Flash Safaris and Photography

Please do not make a mistake of booking your safari with Flash

We recently came back from a safari with Flash. We couldn’t have been more disappointed. Not only their cars are broken, they don’t pay their drivers and they also tried denying obvious problems we experienced during our trip which we have video proof of.

The Car:

4wd drive didn’t work. This caused us and other people to be put in a life-threatening situations when for example the car was sliding down a very steep hill, unable to go up without being pushed up by another car after our driver, Jerry, with help of drivers from other companies tried fixing it with a RUBBER BAND FROM THE ROOF-LOCKING MECHANISM. This wasn’t the only case when someone had to push us. The gears didn’t really work either. Going uphill, on an asphalt road with a speed limit of 80 km/h, their car could reach a maximum speed of 20 km/h, causing massive traffic jams behind us. Going down, we of course were able to reach 80 km/h easily. If that wasn’t enough, the car’s shock absorber broke down on the second day. We know that accidents happen, but during our trip it was mostly Flash cars that we saw broken on the side of the road.

The Unpaid Driver:

On the last day after finishing the safari, our driver dropped us off at our hotel and we were getting ready for a well-deserved sleep. Half an hour later we were shocked to see him knocking at our doors in tears. It turned out that HE DID NOT GET PAID A SINGLE DOLLAR from Flash. That’s disgusting! As he explained, all his money comes from tips. We omitted them, because Flash assured us that everything is already paid for and we were really irritated with our safari on the last day because of continuous problems with the car and Flash’s inability to deliver a quality service.

The Lies:

“Nowadays at most part of our roads there is a speed limit of 50 km per hours and you must have seen all the police control posts. In the parks there is also a maximum speed limit and I want our guides to hold to this as we can lose our permit.” - that’s clearly not what we were talking about. We have video proof of car struggling at 20 km/h on a road with 80 km/h speed limit.

“I asked Jerry about the starting problems, he told me that this did happen once and then some people had to push the car to get it started, there were no other incidents” - It happened numerous times, with the most dangerous incident on a steep hill where another car had to push us. Not only we have a video proof of that, at that time in our car, there were also other Flash clients whose car broke down completely earlier that day.

“Jerry also told us that he never used a rubber to fix or repair the 4WD, you must have taken that wrong.” - again, on that day we were accompanied by other people who have also seen it. Jerry clearly told us that he has a problem with activating 4WD and this rubber would hopefully temporarily solve the issue.

We asked: “Please clarify for me how much was driver paid by your company. We want to understand how big is the tipping part of his total salary. Please confirm that our driver was paid by the company (what was the amount?) and that our tips were only the form of extra bonus for him.”
To which they replied that “Jerry get paid a good salary”.
Well clearly if your driver comes up to our room after safari in tears something is wrong.

“On the way to the crater you indeed met with another car from Flash Safaris, it is very common that guides do help each other. Jerry stopped and you talked with the other clients. Then you asked Jerry to help and to take the clients with you. I really appreciate your gesture in this.” - Just shows how “good with words” Edward, the company’s co-owner tried to be in his emails. Of course, we accepted the other people on board (for the whole day) because your car broke down completely and they were stuck in full sun for few hours with small kids in the middle of nowhere and you didn’t manage to secure a replacement car!

SUMMARY:

4WD not working, problems with gears above 2, car not starting, broken shock-absorber, dishonest management unable to even admit the obvious problems, driver working for 0$ for 5 days in extreme conditions.

If you don’t want this to happen to you, just choose another company.