A thief - a fraud and a liar
A thief, a fraud and a liar. This post concerns my experience with Churchill Safaris in Uganda. I have been dealing with owner! Churchill Safaris cannot be trusted. The businesses Churchill Safaris works with: helicopter services, lodges, or hotels cannot trust her either, she is misrepresenting them! She invents costs and charges using the above parties’ business names! I had to cancel a planned tour due to medical reasons (not Covid). Well documented, 3 visits with my doctor confirmed in a medical certificate. Our original agreement was based on either commission or a 5 per cent administration fee. (I have documentation). When I cancelled she wrote me mails such as: QUOTE: 1. “I totally understand your situation and I kindly request you that if you can come, you please reconsider and come and we do this tour because it looks that we are going to get issues with refunds from these hotels and the charter company as well. They are all talking of postponing and offering credit notes for the full refund.” 2. “Since you told me about the cancellation and I started communicating with the various parties, I DON’T SLEEP AND Its BEEN HEADACHES FOR ME. I don’t want to go in to a legal battle with these hotels which will take forever. As you can see they find reason to twist everything around.“ 3. As you can imagine, after paying the service providers, we did use our commission too in our expenses because we knew that the trip is definitely going on.” UNQUOTE. I contacted all parties involved in my tour, ALL of whom most professionally arranged the refunds promptly. Her mail is completely untrue! Business terms: After two days, the owner had resolved her own head aces and issues, simply by deciding to change the original confirmed administration fee of 5 %. She informed me that she will keep 20 per cent to cover administration and costs. Well, that turned into 20 per cent and about USD 1,000 (one thousand) charged as bank fees! Back in 2021, I had already paid 2/3 of the tour, when I found charges claimed in her business partners’ names’. To mention a few: (all rates ARE commissionable to agents, her payment is included in the rates) • One lodge’s commissionable rate USD 1,555, marked up to USD 1,900 a night, quite the mark-up. “Carrying luggage to helipad” 1 x USD 50. That fee does not exist. • Petrol cost amounting to max. USD 110 first charged with USD 650. • Hotel in Kigali is USD 208 and 100 for a dayroom, marked up to USD 308 and 250. • Helicopter – charging a landing fee of USD 50 per landing, which does not exist. • Smaller hotel marked up from USD 73 to USD 83, regardless of commissionable rate. • Hotel by Lake Kivu marked up from USD 389 to USD 425. • Lodge by Akagera: Transfer to and from the helipad at Akagera USD 300. Landing fees 2 x USD 50. None of these fees are charged by lodge group. They are incl. in room rate! • 4 trekking permit. Possible overcharge of USD 460 on the Gorilla Permit. When a guest evaluates accommodation, F&B, sights, tours etc. for TripAdvisor, Trustpilot, Facebook, etc., we do this against the rates we pay. “Value for money”. Inventing costs (unbeknown to businesses and clients) adds to the costs against which a client evaluates products. This is by no standards honest. When you work with commissionable rates, you do not add to these. On their web CS claims membership of American Society of Travel Advisors (ASTA). CS has not been a member since 2013 (13) confirmed to me by ASTA’s Senior Manager, Membership. At the time of writing this document, the owner of Churchill Safaris has kept USD amounting to 22.5% (22.5 per cent) out of a rather expensive tour. My conclusion is that Churchill Safaris cannot be trusted. The owner is a thief, a fraud and a liar! Look up Churchill Safaris on “travel recommendation sites” for further information and access to my full report.
By Olivias M.