Warning aginst using the company Greenland Tours and Travels in Ethiopia
In October/November 2015 my husband and I travelled one month in Ethiopia. We used a Danish travel agent (EtiopienRejser), but all the arrangements were in fact made by the Ethiopian company Greenland Tours (GT).
In the very end of our holiday we decided to go by plane from Arba Minch to Addis Ababa. We paid for the tickets ourselves (330 USD) as this was not part of the original arrangement. However, due to acute disease we had to cancel and we asked GT to cancel these tickets. We left Ethiopia the following day.
Back in Denmark we planned to contact our insurance company for economical compensation. Therefore we requested GT to confirm since the tickets for the airplane were left with their driver. This is what happened: 1. To our very surprise GT informed us that our driver already had received the money being refunded from the airlines company, 250 USD. He was still keeping the money. Since he was travelling with another group we could not get our money right now. 2. Next GT informed us that the driver claimed that he had in fact already given me the money. 3. Our Danish travel agent who happened to be in Addis Ababa at that time met with GT. The 3 of them - the driver, the agent in the GT- office and our Danish agent - agreed in the following very peculiar solution: I had in fact received the money, but being confused I had forgotten about it! The four of us were to share the loss. The 3 above mentioned were to pay 62 USD each to me and my husband; we ourselves had to be responsible for the last quarter, 62 USD. Of course we rejected this solution. 4. GT closed the matter by concluding that they believed their driver! 5. To put an end to the problem our Danish travel agent paid us the 250 USD herself. We asked GT for details concerning the course of the events, but never got a reply.
We have had no loss due to the theft, but we find it totally unacceptable that GT gets away with treating customers like this. The very core of the problem is not who believes in who. On the contrary the fact is that GT has been acting irresponsibly and illegally: GT sent a driver to collect our money at the airline office without any written authority from us or even asking or telling us about it. Furthermore GT did not demand the driver to get a written receipt from us to ensure that we had indeed received the money. This is especially beneath criticism as the driver was free-lance and had only been working for GT for a short time. GT boasts being an excellent tour company in Ethiopia with focus on the well-being of the customer. GT certainly knows of the importance of written accepts/receipts to avoid swindle. In their hotel in Arba Minch there is a sign requesting customers to get a receipt when having paid the bill. We certainly do not appreciate that the company protects an unreliable driver and we certainly do not like the idea that this driver may still be working for the company.
Therefore we highly recommend travellers to use other companies when travelling in Ethiopia. In our opinion loss of customers and money is the only way to make GT treat customers in a decent way.