Road Scholar

I've talked to them so many different times for different trips and nobody seems to know what's going on or can answer any questions. This will be the last time I take a trip through Road scholars. They also talk to you like you're 95 years old.

Toured Montreal with Road Scholar. Everything about it was cheap. The advertised breakfast turned out to be the cheap hotel breakfast all guests get. Hotel was full. There was nowhere to sit to eat breakfast.
First day tour was nice. Second and third day tours spent more time waiting for city busses and metro than actually touring. When we did get to a venue, the guides basically said, "Here we are." And left it to us to find or see anything.
Except for the old city area, I found Montreal to to be a dirty depressing place. Dirty, countless vagrants, and second hand marijuana smoke everywhere.
Not worth the time or money.

Road Scholar will only issue medical exemptions with a doctor statement indicating that the vaccine should NOT be taken. This is an unreasonable and dangerous position as there is a widespread difference of opinion as to the safety and efficacy of existing mRNA vaccines. In the meantime, I am out $2400. Exercise caution before committing cash with these people!

This was our first Road Scholar trip.
It was a wonderful experience. Every part of the trip was exactly as advertised. The leader was knowledgeable and ready to help with any concern. The hotel was great. The other participants were very similar to us:70s, well educated, interested in learning something new.
We have already booked another trip.

My cruise from Dublin to Glasgow, Edinburgh, Orkney, and London lacked depth. At Orkney, the route centered on an overlook and swans. In the haste to the overlook, the tour bus passed by Skara Brae, a 5000-year-old commune from the stone age. The stop at Alnwick featured the Harry Potter castle, hardly a priority to real scholars on the trip. Regular meetings and dinners of groups violated privacy and personal choice. This silly arrangement infringed on time and available shipboard spaces, especially the Lido Deck. A huge disappointment.

I have been on three trips with Road Scholar; Scotland, Greek Isles on their small ship, and Switzerland. Every trip was wonderfully planned and executed and the guides were the best. The site is easy to navigate through and sign up is easy. All of the accommodations were nice and the food great. Free time is offered and options provided through the guide were great. I cannot say enough about them. I am a solo traveler and have made good friends while on the trip and always feel safe. Go for it! Now planning a trip to Ireland.

My grandson and I paid $12,548 for a grandparent/grandchild tour in Iceland. We were stranded in the Chicago airport along with 11 other people trying to get to Iceland for Road Scholar tours on July 1.
The emergency phone number just kept all of us on hold for hours in the wee hours of July 2.
My grandson and I got sent to Dulles, to Amsterdam, and then were refused the Iceland flight. We spent a fourth day in Amsterdam and then begged to return home. Our luggage was lost for a week.
They offered a $500 credit for their failure to deliver us to Iceland for the tour.

Leaving for an Antartica expedition in 4 weeks and still don't have final packet with instructions. Have been getting conflicting info since we booked. This last call to ask about final packet took forever to get a response which was vague and unhelpful about when we would have materials, including what we need to bring. Completely unresponsive to our requests for medically necessary adjustments to accommodations and ignored our airplane seating requests. Do not seem to have any interest in customer satisfaction once they have your payment. Hope the tour itself will be better. It is handled by a subcontractor (Albatross) who has been responsive. This is our third booking with Road Scholar and are surprised and disappointed so far.

Had emergent urological issues, unable to urinate, sepsis, high white cells and lactic acid, hospitalization and emergency surgery.
Tried to transfer funds to another program for a small fee; the small reasonable fee per contract is 100%. I'll truss up my testicles and wear incontinense diapers, I will NOT lose $10,000 - period.

A friend and I are supposed to complete payment for our trip by Sept. 30, but we can't get anyone at Road Scholar to give us our flight information. Flights are included in the package. I am quite reluctant to pay $4600 for a trip to Cambodia when I don't know how long my layovers will be. The fastest flights are almost 24 hours Others are 30 hours and above. My friend has called, emailed and left voice messages multiple times in the last few weeks, all to no avail. This is not acceptable.

My husband and I just returned from a Road Scholar program and experienced issues which the administration of this program refused to help with from day one including flight issues and a Covid Outbreak. The educational content is excellent but if something goes wrong the travel service and Covid Response team will provide inadequate support. At least 8 of our small group are positive with Covid due to lack of comprehensive protocols.

After my wife came down with Covid (along with several others), Roads Scholar asked us to leave the tour. They left us in the remote town of St. Anthony, Newfoundland, last June, to find our own way home (no offer of assistance). So far they have ignored our effort to recover any of our tour costs and the considerable expense of getting home.

I booked a trip and put a deposit of $500 down. At the time I thought I was told that if I had to cancel that money could be used towards another trip.my knee went bad and I now need knee replacement surgery so I have to cancel the trip.when I did this I was told that there was a cancellation fee and that my money will not be refunded.I'm not worked with a company that did not honor the ability to cancel or transfer within certain time frames be careful

When there is a REAL emergency, there is no way to contact them, except to wait on the phone for 4 or 5 hours (True!).
When an email message was sent, we got the usual please wait for 5 days...
This is a true emergency, and I don't know what to do.
This is the situation: a friend of mine (an elderly gentleman), signed up for a trip with Road Scholars that starts in Madrid. He flew to Barcelona to take a train to Madrid where he is supposed to meet with his group.
We received a phone call from a hospital in Madrid. Apparently, our friend was robbed, he lost all of his money, his papers, including his passport. We do not know
When and where he is supposed to meet up with his group.
Road Scholars has all of his relevant information, but we cannot reach them.
How is that for customer support?
Julika Bond and Anna Sime

Road Scholar offers trip protection plans from AON Travel Insurance. DO NOT BUY those plans. Read the reviews of AON Travel and you will see why I say that. We bought a plan and before we filed a claim we called AON and were told it would take 4 - 6 weeks to receive payment. It has now been 128 days and we are still waiting. When we contact the company we always get the same reply of "please give us 30 days". Whether we call or email, the reply is always the same.

Road Scholar is the most "deaf" organization I've ever dealt with. First, they never think of the customer, just their bottom line. All rules are to their benefit. I cancelled a trip almost 1 year in advance and they could only say, you agreed to lose your $1200, too bad. How about referring your friends or giving us a donation? Also, provide us all your friends & families emails so we can bombard them as well. I'm so done with this company/non-profit. Buyer Beware!

Think twice about booking your travel through Road Scholar:
Recently I booked a trip with Road Scholar and used their travel department to book my trip. As luck would have it weather delays created a situation where I would miss most of the trip so I chose to cancel the Road Scholar trip. When I asked United if they would cancel my flight and give me a refund they agreed…until the agent discovered I had booked the flight through Road Scholar. Because I booked through a third party, I was told I had to obtain a refund from Road Scholar directly. Road Scholar refunded all but $200.00 which they said was a booking fee. News to me, never was a booking fee if canceled discussed or mentioned while booking the flight. So, my advice to anyone thinking about booking a Road Scholar flight is to make their own travel arrangements or buy trip insurance.

Just landed for a road scholar trip, in a strange city, running late and worried you'll miss your transfer shuttle?

Who ya gonna call?

Not Road Scholar! They place no importance on this important aspect of customer service. At least they didn't when I took my trip to Santa Fe. The "emergency" call center didn't know who was supposed to meet us at the airport-didn't have any names-didn't know if they were still there or when they were leaving.

Really? I think that is what technology is for. Unforgivable, Road scholar. You can do better.

For two days I have attempting to contact customer service and the travel department to no avail. I keep receiving the tired old message that due to increased interest, we are to leave our telephone number and wait to hear from them. Obviously, they do not have adequate staff to respond to our inquiries. I am a veteran traveler and have traveled with other companies who are much better staffed. There is no excuse for their lack of service. The management needs to address this grievance.