Abans Tours Sri Lanka, www.abanstours.lk

I just returned to USA after a holiday in Sri Lanka and would like to post my experience with Abans tours. I rented a van from Abans Tours at the airport the airport to get to my rented house in Colombo upon arrival. Therefore I decided to rent a van from the same company to get to the airport. They took my booking and promised to send a van by 8:30pm. However the van did not arrive and at 9:30pm, I called Abans to enquire. I was told that the van had met with an accident and they will not be able to provide any transport. How unprofessional? They did not even call me to let me know! As a result I had to rent two vehicles from the street and got to the airport 2 hours late! I got to the boarding gate 5 minutes after the boarding started, after all the rushing and running through the airport. Others may have had good experiences but mine was terrible and would not recommend then to anyone!

Hi,

I would like to share our bad experience with the Europcar car rental in Colombo Airport and their operating tour agency Abans tours.

We rented a self drive car for 3 weeks at their office (which is operated by Abans Tours) for our trip in july 2013. When we got the car they took a deposit of 300 euro from our credit card. This is a normal procedure for car rental, but here they did not just took an authorisation on the amount but took / charged the 300 euro, which I only noticed when we got back home. I then started sending them emails to get this deposit back, and every time got after a delay of a week that they would check, but nothing happened. Finally I had to start a procedure at VISA to get the money back because there is a maximum of 3 months that this procedure is possible, so I think Abans Tours just tried to stretch the time to get past this limit and keep our money. A really bad and frustrating experience. Now, finally after 4 months I was happy VISA could force them to pay the money back.

This was the message I received each time from their manager Iqbaal JALDIN:

"Hi Hans, We have noted your request, will get back to your once we have checked this with the bank. Pushpa, Please look into the below, client have still not received the deposit.

Thank you, Iqbaal"

The car itself which we rented was ok, but it had very little power, so was not fit to get into the mountains. We had a few times it almost stopped uphill because lack of power and one time, when we went up to Horton Plains it did not get up and my wife and two kids had to get out to help pushing it up.

Also note that allthough Europcar has a booth in the airport they have no car parking at the airport, so there is not much advantage to taking a car rental company in central Colombo, they have to drive the car over anyway and you have to wait at the very busy departure kiss and ride zone in the airport for them to come over.

I am just back from a Vacation to Srilanka and I am still trying to come out of the horrible experience I had with the Abans Tour Operators.

The chauffeur Mr. Ranjeeth was extremely rude and mean to us, it kind of ruined my vacation. The tour operator dint seem to care when we complained about the chauffeur. His Snide remarks and sarcastic replies spoilt the entire point of a vacation and left me frustrated.

I guess the least a tour operator can do is employ a friendly chauffeur!

Please do not book your vacation plan through them, its like a guy straight out of hell driving you around!!.

P.S : They will be at the airport trying to entice you with a sweet-talking operator. Dont get cheated.