Don't go with Ger to Ger,
Let me start with this. I am a thrifty person and I felt I had no choice but to walk away from a $744 deposit for myself and wife.
Here is what transpired.
My partner and I came to our orientation (that lasted for 4 hours and I am not joking when I say you will learn a lot about the owner's resume and the history of GER TO GER but very little about what is likely more important to you - what you will eat, what are the shower and toilet situations etc.). The orientation was run by Zanjan the owner and founder.
My first feeling that Zanjan was a person whose trips/organization I did not wanted to be part of was when he recounted that he had felt that some past clients had faked true illnesses to be able to return to a hotel or they just liked arguing (his words not mine). He said that from now on if his clients said that they were sick that he was going to make them go to the hospital and that they had no choice and, he said "I am not a person you want to mess with." At that moment, he sounded more like a MMA fighter than a level-headed tour operator.
Then during the orientation, we were told that we would be doing an activity where we would imagine that we were in a real Ger. I thought that he was giving instructions and shortly we would be standing up, stepping out of the office and walking back into the office/GER and trying to put into practice his instructions. I found out that this was not the case when he described the way to sit in a GER so as not to offend. He said you should not sit open legged because that was gay. He then repeated it saying that it was "So gay". At that moment, I was trying to determine if there was any way that what he said was not inappropriate. He then looked at me and said I have asked you two times, I will only give you one more chance (my legs were open, I was not trying to be disrespectful). I was taken aback and said "What? Are you going to come over and break my legs? He did not respond.
After the orientation, I expressed to Zanjan alone that I found the way he used "gay" to describe why it was disrespectful to have your legs open was questionable. He told me that the orientation was a boot camp and that it was his job to give out tough love so that we best represented ourselves as ambassadors for his company with our GER families. He also told me about a situation where a possibly gay client had shown an interest in him and that he was no longer interested in being politically correct. I told him that many people and particularly gay people would find his use of the descriptor insensitive. He also said he was testing me to make sure I was a good representative of his organization.
The next day we went online and saw the numerous negative reviews of GER TO GER some of which referred to Zanjan's (and those who worked for him) insensitivity to his clients needs and concerns. We approached Zanjan that day to tell him that because of the reviews and our past interaction that we felt we would not be a good fit for his tour and would like to cancel the three separate tours we had signed up for.
He said he would not refund our deposit.
We asked what was his cancellation policy. He said we should go to the website to read it. I said he, as the owner, must know what it is. He told me again to read it and he must follow it. I told him I had read it and was confused because it spoke about what happens when you give less than 7 days notice but doesn't say what happens when you give more notice - two of our trips were happening 8 or more days later. He said he considered it all one collective trip because we booked our trips all at the same time (there were a few days gap between each of our trips). I told him of course he could see how the reading of the policy was not clear and he could have some flexibility on the situation - possibly return some of our deposit or we could go on his first trip and just cancel the second and third trips or something similar.
That was when Zanjan said we would have to write out on paper a formal request for all or part of our deposit but that we would have to have a better excuse than we felt uncomfortable with the way he had treated us at the orientation. We told him it was more than that (bad reviews, way he was treating me then, his being unaware of his own policies, our belief that we were giving enough notice for the other trips).
A number of times during this 10 minute discussion, he told us that we did not make an appointment and a 5 minute discussion was fine but he was busy and he did not want to discuss it any more. He told us, our choice was to either go on the trip (paying rest of the cost) or write out a request our deposit and not go on the trip "which would just be our loss".
Well we did not write out the request. We chose to lose our deposit but we think we dodged a huge bullet by choosing not to go with a tour organized by a belligerent, insensitive, aggressive person.
PS - we went to a few other tour operators and found out that they had very similar trips at a third of the cost and the operators of these tours were very warm and open to questions - even without an appointment!!! And when we told one operator that we were having difficulties with GER TO GER she rolled her eyes and said "We have heard many complaints and they charge a lot more for little."
Well we are one more complaint to add to the pile.
