In terms of organizing the tour, everything is fine, as far as respect for the interests of the client is indifferent

I decided to share my, unfortunately, this time not very successful experience of traveling with the Accord Tour. At the same time, I want to make a reservation right away, there are practically no complaints about the tour itself, with the exception of absolutely no excursion to Jurmala, where the guide Alexander (a pleasant and cheerful guy) did not even have basic information. Everything else was wonderful, at a decent level - the bus, drivers, accompanying, excellent, most interesting excursions in Vilnius, Riga, Tallinn, cool hotels ...

It is safe to say that the Accord Tour fulfills its contractual obligations, and in a normal situation, if you do not have any nuances, you can safely travel with them.

And now about the nuances, or why they should not be trusted in a difficult, atypical situation.

After the May holidays, I found out that from May 30 to June 14, 2015 I would have a vacation, and I planned a personally important tourist trip to Berlin from June 10 to 14 - I bought plane tickets, paid for a hotel (the Accord Tour has nothing to do with it ). Then I saw this tour "Weekend to the Baltics" on the Accord website from May 30 to June 4, for a very ridiculous price (something around 3800 UAH with a visa), I have never been to the Baltics, and thought that it would be very cool first go to the Baltic States, and then fly to Berlin. The only question that arose was with a Schengen visa for Germany - it was quite obvious that if I did not get a Schengen visa to travel to Berlin before traveling to the Baltic states, then after returning from the tour, I would not have time to issue it in 5 days (the Germans write at least 5 working days + 2 days to the visa center).

With all this, on May 14, 2015, I came to the travel agent "Accord-tour" - to the Kiev travel company "May Travel". The conversation was as follows - I really want to go on a tour of the Baltics, but a trip to Berlin, fully paid for at the time of contacting the travel agency, is a priority for me. Therefore, I am ready to buy a tour to the Baltics, but only on condition that I receive a multivisa, or my passport will be returned to me before May 21, 2015, and then I will have time to apply for Schengen at the German embassy before leaving for the Baltics.

At the same time, he once again stressed that if there is at least some risk, then you warn me - it’s better not to start anything right away, I can’t lose my trip to Berlin.

However, the travel agency assured that the probability of obtaining an Estonian multi-visa is very high (before that, I had up to 10 Schengen in my passport over the past 3 years, including the Spanish multi), of course they cannot guarantee what decision the consulate will make, but they will ask very much . Then I asked if they could at least guarantee that they would submit my documents to the Estonian embassy no later than May 15, so that if the multivisa was refused, I would have the opportunity, having received my passport back on the 21-22, even before leaving for the Baltic states deal with the design of the German Schengen. I was promised that they would submit the documents within the specified time. I also suggested that the travel agency present my bookings in Germany (air ticket and paid hotel) to the Estonian embassy, ​​so that the embassy would take them into account when deciding on the type of visa (single entry, double entry or multi), but the travel agency refused, saying that they they never do that. As a result, I was assured that I had nothing to worry about, that there was a high probability of obtaining a multivisa, or I would get my passport back, and I had the idiocy to trust, give my passport and pay for the tour ...

Certain suspicions arose on May 18, when I called the travel agency to ask if my documents had already been submitted to the embassy, ​​in response I heard something inarticulately uncertain, they say, yes, and I was advised not to worry about anything, everything will be in order.

I saw my passport again only on May 30, 2015, already in Lviv, in terminal "A", on the bus next to the tour. And there was a one-time Estonian Schengen... In fairness, it should be said that the fact that the Schengen is one-time - I was notified by phone on May 28, while saying that I could get my passport only in Lviv, on the bus. When I reminded the representative of the travel agency about our agreements, he said that nothing worked out, and it was not his fault that the tour operator applied for a visa directly for the tour. Then I offered the travel agency itself to somehow rectify the situation, for example, to assist me in obtaining a German Schengen (after all, travel agencies have much more opportunities in this regard, including the terms of consideration, than ordinary citizens), but I was assured that this impossible, unless I buy a tour to Germany from them. At the same time, the representative of the travel agency said that in the German visa center (he found out!) There is an accelerated procedure for an additional fee, in 3 days for obtaining a visa, and suggested that I do it myself.

Result: I submitted documents to the German Visa Application Center on June 5, of course there is no accelerated procedure for an additional payment, today is June 12, I still don’t have a visa and obviously won’t be until the weekend, the trip to Berlin was canceled, important personal plans and 400 euros lost...

Obviously, I will never use the services of My Travel again and do not recommend it to anyone.

As for the Accord Tour, they really provide a quality tourist product for very little money. For this reason, "Accord" has a lot of customers, which is why it is more important for them to fill the bus today at any cost than not to lose one or two customers because of a situation like mine tomorrow. Because they know for sure that instead of one or two, tomorrow there will be ten more, because in a standard situation their services are impeccable...

You can really ride with Akkord, but unless your situation is somewhat non-standard, like mine, I would not advise you to trust Akkord - it is more important for them to get more money now and immediately than to warn the client about possible risks and take into account his interests. Of course, if I knew at least 1% about the risk of not going to Berlin, I would never have gone on an adventure with buying this Baltic tour, no matter how good it was.

It is clear that the travel agency cannot guarantee a multi-visa, but it is simply OBLIGED to warn the client that he will receive his passport only on the bus, that the visa documents will be submitted all together, immediately before the tour, and if another trip is more important to the client, then from this one he it is better to refuse, because there is a reasonable risk. So do those travel agencies that primarily value their reputation.

In the circumstances, I still mostly blame myself - I had already traveled once with "Accord" through "My Travel", then I liked everything, and now it was very frivolous of me to trust them so much.

I hope this review will help others not to repeat my mistakes.

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