Travel Leaders

Had an appointment with Caitlin over a month ago where she took some details of honeymoon ideas for us. She said she would look into things to do at the different locations for us and get back to me the following week. Well, I still have yet to hear from her. I think based on this interaction it is safe to say we will no longer be using Travel Leaders to plan our honeymoon.

Excellent service and very responsive.

Do not work with Elly Vermeulen. We asked Elly to help us plan a trip to Ireland, but our experience was frustrating and disappointing.n•tElly arranged a travel package with CIE. We paid in full for this package in May after she assured us that we would receive all the necessary paperwork within 30 days upon payment. When Elly bothered to respond to emails, she assured us the paperwork was in the mail and would arrive soon. By the time we were a month away from our departure in August, we were all-out panicking. Elly then told us that CIE would only send the paperwork 30 days in advance of the trip date. Meaning every time she told us throughout the summer that our information was in the mail? It definitely wasn’t.n•tWe asked Elly for assistance in touring the Guinness Factory. She arranged tickets…which turned out to be for the wrong day of our trip when we weren’t even in Dublin! I emailed to let her know of the issue, which we were fortunate enough to notice before our flight and which Elly didn’t notice at all. Elly, who had apparently saved our credit card information, charged our card for a second (expensive) pair of tickets without our permission. We battled with our credit card company to deny the charges and had to beg our card provider not to cancel the card while we were abroad, since an unhelpful travel agent was running amok with our card information.n•tLodging screw up: At the last moment before departure, CIE swapped the hotel we had picked out ourselves with another random hotel in Dublin. This wasn’t Elly’s fault, but in “carefully checking over the paperwork from CIE” she failed to notice anything amiss. If we hadn’t noticed ourselves, we would have went straight to the wrong destination on the first day of our trip.n•tCar rental screw up: We headed to our appointment to pick up our rental car at 8:30 a.m. We took a cab across the city from our hotel and arrived shortly after 8:00am, only to learn that the Hertz Office did not open until 9:00a.m. We were left to stand on the streets of Dublin in a residential area with nowhere to go for an hour while we guarded our baggage on the sidewalk. A simple Google of this information would have ensured Elly picked a time when the Hertz desk was actually open.n•tOnce we notified Elly of the trouble we had, she attempted to resolve the situation. To make up for the cost of the tickets, she mailed a refund check to me, despite the fact that it was my boyfriend’s card she charged. I can only hope that she isn’t saving other customers’ private card information the way she did to us.nnElly is uncommunicative and unhelpful. Our experience with her was beyond unsatisfactory and riddled with careless, sloppy mistakes.

We had one of the worst experiences with our travel agent. The most unorganized travel experience we’ve ever had. Our questions were constantly dodged and we didn’t receive our itinerary until a few days before leaving. We had to continue to contact her while on our trip for information on tours and didn’t receive our information for one of them so we completely missed out. I would recommend going through anyone but Elly. Very disappointed.

Great people to work with.