From p1 // ‘Ethical’ travel firm folds with no refunds
failed to file annual returns as required by the Charities Act.
The We Are Bamboo – We want our money back petition now has close to 1200 signatures.
In April, Blenheim woman Liz Wheeler booked a trip to Machu Picchu in Peru for July and was not expecting the $4700 she paid back.
‘‘I’m so angry about it. I just don’t want them to get away with it. They’re claiming to be these wonderful people ... then you see that they’ve [Foster-Murray] built a house in Thailand and he’s [Salisbury] finished building his boat and doing a round the world trip.
‘‘Where are they getting that money from?’’
Wheeler also bought insurance through We Are Bamboo, but when she went to claim she was told by a staff member they were ‘‘in between [insurance] companies’’.
‘‘So they got my insurance money as well. Community Law told me that’s actually fraud, so you can go to the police over that.’’
Wheeler applied through her bank to dispute the transaction and get her money back that way, but had to wait 45 days to see if We Are Bamboo – the vendor – lodged an objection.
‘‘If they object, that’s it. I said, ‘of course they’re going to object, they don’t want to pay the money back’.’’
The majority of We Are Bamboo’s customers are from the United States, UK, Australia and Canada.
Americans Michael Rae, 66, and Martha Uhler, 72, signed up to a trip to Costa Rica in April this year and paid US$5300 ($NZD8500) in advance.
‘‘I did my due diligence. They had a great record and they did a great deal and I went with it,’’ Rae said.
He was told in mid-September their trip had been postponed. They asked for a refund, he said, but were refused.
‘‘I want to know where the money is. That money should have been held in
trust – there should be a bank account with that money in it.
‘‘What they did was reprehensible. They took over a thousand victims, victims who cared about the environment, who cared about those countries and do good for those countries.
‘‘They took those people’s good hearts and basically ripped them out.’’
Rae, a former assistant US attorney, was especially annoyed they paid We Are Bamboo for travel insurance, but this was never on-purchased from a third party.
We Are Bamboo used Chubb New Zealand for its third party insurance, but Chubb stopped providing this service in September 2020.
‘‘Bamboo knew that. They kept collecting the money and they never bought policies and put that money in their pocket. That to me is theft,’’ Rae said.
We Are Bamboo is not a member of Travel Agents Association of New Zealand (TAANZ), which regularly audits members and offers guidance on how to keep clients’ funds protected. About 95% of industry players are members. Chief executive Greg Hamilton said he did not know how We Are Bamboo’s financial model worked, describing them as ‘‘travel operators’’ rather than agents.