Mark A.
Unethical Terms, not trustworthy
My engagement with StartAboard began positively because I felt that they were trustworthy, ethical people. Unfortunately, this didn’t turn out to be the case. The reason for engaging their services was that my girlfriend was determined to move to Portugal very quickly, and she was very persuasive for me to start the process as soon as possible (she’s from Europe, so it’s an easier and shorter process for her). The first step after engaging their service is to schedule your initial consultation call, but the next available time for a call was 10 days later, on December 23. Optimistically, I scheduled for December 23, but preparing for the holidays got in the way, so I had to cancel this initial call. During the holidays, we realized that this move was not in our best interest. Portugal is a beautiful country, but the timing isn’t right for us right now because of some family issues. When I sent the email to cancel the service, no services were rendered—not a single phone call, nothing. Despite this, they were only willing to provide a 30% refund, stating that this was their policy. However, upon reviewing this policy on their checkout page, it says nothing about keeping 70% of your money if you cancel, even if they don’t provide any services. If their position on cancellations where they have done ZERO work is that they will keep 70% of your money, they are not ethical people. I could understand a 10% or even 20% cancellation fee, but a 70% cancellation fee is outrageous! I strongly encourage you to look elsewhere.
Response from StartAbroadFeb 22, 2025
Hi Mark, thanks very much for providing this candid feedback. When a client signs up with us, they receive access to all of our bespoke relocation materials. We work extremely hard to make our services and materials as useful as possible to people during their relocations. The reason we set our Refund Policy the way we have is because we have been taken advantage of before by individuals/competitors that simply wanted access to those materials, and then demanded full refunds. As you can imagine, this is extremely hard on a small business like ours. That said, we have heard your feedback, and do acknowledge that the Refund Policy placed an overly onerous burden on individuals like yourself that ultimately could not move forward with their relocations for whatever reason. We have therefore updated our Refund Policy.