Academic Tours and Travel--Malta and Sicily Delight Tour

Sorry they are dragging their feet in responding or refunding your deposit. I have no knowledge of that tour company, but just offer some suggestions:

Have you read all the fine print in the tour contract? It seems you have been patient, diligent and reasonable with waiting for their replies and/or a refund.

Based on what you wrote, it seems you were within the boundary of their cancellation policy minus any downtime costs (admin fees they assess.) If that tour company promises any type of refund within their own set guidelines and fail to respond or refund, then perhaps you need to step it up a little. I doubt they have not received your inquiries; some people figure that as time goes by, people will forget or give up. I hope that is not their stance considering the "Have a Blessed Day" on their recording.....

Per Academic Tours: CANCELLATION
Cancellations must be done in writing. All cancellations are subject to the following administrative fees plus any applicable hotel and airline charges, depending on when notice is received:
if canceled more than 60 prior to travel, there is a $10 penalty per passenger, or 10% of total value of the trip, whichever is less;
if canceled between 30 and 60 days prior to travel, there is a $50 penalty per passenger, or 10% of total value of trip, whichever is less;
If canceled between 21 and 30 days prior to travel, there is a 25% penalty per passenger, with a minimum of $100;
If canceled between 14 and 21 days prior to travel, there is a 50% penalty per passenger, with a minimum of $100;
If canceled between 7 and 14 days prior to travel, there is a 75% penalty per passenger, with a minimum of $200;
If canceled between 0 and 7 days prior to travel, there is a 100% penalty per passenger, with a minimum of $200;

Also, maybe call the BBB in your local area. Perhaps they can help or guide you to someone who can. If you have a attorney friend, maybe they can place a call for you or send a letter of inquiry about your refund?

If you choose to file a small claims; check the stats of limitations http://smallclaimsdepartment.com/ny_sol.asp

If you give Walter another chance to respond - say, 48-72 hours and still nothing, then maybe you should consider moving forward with a small claims. You do not want too much time to go by for that. Seems you have given Walter and Academic Tours ample and reasonable time to respond and refund your money.

Keep all your emails, letters, etc in chron order, as you have done and go from there. Good luck. I hope they make good on their refund policy and you will have your money soon. Think positive :)

I don't know the limits of small claims court in NY nor where you are at. This seems the proper court. Somewhere in there you should have had a registered, return signature, demand letter sent. Relying on emails is not always the best paper record. I would call the local Better Business bureau to determine if they are still in business. This has some smell of having gone out of business. I would also protest the card on your credit card as fraud. This is a sixty day limit for disavowing regular but no limit on fraud. The cc may still reject it but they will still have to investigate the charges. See if the local newspaper or radio/TV stations in the Forest Hill area has a consumer advocate or investigate reporter. Contact them. My guess would be that you are not the first to have this problem. At the end of the day you only recourse will be the courts if they refused to pay so get you ducks in order with copies of everything including phone records.

Thanks for your replies. Marie B--you found the cancellations policy for Academic Tours and Travel. The same policy is printed on my invoice. You assumed right--I paid by check rather than cc. Lesson learned. I have filed a formal complaint with the BBB of NYC,

George. Thanks. I did see the article you cited. I sent a letter describing my situation to the blogger who wrote the article. I have not heard a response.

Thanks Marie and Frank for your additional suggestions. I did not realize you could go to small claims court online. I will definitely pursue this. I realized I had not sent a certified letter, return receipt. So I took care of that. I have not contacted any consumer advocates in the NYC area--but that is a good idea and I will follow through.

George. I agree with you about the lack of information at the web-site. There was an earlier version of the web-site when I signed up. That version did have more detailed information. However, according to Boden, the web-site crashed, was down for months and then reappeared in its present form.

You are very welcome. And I hope everything works out for you.

You can file for small claims on line BUT you will have to appear in person to pursue the matter. Not knowing where you are in relation to NY has bearing on how you proceed.

A few states require providers of travel to be licensed or registered by the state, but New York is not among them.

Academic Tours, as the name implies, markets a lot to schools. I've never used them and don't know anybody who has. A lot of companies like that are run by well meaning former teachers who think they can just use the skills they developed from a trip they organized for their class to an amusement park. I watched several colleagues even screw that up and then went on to plan a, disaster of a European trip. Use true professionals or have lots of fun planning the trip yourself. It can be done!