Africa

[funinthesun]

Hi I am planning a trip to Africa and i am volunteering for two weeks with a company called African Impact, and then after volunteering i am touring for 20 days with a company called ZedAway. Both of these companies are based in the UK. I was just wondering if you would be able to check them out for me to make sure they are legitimate. Thank you.

Originally Posted by funinthesun

African Impact
ZedAway.

Both of these companies are based in the UK.

African Impact [www.africanimpact.com] have been around a while. Make sure your communications are being done via an email address ending with "@africanimpact.com" and not anything else. Likewise any phonecalls should be to those on their contact page here. According to the contact page this group is in Zimbabwe, not the UK, so you will need to clarify this.

ZedAway [www.zedaway.com] have been around for a while too and have a London office address. Again, make sure communication emails match the domain name and that contact details match what is on the website. This one does have a UK follow me (+44 70) number in the contact us page [here] so that would no doubt redirect to anywhere. This is the first time I have seen a legitimate business using one of those.

No experience with either group, but they would be unlikely to have lasted this long if they were not anything but genuine. If you approached them via their websites then that is good, but bad if you got unsolicited email. Please do check email addresses and contact details with those on the websites to verify.

If everything matches up, I would have high confidence in both groups.

[funinthesun]

Thank you for your time!

[funinthesun]

hi! i am also going on a two day tour to Victoria Falls through a company named Afrizim. Could you check this company out for me? Thank you!

[Rob]

Afrizim is a legit company, too (judging from their website) but it's a common tactic among scammers to impersonate them. They often claim to be associated with them but use email adresses from free services such as yahoo, hotmail, etc. Make sure that they answer you from an address that ends with afrizim.com.

[funinthesun]

Did you say at the bottom that this is a scam? The email address that they they use ends with flameofafrica.com

Originally Posted by funinthesun

hi! i am also going on a two day tour to Victoria Falls through a company named Afrizim.

Originally Posted by funinthesun

The email address that they they use ends with flameofafrica.com

Now you are talking about 2 different companies. It is time for you to explain in full because right now your lack of information is causing some issues. The quality of our responses is directly proportional to the quality of information we recieve.

Afrizim.com are a legitimate company, and flameofafrica.com are legitimate as far as I can see. Their site has been up since 2006.

If you contacted AFRIZIM.COM and THEY have directed you to FLAMEOFAFRICA.COM then that is fine. Rob's message above means to watch for emails that use FREE webmail accounts (Yahoo, Hotmail etc) that pretend to be a company.

In the end if you cannot ascertain whether a holiday company is legitimate, you should visit your local travel agency to find out.

[funinthesun]

hi, sorry i was kind of confused at all of this myself. I went back to the Afrizim website, and i went to how to contact them. Their contact email is Afrizim[at]flameofafrica.com. I think that explains it. Does that make sense to you?

Ahh yes, I see the contact us address on their main page. Yes that's perfectly fine.

[Alezxafrica]

Hi funinthesun
I've been doing some consultancy work with Zedaway and they're a bonafide UK company. They're basically holiday designers for Africa. I know they're also involved a lot with volunteer projects. You can e them at info[at]zedaway.com or check out www.zedaway.com for their tel no. Haven't heard any of the others, sorry. Have fun when you go ...