Colorado travel company will reimburse Colorado high schoolers and families nearly $800,000 for trips canceled due to the pandemic
March 8, 2021 (DENVER)—Attorney General Phil Weiser today announced a Wheat Ridge-based travel company, Voyageurs International, will provide refunds to about 400 Coloradans after withholding fees for music trips to Europe that it canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Many families in Colorado are facing new and additional financial hardships due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Weiser. “Companies should not be withholding money from consumers that they were charged for a service that they didn’t receive. We are pleased to see this money returned to Colorado families.”
For 50 years, Voyageurs International has organized trips to Europe for high school students and accompanying parents or guardians.
Residents from around the country paid Voyageurs to go on the 2020 Ambassadors of Music Tour, including about 400 Coloradans. Of those Colorado residents, 44 also purchased the Greece Extension, a four-day addition to the tour.
After the trips were canceled due to the pandemic in March of 2020, the company provided refunds to those who had prepaid, but kept a $1,900 cancellation fee from each customer and an extra $765 per student and $775 per adult from those who purchased the Greece extension, which the attorney general’s office alleged violated consumer protection laws.
In the settlement announced today, Voyageurs agreed to refund those withheld fees, which include $793,300 in cancellation fees to Colorado customers, and $59,925 to residents of other states.
One Coloradan, Amanda Wicker, of Loveland, said her daughter, Faith, worked two jobs to save money for the trip in addition to her parents’ contribution. When the trip Faith was expecting to be a highlight of her senior year was canceled, Amanda said she shouldn’t have also had to deal with the loss of that money.
The refund from Voyageurs, Amanda said, will go toward Faith’s first year of college, after she graduates this spring.
“We’ve experienced enough loss this year,” she said. “I’m grateful for the attorney general and the people who worked so hard to make sure families across the states who were so impacted by this get their money back.”
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