EA Ski & Snowboard

Absolute rip off – Absolute rip off. Once you take away the inclusives in the program, you are paying $640 a day for group ski training. At my resort you pay far less for a full day private ski lesson. My advice is, get a job at a resort and pay for private lessons yourself. EA will you rob you blind.

Awesome winter, highly recommend – Incredible experience, would recommend EA, they helped me every step of the way becoming an instructor, and the season was amazing. Made heaps of new friends around the World and have kept instructing.

Really great course. Appreciate the support getting into the Snowsports Industry – I received some great support on the lead up to my course in NZ. Everything was explained through so I knew what to expect. I made some amazing lifelong friends and was sucessful in my Level 1 exam. This course really helped me see what it was like to be an instructor. It was meant to be a OE, but I did a Northern Hemisphere season and I am back again this year :)

Great winter season in NZ – I attended an EA course in Queenstown, NZ in 2022 and it was a fantastic program. The quality of the training was excellent and helped prepare me for my instructor exams. We were given accommodation that was conveniently located, and was both comfortable and social. It would have been great to do a couple more social events as the ones we did were… Read more

a lot of fun! The person I dealt with to book my course was a real highlight - Ray was responsive, knowledgeable and helped make the whole thing a reality for me. Would definitely recommend!

NO ACCOUNTABILITY , hidden terms and conditions, steal your money – I initially signed up in December 2019 for the Mntt Hutt ski internship in New Zealand. I would not trust your money with this company. They demand money and insisted I paid $5000 in February as a deadline, which luckily I didn't. As the pandemic was happening and the situation clearly was not getting better they still demanded money to which I… Read more

replied I did not feel comfortable doing so. The company they said to book insurance with STA went into liquidation in August 2020, however, they never made this known to people and contacted me a year after this saying I could maybe get my money back from them, and get insurance with them.

I paid $3000 in 2020 to go on the course, which was canceled due to the pandemic, they then pointed to some terms and conditions I was never aware of where they keep your money since "it's not their fault it been canceled". I am aware of many people who have experienced the same and have been fighting to get their money back.

I was offered as a "gesture of goodwill" to have only $1500 go towards a future course and that I would just lose the other half. Following multiple email exchanges and a couple of months of fighting, they eventually offered to transfer the full amount $3000 to a future course. By this stage, I felt completely demotivated to carry on further with any future EA ski courses, and could not bring myself to go on the trip nor pay any more money. I know Covid- 19 has been a difficult time for you as a company but this money has seriously limited me and others in their future plans. This is when I started discovering other people who have had negative experiences, and how a lot is promised but nothing is delivered. Whereby I do acknowledge your reasoning for not refunding, I do still expect a refund. I paid an initial deposit which as you stated comes under your booking terms, however, I signed no document agreeing to this, had any knowledge, nor was sent any of your terms and conditions outlining this. Under the law if the terms of the contract seek either to make the payment non-refundable in circumstances where the event did not go ahead due to no fault of the consumer this will satisfy the legal definition of unfair term in a contract and therefore not enforceable and subject to possible remedial action by the Commerce Commission in terms of the Fair Trading Act.

My hope by sending this message is to spread awareness to people on the whole issue of this company's actions, and how careful you have to be when dealing with them, always read the invoices, double-check they don't just last-minute hike the prices without your knowledge because I would never trust Educating Adventures limited with any money (I can't emphasize this point enough)

They changed ski resort and did not offer course paid for – We booked an Internship Plus program at Queenstown for 2021, paid a $5000 au deposit. We were contacted by EA in March 2021 advising us they were not running the course in Queenstown, that we had to attend Mt Hutt and only the Internship program was available not the plus we had paid for. This was unacceptable to us. In the fine print of the… Read more

contract EA is allowed to change location and course on offer so they filled the course and kept our money.

Total rip off – To whom this may concern, I am a previous intern for EA from the 15/16 season in Nozawa, and I have some issues I would like to raise with management about my experience with EA in Nozawa. After we had completed payments we were then told to pay an extra $450 US each to stay in Tokyo for 2 nights which was non-negotiable. This is a trap and… Read more

not outlined when signing up for the Internship, nor did we get $450 worth of value at all. We were then told to pay $20 a day for food at Minikami lodge which included cereal for breakfast until I complained, we then managed to get a few eggs on the menu. Dinner was often chicken, rice and salad and always ran out of anything good/ had to ration (one small plate). This is not $20 US equivalent and often people went hungry which is a shame when we could not get to the grocery store from camp when we needed to. There was only one shower for all of us, so when everyone arrived back from training this was a disaster, and often ran out of hot water and people went without showering.

There was no snow for training at Kagura, I understand you can not control the weather but clearly this is not good enough and we did not get the service that was paid for. The dry mats were dangerous and saw one participant break his wrist on the first day. The rooms were freezing cold and the kerosene heaters smelt awful and often gave me headaches.

We were then moved to Nozawa after training. We arrived to our accommodation and told 4 people to a tiny bunk room with one cupboard, so we all lived from our suitcase for the entire season, it was a mess constantly. We had no pillows, paper thin mattress and a thin blanket, single pane windows and a kerosene heater that did not work. Often this became unbearable. Particularly when you have heavy snorers in your room on top of this, but there is no option to move as the rooms are packed already. There was one shower for 30 instructors, this is disgusting. Also, two toilets for 30 of us, also disgusting. The one kitchen for 30 of us all needing to cook and eat at the same time, a constant mess. 30 of us paying 30,000 yen a month to stay here. Roughly $300 Aus at the time x 30, I expected much more clean and orderly accommodation and facilities.

Then we had our orientation to our new jobs. It was outlined that we must be at the line-up ready to teach 20 mins before we even start to get paid or money would be taken from our pay slips, even for one minute late 1000 yen would be taken. Furthermore we were not allowed to take our uniform home as we were not allowed to be seen in it. So we would have to get dressed for the mountain including pants and boots so we could get the chairlift and board to ski school then once at work take everything off and get changed in to uniform in the morning.

We were told we get a 2 hour unpaid lunch break, but we are not allowed to be seen snowboarding in uniform on our break, even though the Japanese riders were allowed. With not enough time to get changed out of riding gear twice and be ready for afternoon shift, everyone was forced to sit and watch for 2 hrs until it was back to work. This is clearly racist... The Japanese instructors had meals prepared for them every day while working too while it was up to us to find our own food.

Here is the best part. I was not allowed a day off for 2 whole months, over 60 days. This was never part of the contract and we were threatened multiple times if we had the day off our pass would be revoked. So for 60 days we worked every day. No before or after riding was allowed. We were to stay back after we finished being paid in the afternoon to do our debrief which saw us staying back sometimes up to 45 minutes of our own time, when you work 60 days straight this is not fair. I asked for a day off multiple times and was denied. While working every day, we were also given a jobs roster to complete which meant maintaining the whole lodge before and after work. This included snow removal before work, often while still dark. None of this is outlined when signing up for the EA Internship. We had one van for 30 of us to use, so getting to the grocery store that was 20 minutes drive away, there was always people who had to miss out.

My ski pass was left in the change-room after a shift one day by accident as it was a mess in there with all of us getting changed at once. The ski school boss found my pass and took it, and was telling my boss Steve that I had lost my pass and that I should be fired. This went on for days as I constantly looked for my pass, Steve finally reached an agreement with the ski school boss and gave me back my pass but I was to not be allowed to work or snowboard for a whole week as punishment for accidentally leaving my pass in the changeroom after work, all the while I was not getting paid obviously...

As we reach the start of March, we finally start to receive a couple of days off, by this stage the powder days are basically behind us, some runs had already started to close, and the base was about 40cm down low and 80cm up top. This is a long way off what is promised to you when you sign up of endless powder days. We had grass and rocks on the main runs in March.

To top all of this off, I applied to teach in Mt.Hutt NZ once the season was over in Japan. I had a glowing reference from my ski school boss and also I had the most private lesson requests out of EVERYBODY in the ski school for the season. I never heard anything back from Mt. Hutt after the skype interview. All the promises of resort partners and future job opportunities were not what they seemed. It become obvious that EA want new interns every year to collect the $8-10,000 USD from to keep making their profits. I had just spent my whole savings and EA could not offer me a season with their partners anywhere in New Zealand. I was back at square one, with over $10,000 dollars drained from my savings. This is incredibly stressful and soul crushing, you pack your life up to follow your dream to get treated this way.

I understand this is 5 years ago but I am still trying to get back on track as I devoted alot of money, time and effort into what I thought was my new career. I have not recovered from this poor experience and never got another instructing job after applying many times to many places even with my good reference from Steve. Bottom line is, these details are i believe purposely left out of the information given to potential Internees which is wrong, everyone would second guess signing up with EA in Nozawa if they knew these details.

I feel used and ripped off, and I want people to be held accountable for taking advantage of people looking to enter a dream career only to arrive to the slave like conditions in unsatisfactory living arrangements. I would very much like to hear from someone in management about my situation to see what they think about it and where we should go from this point.

Kind regards,

Jacob McQueen

EA Ski and Snowboard training review – I had a great season out in New Zealand last year and am getting ready to fly out for my second winter in the south in 2 months time. I enjoyed the course and thought the training was great. Best part of the course was definitely the crew we lived, worked and partied with and I will be mates with some of them for life. If you are looking for a… Read more

course that makes it super straightforward to get qualified and start working, as well as take care of all the living/transport issues you have when moving to a new place then EA will sort you out. Shout out to Ash from EA who I worked with in the lead up to the winter and then met during the season, top guy and genuinely wants to help people become good instructors.

Avoid this company if you plan on becoming a ski/snowboard instructor! – Last year I went with a ski/snowboard agency, EA Ski & Snowboard. They basically act as an intermediary between Australians looking to become ski or snowboard instructors and international resorts looking to train and hire beginner instructors. I knew that they would be taking some sort of decent commission out of it all, but it was really… Read more

pretty disgusting how much they took and how little they offered. While other agencies similar to EA also took hefty commissions, they at least weren't super cheap and stingy. After taking $10,000-$15,000 for about $3,000 worth of expenses with accommodation/training/certificates etc, they would organise little nights out to try and make it seem like they're putting in some sort of effort. The ultimate slap in the face is the little things, like the fact that they still asked us to bring $2 to pay for the entry to the ski rink. Other troupes had their agencies shout bar tabs, weekly pizza, hire out activity centers etc while EA just laughed at us up from their mountain of commission. It was a good opportunity to meet other people in the same boat as you.