EAST HARTFORD--Some students in East Hartford are feeling cheated after losing money on a canceled trip to Paris in April.
The group of 11 students backed out of the trip shortly after the terrorist attacks last November.
Zaria DeBerry says when she originally booked the trip she thought, "It was my senior year, or was going to be my senior year, and it would be a nice gift to go out of the country for the first time."
That excitement later turned to fear and disappointment for DeBerry after the Paris terrorist attacks on November 13, 2015.
"It was, like, if somebody wanted to come to America after 9/11, you would caution that," she explained.
The State Department agreed, at least for a time. After the attacks, the department issued a worldwide travel alert for American travelers. That alert expires on February 24, several weeks before East Hartford's class trip was planned to take place, though it's not yet known if the alert will be reissued after that date.
DeBerry assumed the travel company that booked the school trip would have that same thought, but says that wasn't the case. She says when the company came to the school for a follow up meeting, "They were literally arguing with parents, 'You should really go. You should really go.'"
The company, EF Educational Tours, which is based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, says that wasn't the case.
"We respectfully disagree with the characterization of our dialogue with the district," the company's spokesperson said in an email to FOX 61. "Along with student safety, customer service is of the utmost importance to all EF employees. We have worked to make ourselves fully available both in person and via phone to continually try and reach a cooperative resolution with the group."
Either way, DeBerry will lose $750 of the $1,300 she paid because she's choosing to cancel.
DeBerry said, "I was paying out of my pocket in the summer months and the beginning of the school year."
EF Educational Tours says even after the terrorist attacks in Paris, less than 1 percent of groups nationwide have canceled their plans.
The tour company released a full statement explaining the situation and the options they presented to the school:
The safety of our travelers is always our top priority. We are continuing to monitor world events with our global offices and the State Department, and it is important to remember that at this time the State Department has not issued a formal Travel Warning recommending against trips to Paris, France or other destinations.
Since the tragic attacks last November, we have spoken with teachers and parents from many of our partner schools across the country, and the overwhelming majority are moving forward with their educational tours as planned. In fact, less than one percent of groups nationwide have cancelled their plans. However, for the few groups that were considering a change of plans, we actively worked with our teachers (who serve as group leaders), our student travelers and their parents, and administrators at the school and board levels to determine the best solution for each group.
While there are significant costs associated with making even minor changes to group travel plans, we understand this is a unique situation. Therefore, we have been offering multiple flexible options for groups that would like to change their plans, and waiving fees associated with those changes.
Groups could choose to:
- Revise their itinerary in their current destination
- Change their destination entirely (including to domestic options)
- Delay their travel plans to a later date
- Take a full refund in the form of a travel voucher. Our travel vouchers are good for any future tour of equal value, they are transferable, and they are good for a trip with any of our travel groups including our college and adult travel divisions – so, for instance, a graduating senior could travel with EF College Break or EF College Study Tours or their parents could take a trip with Go Ahead Tours.
Immediately after the attacks, we froze all scheduled increases to cancellation fees (those increases occur as a group gets closer to departure and as we continue to confirm things like hotels, airfare, busses, tickets to cultural attractions, etc.). The freeze was originally in place until the end of 2015, but we extended the freeze into 2016 for the East Hartford group as they continued to decide how to move forward. Ultimately the group chose not to exercise one of these flexible options and cancelled their trip outright. Therefore they defaulted to our standard cancellation policy. Our policy correlates with the investment we make in a group’s trip over time, and the cancellation fee exists so that we can offer the aforementioned flexible alternatives to every group.
However, DeBerry still feels given the current climate in the world, there should be an exception and she and her classmates should get their money back.
Other schools in the region, including in South Windsor and Durham, canceled class trips to Washington D.C.
