The Lisbon trip was honestly a great experience for me.
The city in general is a great place if you're someone who is worried that they will feel out of place in a foreign country, because it's so diverse and plenty of people speak English and Spanish. It has a rich culture which you feel when you're there whilst also having a good nightlife and buzzing tourist atmosphere. Whether you're a European like me or someone from another continent, Lisbon is a great place to live for a short period of time, with relatively low prices and plenty of things to see if you are a bit of a traveller (plus there's beaches nearby - the temperatures are above 30 degrees celsius in summer).
Absolute Internship (AI) were quick to resolve any issues I had during the 6 weeks I was in Lisbon and always made it clear that they wanted to help improve my experience in any way I could, albeit both their advice on how to make the most of the trip and their communication prior to me coming to Lisbon wasn't great. When I applied for the program around January-time, the person from AI who was finding me a job was at times slow to respond to my emails but did make a clear effort to find me an internship that suited what I wanted to get out of my experience (any job in marketing). I had secured the job by the end of February and AI's payment scheme meant that I only paid the total amount once I'd secured the right internship for me. When I'd arrived in Lisbon, the AI coordinator taking us was very quick at responding to my messages, and I was repeatedly reassured that if there were any issues I had with any aspect of the course, I should let the coordinator know as soon as possible, which was helpful.
As someone who was concerned about whether this company were legit or not (and if I'd just paid a large sum of money to a bunch of scammers), I was relieved to find early on that they were as legit as I'd hoped, and most of the others on the course had found AI through their universities, which was also reassuring. I was satisfied with the quality of AI's care and support, although I know that there were others that were unsatisfied with some responses to their more serious issues (e.g. they really didn't want to continue with their internships but AI couldn't find them another one).
I was the only Brit and European on my course, with the others coming from North America, South East Asia and the Middle East - they were all a great group of people and we did quite a few activities together, which was nice. The social side of this trip was great and although it was a bit lonely to start with, as expected, I'm really good friends with many of the people I met on this course - no need to worry about whether you'll make friends or not!
Overall I would highly recommend the Lisbon trip! As someone who has been on a poorly run internship scheme before, AI definitely offered a professional internship scheme that I'm grateful I went on and was worth the money in my opinion.
Response from Absolute Internship
Dear Mene,
First of all let us apologise for not being able to live up to your
expectations. We can assure you, our main goal as a company is to ensure that students are developing professional and personal skills via our programs. It is incredibly saddening to hear your feedback that you feel let down despite our efforts to resolve your concerns.
As we previously responded to your concern in detail, we want to emphasize that we arranged phone calls with you to ensure we fully understand your concerns, we talked to you in person on location and communicated with you via email as well. We certainly took on some of your concerns that we need to improve and we are glad to advise you that internal changes are taking place to make sure there is no misunderstanding regarding what's included in the housing and how we provide SIM cards.
We apologise if it wasn't clear that we supply our students with a local SIM card when they arrive to our program and on top of that we also add data and minutes for them for the first 30 days to start them off.
To address the reviews, we are actually not allowed and able to delete reviews to our liking, as the review platforms do not allow it.
We were sorry to find out that you decided to leave our program and student housing without informing us. It was reassuring to know that you carried on with your internship placement and we truly hope that you gained plenty of useful skills that will enhance your employability. As unfortunately we couldn't receive more updates from you regarding your situation we honestly hope that you are taking away positive experiences
as well. We can only hope that you will see this experience in a different light and that your experience was not influenced by any negative attitude from another student in the program.
Again, let us apologise to you that you didn't have the experience you hoped for and we would like think that spending a few weeks abroad has helped you broaden your network and gave you invaluable life skills.
We wish you all the best with your future Mene.
Best regards,
The Absolute Internship team