Tucan Travel- choose another operator
Replies: 7 - Last Post: Feb 15, 2013 1:14 PM Last Post By: hermosajoe
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Tucan Travel- choose another operator
Hi guys....i just wanted to put the word out to ppl looking at doing a tour to let you all know that Tucan do not have your best interests at heart!My girlfriend and i recently did 2 tours with Tucan, 1 in Peru and the other in Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina...half way through our tour in Peru we called and emailed the Australian & South American branch of Tucan to cancel our 2nd tour as the 1st 1 was so average.....not the intineary (it was amazing) but the tour guide was just terrible, i wont mention her name but the tour guide from Holland was doing her 1st tour ever and just had no idea what so all. She could speak Spanish and get us from place to place but apart from that she was totally useless. She was soooooo flat, had no personality, we only had a group of 6 including my girlfriend and m.. she did very little to make the group bond by organising activities etc. I suppose it didn't help that the other 4 in our group was a 50 yr old lady who had no go, another older lady who did her own thing, and another girl that said 3 words the whole trip. We constantly bumped into G Adventures and there group was so much better and the tour guide was a legend. The really dissappointing thing with our tour guide is she never organised dinners or anything, she never gave us information about anything what so ever....i constantly had to nag her for information regarding what we were doing (like how long do we have today at the Oasis because there were other activities such as sandboarding that i wanted to fit in with little time to do it all) she just gave me a blank look and it was as if i was bothering her....
There are way to many things for me to list about how crap she was but for example my girlfriend broke her ribs and after day 1 of the inka trail and had to turn around and go back...she could not get hold of the tour guide so was on her own for 3 DAYS waiting for us to get to Machu Picchu (even though there were 3 of them including the crap tour guide not on the inka trail) the guide didnt even think to email her or facebook her, my girlfriend called her everyday and she just never picked up...she made no effort to find her and she had been informed that my girlfrend had turned around by the inka trail guide. Also at the beginning of our trip we wanted to add the amazon jungle to our trip but after 6 days of asking we still had no answers so i told her to forget it (by this time we hated her and didnt want to spend anymore time with her or that gorup). Also at the end of the trip we wanted to leave the tour a day early as we had booked a Gallapogas cruise so we wanted to change our flight (that tucan had booked) for a day earlier....she just simply said it couldnt be done, so i ended up contacting the airline myself and did it. She constantly stuffed up by telling us things like be at the train station for 3pm...so we got there and the train was at 5pm and she rocked up at 430 so we wasted an hour n half...or forgot to organise our transfer from the airport so we had pay for our own taxi....honestly there is so much more but i could be here all day.
We are not unrealistic, we understand you cant blame a tour company for 1 bad guide....but when we made our complaint in detail to tucan 2 weeks before our next tucan tour saying we wanted a refund from our next tour they just completely dismissed and didnt reply till 2 days before our 2nd tour was supposed to commence and there reply just simply BLAMED us...it was crazy, they basically made out we were whingers. This aint the case though coz this is the only bad tour ive ever had, it was just bad! On top of this why the hell did it take them 2 weeks to answer our complaint? We were ringing them saying we want a refund and they were just like sorry cant help you its xmas and we are short staffed! haha what the hell?? Anyway we had to do our 2nd tour as they refused to give us an outcome before our 2nd tour and we didnt want to waste all the money already spent!
Fortunately the 2nd tour was 100 times better and the tour guide was a legend! But still its not the point.......Now after several emails, tucan have still not respnded and taken no responsibility for making our 1st 2 week tour a shambles and even worse in their only email made out we were to blame!
Honestly guys dont give these guys your money, not only because you may get a crap guide as we did, but because tucan dont care and from what i heard alot of the guides get paid nothing so hence why they are so inexperienced and just dont care either!
1
To be honest, I think the tour company was right. You are whingers who expecrted a lot of hand holding and reassurring. It is not up to a tour guide to make you have fun. You have to have fun and create it yourself.It seems your tour guide got you every place and OH My god you arrived early for a train. Seriously, please look at what you wrote, there is no real things that went wrong apart from bad company on the tour. Your dutch guide didn't break your girlfriends ribs herself, even though she probably wanted to.
Next time maybe travel independently. It is cheaper and you get to see more at your own pace with companions of your choice.
2
I could be believe how bad you feel with the service, is not new for local people to see the tour guide lider with groups visiting for first time the country and they do not have idea where they are.Recomendation for you; next time; you can booking your tours with local travel companies, I am sure you will pay less but you will have very good services with local tour guides.
4
Possible reasons for taking a tour in the first place.1) you are visiting North Korea, so the options are limited.
2) Your name is Ida, you are a 76 year old woman who resides in a retirement village in Florida, had a hip replacement last year but so enjoyed that cruise you did with your late husband.
3) It's a condition set by Mummy and Daddy in return for paying for your holiday
4) You lack the necessary organisational ability to plan your own holiday.
6) You are 22 live your life on Facebook and need others to organize your fun.
7) You are a complete muppet
8) You have a pathological aversion or inability to order dinner by yourself.

