USA - The Golden Experience

Customer Reviews

• KR

  Krishnankutty

  · June 10th, 2024
  I have been on a few tours, including the excellent European whirlwind(Trafalgar ) booked through Tour radar last year,but this is by far the worst. The tour finished today.We reached LA around 9 pm and were just dumped on the side of the road on the footpath where it later turned out that ONLY tour buses are allowed to stop and that too for sightseeing. No information about this potential problem was given. Uber and other cars could not enter the carpark in Farmer's market and passengers were pushing heavy luggage around trying to find where those cars could pick them up.The tour guides had left the bus 4 hours ago in Vegas and the regular driver left in Barstow due to company policy. The new driver would not unload the suitcases and was shouting at us for loading the bus wrongly. (All loading was by previous driver and he had been good.).He refused to unload them because " he hadn't done the loading" . So passengers,(everyone over 60 and a couple over 80 ), had to climb into the luggage area and unload by themselves. The guides were ok but the bizzare company policy whereby everyone leaves after collecting tip money is not acceptable. At least one person should have stayed to make sure everyone was safe.We had to stay around at farmer's market for 45 minutes because the person who was supposed to pick up the 80 year old lady (from India ) could not find a way to get to her. We couldn't simply leave her to get mugged in a deserted , poorly lit corner of an empty car park. All in all, reasonable sightseeing but poor pre-tour communication and organisation and somewhat lax attitude with poor accountability in terms of leaving paying customers to fend for themselves and that too after 9 pm in a deserted, poorly lit corner of LA. The mind boggles. Tour Radar must look into this and make sure the company tightens up. Your credibility is at stake too and one day it could well be a tragedy if some defenceless person gets mugged or worse because the company cares two hoots about customer safety. Until they have improved, neither this or the associated should be coming up in Tour Radar searches.( Interestingly, different company names have been used for different passengers. Some had booked through AAA, some through Amadeo etc). I will not be recommending this company even though the guides were friendly and mostly helpful. The last few hours of the tour certainly left a bad taste in everyone's mouth but that's a problem with the company and probably not controllable by the guides. Poor ending to a reasonable tour. Krishnankutty Rajesh Australia.
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  Trip date: June 2024