don't have to worry about a lot of the logistical pieces of planning a longer stay in a foreign city. However, based on my most recent experience, the company is no longer providing value that is anywhere close to what they charge for their programs. And they seem very unconcerned with the impact that their false advertising has on their customers' ability to work effectively while traveling.

If you’re considering a month in Lisbon, do not waste your money by giving it to Remote Year. RY’s advertising on their site is misleading. They claim that they provide “centrally located” or “hotel-style” accommodations. I guess heavy emphasis on the “or” because what my roommates and I received were maybe hostel style accommodations. When you look at the pictures in the “accommodations” section of the Lisbon tab, it’s truly misleading and so far from what my roommates and I received. The quality of living quarters provided was little better than a college dormitory. Our hot water kept going in-and-out, mostly out. It took about 10 days for it to finally get resolved but not without a fair share of cold showers. I had to shower at the gym. —The outlets in my bedroom and the shared bathroom were mostly non-functioning. —The stairwell light kept malfunctioning —The stove-top and oven in our kitchen was basically a hot plate. And for a dormitory, and I mean dormitory(!), for four people who cook their meals, this was a problem. Our oven was very outdated and took forever to get warm, let alone hot. —The workspace felt far. Even people who were located half our distance from the workspace felt that the workspace felt far. —Some people called the workspace a place where all fun goes to die (although the rooftop is quite nice) —The group activities were fine. I did the olive oil experience + Evora which gets my one star. —The participants of RY did a far better job in organizing activities For $3200, please don’t spend it with RY in Lisbon, you can have a great remote experience on your own or just roll the dice with another company. You get only $150 credit for any experiences which goes quickly! Basically, it gets you maybe 1 1/2 experiences unless you sign up for the Azores trip which is an additional $700. Airfare not included or nor any type of transportation to and from the airport. Lisbon is a FANTASTIC city with a strong digital nomad / remote working culture. It’s very easy to meet people through a workspace, meetups app, and even in a restaurant or bar. There are expat gatherings all the time, and the Portuguese people are so friendly and wonderful that it was easy to make connections wherever I went. I know that I didn’t travel to another country to just spend it in my apartment, but for $3200, I was expecting something so much more than a dysfunctional dorm room. Going home was not a place of rest or relaxation—just frustration. And let’s face it, travel can be tiring, so when we go back to our accommodations, we just want to be able to kick back, relax and get some good sleep (btw, these beds were the worst. .) This is a gamble I lost. However, I know that some other RYers received accommodations very different and nicer than mine which makes the situation all the more frustrating. I’ll end with this: A friend visiting from Germany and I were hanging out at another RY apartment one evening, and after we left, she told me that the disparity between my apartment and the one we were just at was shocking and a grave injustice on the company’s part. *And, by the way, the RY apartment that was called into comparison(?): even those people didn’t think their apartment reflected the price they paid for the program.

The accommodation was not up to standard, internet didn’t work, no dryer in the house, made my life very inconvenient to say the least, with the amount they are charging you can get way better accommodations within the same area. The manager and landlord was rude and not helpful. I did not have a great experience overall.