HK
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Did not get picked up, terrible experience
It all went well before our trip. We got our quote, discussed with the company various information about our trip and pick up time, our number of guests etc... And we were anticipating our first safari experience.
We did not get picked up eventually. We have waited for an entire hour at the pick up spot, but we never saw the guide coming. In desperation, we tried to contact the company through all possible means -- WhatsApp, email, calling their number, and even trying to search for more contact information. All the call numbers cannot be reached, and no reply from the WhatsApp and email whatsoever.
We ended up losing all hope and ran to the town, booking another company in last minute.
We got contacted 3 hours later via WhatsApp, and we were told that the phone of the contact person has been stolen and thus the events that occurred. By then we already agreed to take an offer from another company. We were also very disappointed by the explanation, since we doubted whether it is entirely impossible to inform us via email, something that can be accessed with any laptop computer. We could also be easily found at our pick up location and informed in person, but we never saw that happen.
All in all, it was a terrible experience, and we wish that this would not happen to other travellers.
US
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Simon of EastCo still owes us more than $9,000 after three years. DO NOT BOOK.
It is absolutely criminal that Simon and EastCo are still taking bookings. I should have written this review earlier, but every time I think about it I get a terrible pit in my stomach. My husband and I organized a 30 day safari with Simon in July 2015. The reviews were all good, so we felt okay about it. But then the first day, no one came to pick us up at our hotel, which should have been the first sign of trouble. The next week and a half was probably some of the most stressful travel I've ever experienced. I won't get into the nitty gritty, but I will give one detail: our safari vehicle got repossessed in the middle of the night when we were at a remote safari camp, because Simon hadn't paid the bills. At every turn we were asked to pay out of pocket or held behind, because Simon and Eastco hadn't paid. Finally, we cut our trip short. We ended with a copy of Simon's passport and a statement, in writing, and signed, that he would repay us for services not rendered. He's paid us back only $900 of over $10,000 owed. We're still waiting. DO NOT BOOK WITH EASTCO. You will have your money stolen. I would be happy to discuss more with anyone who has questions, and to share the written document of Simon's promising us our money back (you can email me using the link above this review). This company should be flagged as fraudulent on all safari sites. Terrible. Just terrible.
KW
20-35 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Look For Somewhere Else !!!!!!!!!
When my flight arrived at 10:30am driver wasn't there I waited 2 hours for him to arrive. And the driver wasn't my actual tour guide he is a tour guide for another group. His excuse for arriving late that his car was damaged, but in the end I found out he was lying and my actual tour guide made a deal with this other tour guide (Who will pick another group that I don't know) to go to the airport to pick me up because I was solo. And because of that he arrived late cause the other group's flight arrival is at 1:00pm. My trip plan is private tour which means driver must to pick me up alone without other group!!!!!!!!!!! And to top all that the car was in super bad condition. To sum up this company is a so unorganized, very old vehicles, don't care about customer satisfaction, and do whatever they want to do without even asking beforehand if I agree or not. Please avoid so that you will not end up with similar experience or even worse.
US
50-65 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Do not trust this company!
Do not trust this company with your money. I paid them my deposit in early March. A week later, their website and cell phone number were terminated due to lack of payment. When I finally
heard from them again, I asked that my deposit be refunded. At the end of March, they agreed and stated that a wire had been sent, but that never happened. There have been several emails sent to me with stories as to why I have not yet been refunded. To date, I have not received my money back.
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Avoid these guys!
I have never written an online review but feel I should.
As soon as I paid my deposit communication suddenly went very quiet and I had to send several chaser emails to find out what was going on.
Finally a day before we were due to start I received an email 'Pick-up at 6.30am'. 6.30am came and went and at 7.30am I finally received an email response saying 'Call driver 07xxxxxxx'. Not even an apology. You can imagine how stressful this was morning was! When I spoke to the driver on the phone he explained that one of the guests on our safari had a delayed flight and was waiting at the airport. When I met the others they said they all arrived the previous day! Other than that, they hadn't prepared the vegetarian option for lunch which I had requested.
The second day brought more dramas. After being told to wake up at 7am for an 8am start we were all extremely frustrated to find the driver had disappeared. He eventually came back at 10am and explained that his boss hadn't put the funds on his company card. We missed out on 2 hours in the Ngorongoro crater because of this.
We were promised extra time in Serengeti to compensate for this but on the 3rd day exactly the same thing happened! The driver even asked if anyone could pay the balance on their card and that his boss would refund through the web!
I know they offer extremely cheap packages but no saving is worth the stress of waiting around to get into a park on a once in a life time trip. Pay a little bit more and avoid MJ Safaris."
SG
35-50 years of age | Experience level: first safari
Professional scam artist, avoid Yoeni Japeth Mbonea at all costs. No stars!
My wife and I engaged Drive Tanzania for a 21 day safari covering Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. With the benefit of hindsight, we should have not gone ahead with this when Yoeni, the director of Drive Tanzania was either very hard to connect with or he would hang the phone up on you mid conversation, as what occurred in the lead up to us engaging Drive Tanzania. There was a lot of miscommunication due to poor communication by Drive Tanzania around flights and commitments. I thought it is just a bad phone connection but really, that has nothing to do with it. All of these tour operators have multiple phone numbers and whatsapp. Tourists do not get the number they use most for all their communications with locals and to do their business.
Regardless, we commenced our tour. Things continued to go badly. In Uganda, when we arrived, our tour guide was more than an hour late, which is quite scary late at night in a foreign country with taxi drivers yelling at you at airports. There is a minimal standard of care and for a safari of this price, it was not being met. Eventually our driver came. We found out he didn't know who Yoeni was as all of the Uganda tour was outsourced and not provided by Drive Tanzania.
That said, Uganda is amazing. Seeing mountain gorillas in the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest and getting so close to them is a life long memory. Further, the Maasai Mara in Kenya (our second country, guided by another outsourced tour guide) was also excellent. Seeing lions, cheetahs, leopards, elephants, hippos etc in the dry season was actually very worth while as we could get close to the animals as there are less tourists around.
Here is where the disaster with the fraudster Yoeni and Drive Tanzania really began. As we crossed into the border from Kenya to Tanzania our Kenyan tour guide told us he was unable to reach Yoeni and left us there, to drive back to Nairobi. I was able to contact Yoeni and he said the car had broken down and they were several hours away. We waited for them in a roadside hotel at the border as we had next to no money, afterall on safari all expenses are paid and in advance. Also, this is Africa… do you think they accept credit cards or know what an ATM is? The hours passed. We got worried and tried calling Yoeni...repeatedly… 110 times! He had turned his phone off. We got worried and started scrambling. Eventually we found out the name of our hotel in Tanzania in the Serengeti and when we called, we discovered there was no booking for us and we could not get into the Park.
Yoeni Japeth Mbonea and Drive Tanzania left us stranded and took $10,000s from us. We are still chasing him for an equitable refund for more than half of an unfulfilled trip. Be careful, he has done this before. He has many different tourism companies that have come and gone. He also has interests in mining companies and gem traders. His fees are also very expensive, particularly as he outsources everything, but really he makes money by scamming foreign tourists and making a couple of phone calls to other tourist providers. His company is actually really small and he uses the money he steals from others to support an affluent lifestyle in Norway. Avoid this person [remember his address in case he starts a new company!] for your own piece of mind. Use safaribookings.com to find another tour guide as there are 2000 more out there and you will save yourself from this horrible, potentially life threatening experience.
HK
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
Stay away from this company. Still owed a refund
I travelled as a group of 4 and booked a trek and safari trip with Peter at Africa Flash McTours and paid in full before my vacation. He never showed up for the safari trip and I was left on my own to book another tour when I was in Africa. He promised to refund me my money (a couple thousand US dollars) and after 6 months, he still has not.
There has been mixed reviews on this company on safaribookings. Im sure Peter (who runs this company) has had some good tours in the past, but there are also many many poor reviews you need to be mindful of because they are in fact true. His company is NOT registered with the tourism board and he has a history of not showing up on time, changing itinerary and cheating people their money.
For the past 6 months he has continued to say he would send the refund that he owes my group. Every week he fails to do so. He has stolen over $2000 USD from my group.
Do NOT risk your vacation with this company. Do NOT put your trust in Peter. There are so many other safari tour companies you can go with.
IE
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
not what was advertised
Tanzania Safari Supremacy is a complete rip off. Simply put, what they advertise and what they set out in their itineraries are not what they will provide. I travelled with them in July 2015 and was utterly disappointed at the service they provided.
Firstly, when we were picked up from our hotel in the morning the operators demanded that we pay the balance in cash. This was never mentioned to us in any correspondence beforehand, which it clearly ought to have been given the size of our group and the amount of cash we would therefore need to have on hand. We had expected to be able to pay by card, but instead lost an hour that morning travelling to the airport to access an ATM – a terrible start to the trip, a waste of our time, and no apology from the company. Unfortunately this was only the beginning of our problems.
We had opted to use this tour operator as they claim in all their materials that the drive to the park is 4-4.5 hours from Dar es Salaam (there are other parks in the region but they are a longer drive so we chose Mikumi as we had limited time available to us and wanted to maximise our time in the park). The drive took 6 hours. This wasn’t due to traffic as there wasn’t any significant traffic and the journey time was the same on the way back to Dar from the park. This delayed not only our arrival on the first day but also meant we would not have time to make use of our final morning on safari as we had to ensure we would make it back to Dar in time to catch the ferry.
The itinerary for the first day was to arrive by midday and immediately start on a game drive. Instead, when we arrived the driver told us that the plan was not to go out on a drive until 4:30pm! This was a loss of over half a day of driving for absolutely no reason.
At this stage we were very annoyed by the situation. We asked the driver to take us out at 3pm so as not to lose so much time and, reluctantly, he agreed. We also asked at that stage for the driver to get the manager, Elvice, who we had corresponded with by email beforehand, on the phone so that we could discuss the issues that had arisen. The driver did not get him on the phone.
On the first evening the driver (allegedly) checked what time breakfast would be served at, told us it would be 6:30am and initially suggested picking us up at 7:30am to go on a drive. As anyone who has been on safari before will know, it is best to go out as early as possible as the animals move around most in the mornings before it gets too hot in the middle of the day. Thankfully, we knew this so insisted that the driver pick us up at 7am and he, again reluctantly, agreed.
Later that evening the catering staff (who are entirely separate to the safari company and did a fantastic job and were most helpful) told us that breakfast is not served until 7am (a fact I have no doubt the driver was fully aware of). They tried to contact the driver for us to tell him that we would instead go on a drive earlier and return for breakfast later in the morning but they were unable to get through to him.
The following morning the driver did not turn up until 7:25am. When we were eventually able to speak to Elvice much later that day he claimed that the driver was delayed as he had had a flat tire. The driver never mentioned this so I fully believe this was just a story concocted later on to try and cover himself. He didn’t apologise at all when he did arrive late and when we made it clear that we were very unhappy with how we were being treated he again offered no apology.
As an aside, the driver showed very little in the way of knowledge about the animals. If we had not asked him questions about the animals I don’t think he would have said a word the whole time and when he did answer questions it didn’t seem like he knew very much about the animals. When we did come across animals it seemed very much like just a matter of chance rather than any skill exercised by the driver. Even if all the other issues had not arisen, I think we would have left the tour feeling quite disappointed by the drives because of this apparent lack of knowledge.
Returning to the main issues. When the driver arrived late that morning I insisted that he call Elvice as the group was so appalled at the service. He instead got another middle man, Philbert, on the phone who refused to listen to our complaints (which were expressed in a calm fashion) and began to scream down the phone at me, called me crazy a number of times, and then hung up the phone on.
We asked the driver again to get Elvice on the phone as he was, as far as we knew, the person in charge. The driver claimed that he did not know who Elvice was, he only knew Philbert. We told him that we were not happy to speak to Philbert and insisted he get Elvice on the phone and the driver said he would.
We eventually went out on our morning drive and by the time we returned for lunch we still had not received a call from Elvice (although we are quite confident that the driver was speaking on his phone to someone from the main office, he denied it when asked about it). At that point we again insisted on him calling Elvice. Again he claimed he did not know who that was and that he only knew Philbert so he put Philbert on the phone again, who claimed that Elvice could not be contacted as he was ‘in the bush’. When I said that that wasn’t acceptable and that we must speak to someone in charge he again started to shout at me and ultimately hung up the phone.
We again explained to the driver that we had to speak to someone in charge and that we wanted that phone call to happen now. 10-20minutes later we eventually got a call from Elvice. Unfortunately, all Elvice offered us were excuses, such as the phantom flat tire. He refused to acknowledge that the itinerary he had sent us was very different to what was proposed when we arrived and ultimately could offer us no solution. I asked that he consider the situation and call me back within an hour to offer some solution to the problem but, unsurprisingly at this stage, the call never came.
That evening when the driver dropped us off, we asked him to call Elvice again. At first he tried again to claim that he didn’t know who that was or how to contact him, but, obviously, this didn’t stand up and he eventually got him back on the phone. This time Elvice was much more hostile. He tried to claim that we had caused very issues and that we had tried to not pay for the safari (absolutely baseless claims), he offered the same nonsense excuses, and ultimately, when I insisted that there was no excuse for providing a service so different to what was advertised, he became completely frustrated and (judging by the sounds) hurled his phone against the wall.
Do not use Tanzania Safari Supremacy. There are so many companies offering safaris in this region, try any of them other than this one. They don’t provide what they promise, their driver showed no expertise, and their customer service is despicable.
US
I would advise you not to book this company. Seriously, you'll thank me later.
We booked a 4 night budget safari to see the Serengeti, Ngorogoro Crater, and Lake Manyara. While the wildlife did not disappoint (thanks to our freelance drivers, who were excellent guides), the rest of the experience was pretty awful.
We got quotes from a bunch of different safari operators and Kiliholidays came in the cheapest. This should have been a red flag, but we are broke grad students so we decided to hire them. Unfortunately, we got what we paid for.
The vehicles were in a sorry state of disrepair and one of them lost a wheel - twice. The bolts were rusted and after hitting a big bump, the wheel would tear loose and bounce off into the bush. Instead of getting new bolts to fix the wheel, the drivers simply borrowed bolts from other wheels. We saw a couple vehicles from other tour operators get flat tires, but no one else on the road had a wheel come flying off.
We also had some customer service issues with the company owner, Mack. You may have noticed that he has written responses to the other bad reviews from our group (there were 8 of us total).
Feel free to read his responses, but as you do, remember that this is how he would talk to you if you had an issue on safari with his company. It's a lot of blathering and blame shifting, which is really not what you want to deal with when you're totally dependent on your tour operator and just trying to have an enjoyable vacation with friends.
In summary - we felt unsafe in the vans and we felt that Mack took advantage of the fact that we were (stupid American) tourists, dependent on Kiliholidays for food, shelter, and transportation. Don't make the same mistake we did - book with someone else!
20-35 years of age | Experience level: 2-5 safaris
FRAUD ALERT - this tour Company is defrauding tourists
In January 2015 “Bushtroop Tours & Safaris” company from Nairobi, Kenya refused to return the rental car deposit. We regarded this situation as a fraud and highly recommend extreme caution in any dealings with “Bushtroop Tours & Safaris” and personally with Jacqueline Mwathe and especially Moses Mutiva Ombeva.
My name is Nikolay Zagrebelnyy. I am 34 years old and I live in St. Petersburg, Russia.
In January 2015, me and my wife Natalia Klementyeva traveled in Africa: Kenya - Uganda - Rwanda - Congo - Burundi - Tanzania - Kenya together by car. The total mileage was about 5000 kilometers. This was our third visit to Kenya and sixth in Africa.
The car was rented in Bushtroop Tours & Safaris, Toyota RAV4, 2010, registration number KCB-573G. The company based in Nairobi, Kenya. Bushtroop Tours & Safaris has been selected on the Internet recommendations and the car availability. Our previous companies from Nairobi or could not be contacted or did not have the right car at the desired time. Many times we took a car in various countries and have never had problems, including previous trips to Kenya.
The car was given 31.12.2014, in good technical condition. Prospective route was agreed with Bushtroop Tours & Safaris, we made the contract and received the necessary documents. We paid the full rental price and a deposit - 1200 USD in cash.
When returning to Nairobi on 01/31/2015, we returned the car without any damage, which was confirmed by representatives of Bushtroop Tours & Safaris Jacqueline Mwathe and her colleague.
Despite this, Jacqueline Mwathe and her college refused to return the deposit, citing the fact that they put our deposit to the bank, and today is Saturday evening and the bank is closed.
At our request, the company chief Moses Mutiva Ombeva arrived and confirmed this information, also refused to return the deposit.
Bushtroop Tours & Safaris offered to transfer money to the bank card, or through Western Union. Moses Mutiva Ombeva Ombeva written receipt with a promise to transfer money and signed the contract.
The fact that the signature on the receipt does not match the signature in the other documents, I found only in the preparation of this site. Nevertheless, I guarantee that this signature of Moses Mutiva Ombeva.
The situation raises many questions, but in was already late evening and to return flight was only a few hours, so we went to the airport. At the airport Jacqueline personally promised to transfer money tomorrow. At that moment I almost believed her. We passed the car and flew home.
After four months, we have not received the money. Several times I called Jacqueline on the phone. In the last conversation, she promised to transfer the money on 28 April. This has not happened.
Conversations:
We regarded this situation as a fraud of Bushtroop Tours & Safaris and personally Moses Mutiva Ombeva. We highly recommend extreme caution in any dealings with Bushtroop Tours & Safaris and personally with Jacqueline Mwathe and especially Moses Mutiva Ombeva.