Recently when I was planning my Europe trip, I found myself with a few extra days in my itinerary. In the past, I’ve done my own planning. This time around, I decided that I would give an agency a chance to help plan my week in France for me. I chose GoWay.

That was a mistake.

I’ve been travelling solo for nearly twenty years. In my entire lifetime of travelling (both leisure and business), I’ve never come across an agency so poorly run. Not only that, but you end up paying for the privilege of being taken advantage of and put to work during your vacation. When I got home, they asked for my feedback and I freely gave it.

To my complete lack of surprise, they never got back to me. So now I am hoping to impart my experience to as many people as possible with a warning:

Whatever you do, don’t book with GoWay.

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Poor Planning Experience

I should have known early on that there were red flags. My initial advisor would take days to get back to me when I made requests. I understand the need to take a little time to do some research, but this was not a little time. There would be times when weeks would pass and I wouldn’t hear back from my agent. The responsibility fell to me to follow up.

Keep this in mind – it’s going to be a theme.

Midway through planning, it turned out that they let go of my initial agent and I got a new one. This one wasn’t any faster. Plus, despite my request that all communications stay in email (for written copies), the agent would consistently ignore that and insist on phone calls. I don’t mind a phone call to clarify, but it meant that I lost the paper trail that I wanted.

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High Prices

The next part is the one that’s hard for me to get over. When I booked with GoWay, I paid an abnormally high rate. It was four times the price of the one on the website. I wound up doing my own price comparison of the hotels, tours, and other items that they included and discovered the culprit. The private transfers the company booked ran in the hundreds, if not thousands.

I can say that with certainty as well. My parents, former GoWay customers (and no longer after our experiences), contacted GoWay to arrange transfers in Japan to the cruise port. They arranged for nothing else. It was two people going from a hotel in Tokyo to the cruise port. GoWay quoted them over a thousand dollars for a return trip.

Knowing that shed a lot of light on the costs of my trip.

What adds insult to injury, however, is the poor experience I had with these drivers. I was paying a four-figure sum for my four transfers and yet, when I arrived in Paris, the driver wasn’t waiting for me. I wound up lugging my suitcase through the station. Then, I waited in the rain because the driver couldn’t be bothered to park. Now, I don’t care about these things. I’ve taken plenty of public transportation from airports and train stations. It was the fact that I had paid so much money to have to do that. In retrospect, I should have grabbed the metro, because I wound up paying to be inconvenienced, rushed, and frustrated.

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Poor Communication

Not only was the service a bit lacking, but so was the information given. After finally finding my car in Paris, we circled traffic for nearly an hour. I thought it was a bit odd. After all, I knew where I had booked the hotel and we seemed to be going too far.

It turns out that my gut instinct was correct.

The reason it was taking so long was because the GoWay coordinator had put the correct hotel information on the page, but given the wrong address. As a result, after an hour in traffic, I didn’t end up at my hotel. Instead, we had another twenty minutes of driving. Then, it was up to me to contact them and fix the address for my pick-up so that it wouldn’t happen again.

The communication was poor in general. Coming from Nice, I contacted in advance because I noticed that they booked a transfer time when I would still be on the train, but they reassured me that it didn’t matter. It kind of did. Instead of me being relaxed as I was arriving knowing that it didn’t matter, the driver continuously texted, called, and pestered me about where I was. Instead of GoWay adjusting the schedule when I asked, I instead was left to deal with the stress of managing someone I was paying (probably too much).

It’s the common theme adding up — the burden of planning, checking, and coordinating was on me. So why was I paying an agency?

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No Customer Satisfaction Mandate

The question I raise above is something I asked of GoWay mid-trip. If nothing else, I wanted to get some kind of compensation or credit for the wasted time. It made me late for my reservation in Paris because of how long it took to get from train station to hotel (a journey that would have taken twenty minutes by Metro). Nothing came. Not even a credit.

In fact, there were other times when I was getting the blame put on me, but luckily, I had screenshots that proved that I was in the right. It really became clear fairly quickly that they were quick to blame the customer, which added to my stress instead of allowing me to relax on the trip.

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Incorrect Information

Something that was also immensely frustrating is that the experiences that were booked for me didn’t always match up to what I did. For instance, I had a booked walking tour of Nice for one of the mornings. I was extremely excited because the documents said we’d be trying local delicacies!

You may not be surprised to hear that we didn’t actually do any of that. Worse, when I contacted their customer service that day to ask why I didn’t get the full value, I was lied to. I sent them a screenshot that showed what was promised.

Don’t be shocked, but they didn’t write back after that.

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In general, I try and be gracious with a lot of the tour experiences I’ve done. I’ve had sub-optimal experiences over the years, but either the customer service or some aspect of it made up for the issues.

That’s not the case with GoWay. Out of my experience, my one mission is to make sure that no one else has to go through what I did. I’m certain I won’t do anything to their bottom line, but hopefully this has made you reconsider using their services if you’ve been curious about using GoWay.

Please find another tour group. Take the risk and book it yourself. I learned my lesson and will be doing that in the future because it’ll be better for my bank account and for my stress levels.

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