LV
This is my fifth time booking with…
This is my fifth time booking with TakeTours, yet unfortunately it’s a 2 star rating for me given the following reasons (I will elaborate in detail below): (a) the Tour Leader; and (b) we did not get the “Deluxe” package we paid for. (1) In all fairness, this is not my first experience traveling within a tour with a Tour Leader and I have traveled a lot to many times with TakeTours. This was my worst experience yet. We chose the "6-Day US East Coast, Niagara Falls Vacation Package from New York with Airport Transfers tour departing from NYC” by JUPITER LEGEND and had TANA CAIREN as our Tour Leader. In short, she was rude. (2) Our Tour Leader did not respect our choice of not joining the optional tours. When we booked this tour, we were fully aware that the itinerary we picked have some optional tours in it (which fee is not included in the package) and we are okay with it as it gives us room to choose more flexible as it is what it is, an OPTION. Since it is clearly written as ‘optional’, we felt it would be a normal thing should we refuse to join. Yet, every time we conveyed to our Tour Leader, TANA, that we will not join the optional tour, she gave us a hard time – every single time. It would be understandable if she seeks for confirmation from us whether we’re sure on not joining since we will be missing out for example. Instead, she would badger us with these questions like (1) why are you joining this tour then? (2) Is it because of budget reasons? - which we found very offensive. Considering every day has an optional tour, sometimes even multiple ones, we felt very uncomfortable and her attitude made the trip less enjoyable. (3) In our previous experiences with TakeTours, same where the tour has optional tours in it, usually what was done is that the Tour Leader would prior explain to us the itinerary of that day, including the optional ones and their respective fees. Then, he/she would offer us if we would join the said optional tour. Yes, we were being offered. Instead, what our Tour Leader did on the first day of the tour was handling us an amount that we need to pay to her – which amount is to include all optional tours and optional meals. She did this in a manner as if the optional tours were compulsory. Given this was not our first experience with TakeTours, we found her way of things very strange. We believe that by doing so, the information she gave was misleading especially to first-timers, or even people with special diet who can’t eat a certain food (I will elaborate my reason below). (4) Every time it is time for the optional tour, she would give us an attitude, instead of advising us what we can do or where we can wait. At some point, we even felt like she took it to a personal level to make us miserable. There was this one time where we stopped at a museum (optional) where she went out of her way to prohibit us to enter the lobby, saying that we can’t enter the building if we are not joining the museum tour (we went during the colder months so it was freezing outside). We find this very odd so we checked with the security and were told we could enter albeit not joining the museum tour since there is a gift shop should we fancy some shopping. To us, what she did was downright rude. (5) In our last tour day, we had an optional meal i.e lobster lunch. We saw 2 (two) untouched lobsters being tossed to garbage by 2 (two) members of our tour, despite having paid for it. I bet if they knew the lunch was optional, they would not have paid for the lobsters since we saw them grabbed pizza afterward. This calls for misleading and/or inadequate information on the optional tour/meal by our Tour Leader. (6) In truth, we believe we don’t need to explain to ourselves why we refused to join some of the optional tours, as it is “OPTIONAL” – we have the “OPTION”. We denied most of the optional tours as some of us have been on the same itinerary and some of the activities in the optional tour are something we have similarly enjoyed before. Our decision to join or not to join is a matter of personal preference and we believe it should be respected. (7) Choosing the DELUXE hotel while booking at TakeTours will be ultimately the same as choosing the STANDARD and the only thing that is different is that the tour will take more money out of the customer without reasonable reason and explanation.