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Complaint Details
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Initial Complaint
07/18/2022
- Complaint Type:
- Product Issues
- Status:
- Answered
On 11/21/21, I scheduled the best of ***** Tour with Samuri Tours. We paid 3 deposits for $500 each. At the time of booking, ***** was closed to tourism but the web site and owner, ********************* was very reassuring that our deposit was completely safe and refundable. So we paid the deposit for the 10 day tour on Dec 21. Fast forward to march of 2022 and ***** was still closed. I reached out to **** via both email and phone and was again assured that our deposit was safe and he felt like ***** might open by our Tour date start of June 5th, 2022. Im May 13th, ***** was still closed so I reached out again via email and Phone to Samuri Tours and ****. He again reassured me that he felt they would open to tourism and our deposit was safe. I explained to him that this was a Graduation trip for my daughter and that we needed to plan something else ASAP! He offered a change in date at a 25% price reduction, but I explained to him that 2 of us had taken off work and could not get approved for a date change. On May 18th, **** sent us a email using language about how he understood our need to cancel! We NEEDED TO CANCEL BECAUSE ***** WAS NOT OPEN TO TOURISTS! Again I reached out to him about Hapan not opening on June 1st, 2022. And that we needed a refund of our money. Another person in our party paid IN FULL $5000!!! ***** opened on June 3rd to very very limited pre packaged tours, closely tracked and not to many of the places on our iternary. I emailed Samuri Tours and *********************** many many many times since with a reasonable request for the refund of our $6500 total for 4 people and requested it by 7/5/22 or I would seek to file a complaint here. He has stopped responding. He wont answer the phones or emails! We have started FRAUD investigations with **** and Regions and *************** silence from Samuri Tours and ***********************. His company is well rated with BBB but should not be. He owes us thousands for a tour THAT NEVER STARTED!
Business response
08/11/2022
*Response taken over the phone by BBB staff*
We have no record of this consumer doing business with us.
Business response
08/11/2022
I will be contacting them within the next couple of days to verify addresses to send the refund checks to. In my defense, since ***** has resumed tourism in early June, we have been extremely busy. I currently have more than a 100 email backlog of emails to respond to. Before the pandemic, we had 8 employees in the **************** We now have 2 including myself.
To make a long story short, I will be contacting them within a couple of days to begin the refund process. We cannot send a refund to their credit card. When our merchant card processor receives a payment, the payment is converted into ******** Yen and deposited into our bank account in *****. If we refund the payment through the credit card, the merchant card processor will use the current USD/Yen exchange rate to send the refund. Since the exchange rate is different, the refund amount would be different. The only way to refund the exact amount is by mailing a check.
***********************
Customer response
08/17/2022
Complaint: 17581944
I am rejecting this response because: It has been nearly a week since this message and those couple of days have come and gone!! This is the classic response from this company! He never contacts to issue the refund for the trip that was canceled because the country was closed because of Covid. **** makes no effort to make this right.
Sincerely,
***********************Business response
08/26/2022
A refund check in the amount of $1500 was sent to *********************** on the 22nd. This was done a *****'s recommendation since we require a signature for the receipt of the check, and she said that ****** works while she works from home.
We sent an email to ************************* on August 18, asking to verify the address to send his refund check. We never received a response from him. I am going to contact ***** again to ask where the check should be sent to.
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Get a QuoteCustomer Complaints Summary
1 total complaints in the last 3 years.
0 complaints closed in the last 12 months.