20-35 years of age
This company ruined my vacation!
After my fully-paid safari to Maasai Mara with Africa Flash MC Tours did not go through, I was eventually fully refunded by the company four months later. This, however, was a highly nerve-wracking process which included many meetings with the local police. Furthermore, the fact that the safari was not organized as promised seriously ruined my vacation, as I had visitors coming from Europe. There are a number of tour operators who offer safaris in the same price range and who actually deliver and do not ask advance payments. For anybody looking to go on a low-budget safari in Kenya, these might be safer options than Africa Flash MC Tours.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
I advise you not to use this company
Booked with Image Travel in March 2014 for a 10 day Masai/Serengeti Safari commencing Sep 2014. Paid for the tour in full prior to arriving. Mwanje, the owner, was great to deal with when booking but it all went horribly wrong on arrival. Our driver wasn't paid and we were stranded on the side of the road for 3 hours on the first day. We missed our afternoon game drive and lunch. We went for the 5 star option so for our group we paid over $30k USD for the whole trip. Our first night of accommodation was paid for but after that the next 9 nights had not been paid. The deposit was paid but the remaining amounts were all outstanding. We ended up having to report the matter to police and found that over $20k of the trip had to be paid for again. Our once in a lifetime trip was turned into an absolute nightmare by Mwanje and Image Travel. Mwanje would not respond to our calls or emails. Take my advice and go with another company.
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
warning - this company stole my money
After researching which safari to do in Tanzania that suited my time frame and budget I choose David and Goliath tours and safaris. David Michael Bungama (owner) was very helpful and quick to get back to me with my questions. Once we had agreed on my itinerary his said the deposit of 5% (all other companies charge 30-50%) could be paid to him via an international money transfer. (This is common for payment of safaris). I did my transfer of the deposit and five days later he confirmed that he saw it in his bank. I asked for a receipt for my deposit, this is when things changed. I asked a few times over the next week, with no response from David. When he finally did respond it would be one excuse after another why he hasn't sent it. Finally after about 2 weeks he sent me an email saying his manager had hacked his email account and was stealing all the customers money. He said he sacked him once finding out. He then said not to worry about any more payment until arrival where I could pay in cash. I said I wasn't happy carrying thousands of US dollars on me. Then he suggested do a transfer of the remaining 95% amount, two weeks before the start of the safari. In the meantime I had asked a few more times for a receipt for my deposit, with no answers. I felt very suspicious about this company now and the way they operate. After he said his manager had stolen customers money. I asked for a full refund of my deposit, as I no longer trust that they are a legitimate company (when he failed to provide a business registration certificate) and I have no faith in sending more money to them. This is where David stopped responding to me altogether. I have emailed him a number of times, but no response.
I think David and his company are thieves. Please don't send your money to him.
35-50 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Valentine Gumpo - Wild South Safaris
Never, ever use Valentine Gumpo as a guide or any of his companies, he took our money, never met us and left us completely stranded In Zimbabwe. We originally booked with him in October 2013 and his reviews appeared fine - 2 months before our trip we noticed a couple of negative reviews about him on tho site. I e-mailed him and he assured us everything was okay and this was simply a man with a grudge about him. When we arrived in Vic Falks he was no-where to be seen - he sent a lady who said histruck was being repaired and he would meet us on the way to Robins Camp in Hwange - the car transporting us continually broke down on the way and we arrived at Dete near Maon Camp and got handed over to another safari providers truck and got taken to main camp. He had sub-contracted part of our trip without notifying us. Hw also hamper not paid for most of our trip in Hwange - denied having received any money and told this company to charge us. We also were supposed to stay at Hwange Safari Lodge (again pre-paid) and again none of this was booked or paid for. He completely ruined our trip. He is a total con-man and still owes us a lot of money as we had to pay for a lot of meals, drives and accomodation in Zimbabwe. Never travel or trust this man and if you have already booked with him, I would advise you to make alternative plans as he will not fulfill your booking. We are currently I the process of pursuing him through the Hogh Commission and The Zimbabwe Toursir Authority.
US
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Fraudulent company
We booked our trip with David and Goliath as well in late Aug early September 2014, and had a very similar experience to the other reviews here. I looked for reviews on this comany before booking and seemed like they had gotten decent reviews (atleast for Kili treks). We had to pay 300 dollars more after landing in Arusha otherwise the company boss David Bungama refused to start the safari. They sent us official looking itineraries with hotel information. But the actual hotels we were put up in were way cheaper and of inferior quality. He promised to pay us back but there was always an excuse to not do so. We had even booked a Zanzibar leg through him, but on checking into the hotel in Zanzibar, we found out he had not paid our hotel bill. We had to settle the matter by not just paying the hotel bill all over again, but having to endure a lot of unpleasantness from the local tour operator and hotel staff. We spent a lot of money in arranging this trip, and it turned out to be a disaster because of the tour company we chose.
The sotry I get from David Bungama is he had hired someone to set up his websites, who had then proceeded to hack into his safaribooking website and then sign up customers impersonating David, and then taken the money and absconded.
Even though I trouble believing his story completely, i gave him the benefit of the doubt, and entertained the possibility that he was merely incompetent and a little guillible in allowing another person to handle his website and use his bank acocunt for wire transfers. But I just read one of the recent reviews from another customers around the same time, and it appears he uses these kind of tactics regularly. Whatever the truth, there are plenty of other companies offering similar tours with much better service, so dont bother risking an expensive trip like this to such a company, they are either dishonest or incompetent. And if others have had a bad experience with him as well, please post your experiences as well, so future tourists do not get their trips ruined. If you wish you may also get in touch with me, as I m planning to report this matter to the authorities, and would make a much stronger case if there are multiple parties reporting such fraudulent behavior.
IT
Very unpleasant!
It has been a terrible experience with KetSafari Tour.
The only thing they seemed to want is your money and for the rest they didn't care. And the option we had chosen was not even so cheap.
We paid to spend more than a week sitting on a van everyday and travelling for more than 9 hours per day which was a boring and tiring experience and didn't worth the money paid. Once at the lodges what we were doing was sitting in the van (again!) for 2/3 hours to go out on safari with the most silent and speechless driver. On top of this it was even more irritating that we haven't seen much. I know that the safari experience is not like being in a zoo and you cannot predict wether you will see some animals or not but every time once back to the lodges there were bunches of people excited as they have seen many of the big five (especially the most difficult ones). And it was clear that it wasn't only luck but definitely they had a professional driver.
This made us upset all the time. The only 2 sentences our driver was able to say were that we had plenty of time and places to visit so we would have seen something and also he was begging us to invest money on him so we could buy him a new van and he could start his own business!
On the last day, on the way back we refused to stop for lunch despite it was already paid as we were looking forward to end that pain that was making us feeling SO sick!
Well, not what we expected
We closed our booking a few days earlier with kanut. Talked on the phone and he seemed really nice. First of all the driver- lynus was terrible. He was angry and rude most of the time. On the way to the first park he almost fell asleep on the wheel several times. On the way it started raining and the rain got in to the jeep. When we told him he just got mad and said it's not his fault. The cook that came with him was an 18 years old boy who didn’t knew how to cook anything. On the second day our driver got into a fight with another driver that almost got violent. All and all we enjoyed our safari but not thank to kanut safari but because it was beautiful.
It was a very bad trip because John Bakari. A very good trip because Cliff Gustaff Tety.
We are just coming back from a travel in Tanzania. Our stay started on 23/10/2014 up to 02/11/2014. The tour organizer was John Bakari,. He was chosen because being French speaking, because known by the Belgian group leader since many years . He is the owner of the agency "Voyage Africain" based in Arusha.
Our group that was consisting in six people was victim of a large swindle. An advance of 60% of the total amount was paid on Bakari's bank account during the month of January 2014. The balance would be paid below the board on the 24/10/2014. When still in Belgium, in spite of the reiterated requests of our group leader, John Bakari never provided us any invoice. We realized, gradually, that nothing of what was envisaged was organized, nothing was booked. On the spot, John Bakari tapped us more money. He promised to reimburse this loan at our return to Arusha. Conclusion: the 13.200€ paid by the members of our group for this travel of 10 days disappeared.
We were lucky in our misfortune, to become acquainted with Cliff Gustaff Tety, guide certified and driver. He enabled us to carry out the activities foreseen in our circuit. During the circuit he was in communication with the wife of John Bakari for the payment of the invoices related with these activities. Christina, John Bakari's wife, always claimed that her husband would pay any invoice. Cliff Tety went thus guaranteeing the payment since he had the word of the wife of John Bakari. He went guaranteeing at the time of our passage in the national park of Mahale. Again he went guaranteeing the payment for the hiring of the boat which transferred us from Mahale to Kigoma. For our stay at the Arumeru River Lodge, again he spoke in favour of our cause. At the airport of Kilimandjaro at Arusha, the day of our return towards Europe/Belgium, agents of the national parks (TANAPA) were waiting us requiring us to pay the pending invoices. Even if they didn't have any right to do so, they tried to block us in Tanzania. They let to us go only thirty minutes before the take-off apparently convinced by the arguments of Cliff and those of Bernard, the group leader. Later, when the Europeans were gone we were informed that Cliff was arrested and imprisoned in Kigoma. Up to now we don't know why. Blackmail, keeping an hostage, and so on...
Finally John Bakari swindled us for more than €13.200. We lodged a complaint.
I did only deliver to you a very short outline of our adventure. So if there are candidates who envisaged to go to Tanzania, don't hesitate in contacting me on Facebook for more details.
Very bad experience with Elkan Safaris
After paying upfront for a certain itinerary, the manager of the company (and I believe in fact sole employee as well) tried to change the itinerary and duration of the trip without any logic explanation
upon arrival at Serengeti Gate, we learnt that the funds to pay permits where not available. Of course, the operator lied to us saying that this was due to a system failure and ask if we could do the "favor" of paying for the entrance again and get a refund from him after finishing the safari. After 3 hours assessing options at the very gate (and subsequently wasting the time that was scheduled for safari that day), we have decided to pay only for one day, without any certainty that the day after the operator would not be coming up with the same request
thanks to the manager of the driver (a subcontractor), we could finish our safari without major incidents, apart from the inconvenience of having to turn up every single day (of a total of 5) to the offices to extend the permit as the moneys we had paid in advance were never deposited as they should have been
back to Arusha, the manager of Elkan Safaris tried even not to pay the money he owed us and we had to threaten him with reporting to the police to get our money back, which we finally did some 3 hours before going back to our homeland
I am not wasting my time trying to sort out whether all this behaviour was ill-intentioned or simply careless, all I can say is that I strongly recommend avoiding the services of this tour operator if you want to save yourselves some headaches
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20-35 years of age | Experience level: over 5 safaris
Dishonest Management
It's a long story, but in summation we paid extra to stay in nicer accommodations but were taken to another location without being told or asked. We had to confront the company before they would admit the mistake. Management made multiple excuses with a story that changed each time then promised a refund for the difference between the two places. We contacted the company multiple times for this refund and have yet to receive anything.
At the end of the day, there are so many great safari companies, why use one that you can't trust?