Our tour guide never showed up. He texted 40 minutes after the start time to offer a “mini” tour. When we requested a refund Viator only offered 50%! Why on earth should we have to pay anything at all. I will NEVER book with them again and will warn others to avoid them at all costs. What a way to ruin our day in Oxford.
Hi Thomas, You were sent clear simple instructions of the names and number of your guides for your boat tour and then for your walking tour. I also texted you before the tour too. You never replied to any texts nor any messages. It's true that on the day of the tour, unfortunately the morning guide made an error and mixed up the start time. He informed me that when he had realised he had mixed up 11am start with 11.30, he called and texted you starting about 11.20am to apologise and to ask if you could wait until 11.30. He then realised that this would not provide adequate time to take you out for the usual full one hour on the river before you would have to return to meet the scheduled walking tour with the next guide. This is why he therefore offered to either give you a reduced shorter duration boat trip or to instead meet him later in the day after your walking tour had ended. I am really sorry and your boat guide already also apologised to you for the error which he made. I have no idea why he mixed up the start times but I did immediately take responsibility to refund you, the first activity completely. This is why I notified you that I was refunding you, 100% of your payment for the boat trip. However, I informed you why I was not going to refund you 100%- namely because you didn't show up yourselves for the 12.30 walking tour. Your morning guide, Ales, felt responsible enough to still turn up for the other guide's tour, in order to meet you in person to apologise that way too and to introduce you to your afternoon guide called Jean. However, you never showed up at 12.30. We sent you lots of communications and you only responded with a single text and no other messages and no call backs. Both myself and both the scheduled guides tried to call and or text you before or on the day and you didn't answer a single phone call attempt by us. You could have told us that morning, when the boat tour was unfortunately late, that you also wished to cancel the afternoon tour. However, you made no such communication and you simply ignored questions and info sent to you too..except to irately complain (understandably) when your morning guide apologised for being late and then to irately complain to me, when I offered you full refund of the first activity. Your morning guide spontaneously agreed to waive his guide fee but your afternoon guide turned up on time and waited for you and tried to call you and text you and got no response. He was therefore paid in full. Once again, I am sorry that your morning activity didn't go to plan but the customer is not god. You could and you should have made more reasonable steps to communicate with us. You said that you are going to contest the payment with you credit card provider. That's your right to do so but as far as I am concerned, I already offered you a refund of the activity which was not delivered and we also did attempt to offer you opportunity to reschedule it too. Moreover, I also offered you the opportunity to rebook at a future date at no cost but you simply declined to even reply to all these offers to placate. My first responsibility is to my staff and they all work freelance gig work paid as and when they make a commitment. If you don't show up for a scheduled activity such as the afternoon walking tour, I will always pay my staff in full. Thus, I cannot offer you a full refund.
